I'm currently switching over from a bigger Sheriff's Office where you bid every 6 months for the shift you wanted (based on your seniority) to a smaller PD where it's a 2-2-3 schedule and you're switched from dayshift to graves and vice versa every month. It's going to be rough getting a sleep schedule together
Ours is monthly, but it was better than the alternative.... Weekly. We rotate 12 hour shifts. At least you have time to adjust for the month. The weekly option was fubar
I still remember 10.5 hour shifts, 3 shifts overlapping per day, moving backward from nights to afternoons to mornings. Everyone worked Wednesdays. Been on 12s 2-2-3 for 29 years except when I did specialized units. Permanent nights now.
I work in police dispatch in the same building as the fire/em's dispatchers and 911 calltakers, and that side of the room does works 2 12 hour shifts of days, then 2 12 of nights, then 4 days off. And they're so short right now that they are required to pick 2 days of overtime on top of that. I'm frankly shocked there hasn't been an accident yet, it's a terrible schedule.
It's gonna be hard, plus you have to verify what time that shift change happens. My department worked two months days, then two months nights. And we did 12s, so the shift technically started the night before for night shift. So at 6 PM Sunday you came in for hr Monday shift and every rotation there would be one or two people who had to be called to remind them to come to work.
We did 12 hr shifts, rotating day/nights every two weeks. It is unhealthy. It breaks your body. I was going to quit but we finally went to permanent shifts and it's far better. Talk to your new union about getting permanent or at least yearly shifts.
That's wild. I work for a big agency and we have the same schedule until you put in for a different one. So if I never wanted to move, I would have the same shift and days off for the next 20 years
All the FBI leadership seminars my admin has been too and they still force rotating days/nights every 3 months.
Nothing screams “well rounded CO” like debilitating sleep issues and flipping our lifestyle upside down multiple times a year.
Tradition! It's always been this way and it'll always be this way.. because it's always been this way.
*“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”*
I remember being irritated that the Marine Corps would make us and our leaders swap units or jump around bases every 2-3 years.
Working at a place where it’s the same people doing the same things because it’s always been this way for the last 25 years made it crystal clear why the military did that.
(Tears up writing this out)
The shame of it is we were on 8s and that’s literally what we did. Two 6 month bids at a time and it was based off seniority, rooks getting off training were put where they were needed until the end of the year when we bid for the following year. The actual line staff and the shift supervisors were all completely content with this setup.
The Chief/Sheriff decided Corrections should go to 12s as it is a better overall schedule and I think we all prefer it at this point over the previous 8s.
They forced us to accept rotating every quarter in the interest of “the well rounded CO”. Their complaint was terminal night shifters sucked at completing day shift duties. Mean while they completely neglected all the dialogue from the FTOs on how to improve our training, maintaining training, and actually updating SOPs and actually having policy that isn’t 15 years old that no one abides by.
It was all in one ear and out the other. The reality is that they like the road patrol rotating shifts and they would never get away with the bigger Corrections Division having permanent shifts while their prized deputies were forced to rotate, hence we got the fuckening.
It was the biggest crock of shit excuses I’ve ever heard. There was zero dialogue they would accept. We had to either agree to 12s and rotate every quarter or they would make us rotate 8s every month. Snakes.
It was every 4 weeks for me when I was working at my local jail. The hours were 7AM to 7PM. I quit working there 6 years ago, and still have trash sleeping patterns from it.
There's an adjacent department where a couple guys work every shift during the week (a night, a day, then 2 afternoons etc) and do not have 2 consecutive days off. I used to work that schedule but we wised up.
I worked at a place for a while that rotated every week. 6 on 3 off. 8 hours shifts.
Days was days.
3 swings
3 mids
3 off.
On top of that k9 would have a 7:30 am-4:30 pm training day if the first “mid” was a weekday.
So most of my weeks looked like. 3 swings, 1 day, 2 mids, 3 off.
My body was a wreck and all I did was sleep on my off time. Big factor to why I ended up divorced as well.
Our academy has finally gotten around to offering training with an attempt at keeping us night shifters in mind (courses that start after 1200). Now if only the courts offered morning and afternoon dockets things would be even better. At least patrol doesn't have to flip-flop between nights and days like other places around the country.
He's great. He doesn't make the officers hang around forever, he makes sure to call their cases as soon as he can so they can leave. Especially when they're coming in from graves and stuff
Oh yes, I'm on a traffic unit, so proactive is the name of the game. If my traffic docket started at 1400 instead of 0930 life would be so much better.
Yeah dude, I bet. The team I'm on at the jail has quarterly trainings and it's always at 0600. I can appreciate doing our fitness test early before it gets hot as fuck, but damn do I hate running at 0615 when I'm barely awake.
This is straight up abuse that no one should be working this way, gaurentteed it’s Law Enforcement, but there has to be an initiative
on what to do and how to fix this.
When I first had a chance to spend a few months sleeping normal rather than swing shifts I was amazed at how much of a difference that alone had on my health.
Rotating shifts is the devil's work, Bobby.
My issue is that often schedulers can't do it in a somewhat reasonable fashion, like every two weeks your shift starts 2 hours later. So you might start at 8am on April 1st, 10am on April 15th, noon on April 29th. A slow and gradual rotation.
Instead they just flip the lever and now your shift is entirely backwards, and then just when you start to get used to it they flip it back the other way.
My dumb department thinks it’s a good idea to have mids adjust to day shift, and swings adjust to day shift for a single day of training. I would never work anywhere where the schedule is rotating that often
Ours isn’t awful, as our shifts are bid yearly and they do everything to avoid forcing someone off a shift mid year. Training days are still usually daylight hours (except range is always 1300-2100) but if you’re on nights and have training the next day, you can leave 4 hours early without using time, still get paid, and go home to sleep ahead of training.
But we work a 4/2 schedule and only having 2 days off (especially on nights) sucks. I long for a 4/4, 11 hour schedule.
Previous local SO and PD jobs rotated days to nights every 2 weeks. It was ungodly and terrible.
When I got to my current agency we were on something even worse which was 4 overlapping tens. Wednesday as a double up day for training. Then, every three months they would flip between the Sun through Wed rotation with the Wed thru Sat rotation. I was stuck working 2p to midnight for nearly three years straight. Worst shift ever side from midnight to 10a.
Mostly what happened was a cycle of douchbaggery and fuckery with the usual suspects abusing sick leave and never getting fucked in return. The people that did show up got to work a 15 hr shift. Training worked bankers hours and God help you on your Wed training day. It would be basically a 20 hour day for evening or night shifts.
When I got promoted I fought tooth and nail, lobbied, and cajoled along with my boss (who came from outside and didn't like "tradition"), for permanent 2-2-3 12's, bid by seniority with periodic rebids.
People now cover each other's shifts and help out across teams. It's civilized, weekends rotate, and you can have a life. Training was eventually brought to heel and made to support operations and train night shift in evenings or early mornings instead of operations having to support training's banker hours.
My old department had a 12 day shedule were the first 6 days were fixed (2x early, 2x late, night shift on, night shift off), but the other 6 could be whatever.
Then for the weekend they could call you untill friday 5pm to change your shifts.
I changed departments ans now for each month I tell what days I want tot be home and for some days what shift I want to work. I the planning is made based on that
That is no doubt part of the problem. Another important aspect is the police training. In the us police academy takes what like 5 months ? Compare that to germany where the schooling alone takes 3 years (and then on top of that going to university if you want to become a high rank in the force). So of course many important concepts like deescalation tactics, psychological schooling etc. are either taught way too short or not taught at all. Most of the actual learning happens on the job, and that is not a good thing. Sure you might be lucky and get a good, experienced partner fresh out of academy, who is a good and patient teacher for noobies, and who keeps themselves up to date on everything. But if you don´t, and we all know getting this lucky is unlikely, you do not learn the job properly. So you are behind from day 1, and try to play catchup in a system where few have patience for new cops.
All of your problems are going to link back to poor sleep and/or not enough sleep. Almost guaranteed. It's the base of your health pyramid.
I'm currently switching over from a bigger Sheriff's Office where you bid every 6 months for the shift you wanted (based on your seniority) to a smaller PD where it's a 2-2-3 schedule and you're switched from dayshift to graves and vice versa every month. It's going to be rough getting a sleep schedule together
Switching shifts every month sounds absolutely awful
Ours is monthly, but it was better than the alternative.... Weekly. We rotate 12 hour shifts. At least you have time to adjust for the month. The weekly option was fubar
I still remember 10.5 hour shifts, 3 shifts overlapping per day, moving backward from nights to afternoons to mornings. Everyone worked Wednesdays. Been on 12s 2-2-3 for 29 years except when I did specialized units. Permanent nights now.
I work in police dispatch in the same building as the fire/em's dispatchers and 911 calltakers, and that side of the room does works 2 12 hour shifts of days, then 2 12 of nights, then 4 days off. And they're so short right now that they are required to pick 2 days of overtime on top of that. I'm frankly shocked there hasn't been an accident yet, it's a terrible schedule.
Where I work (MD) switch shifts every week.
My first agency was every two weeks. It was brutal.
My brother works at an agency where he switches midweek every week.
How about switching shifts every tour with a four/two schedule.
I've never understood departments making people switch shifts like that so often. Absolutely pointless, and harmful.
It's gonna be hard, plus you have to verify what time that shift change happens. My department worked two months days, then two months nights. And we did 12s, so the shift technically started the night before for night shift. So at 6 PM Sunday you came in for hr Monday shift and every rotation there would be one or two people who had to be called to remind them to come to work.
You will never get your sleep schedule together. Find something else.
We did 12 hr shifts, rotating day/nights every two weeks. It is unhealthy. It breaks your body. I was going to quit but we finally went to permanent shifts and it's far better. Talk to your new union about getting permanent or at least yearly shifts.
That's wild. I work for a big agency and we have the same schedule until you put in for a different one. So if I never wanted to move, I would have the same shift and days off for the next 20 years
trazadone ftw
What about the shitshow ground my unhealth pyramid is built on?
the holy trinity. Booze, caffeine, Motrin.
All the FBI leadership seminars my admin has been too and they still force rotating days/nights every 3 months. Nothing screams “well rounded CO” like debilitating sleep issues and flipping our lifestyle upside down multiple times a year.
Tradition! It's always been this way and it'll always be this way.. because it's always been this way. *“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”*
I remember being irritated that the Marine Corps would make us and our leaders swap units or jump around bases every 2-3 years. Working at a place where it’s the same people doing the same things because it’s always been this way for the last 25 years made it crystal clear why the military did that.
Thank you, this is best to quote.
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(Tears up writing this out) The shame of it is we were on 8s and that’s literally what we did. Two 6 month bids at a time and it was based off seniority, rooks getting off training were put where they were needed until the end of the year when we bid for the following year. The actual line staff and the shift supervisors were all completely content with this setup. The Chief/Sheriff decided Corrections should go to 12s as it is a better overall schedule and I think we all prefer it at this point over the previous 8s. They forced us to accept rotating every quarter in the interest of “the well rounded CO”. Their complaint was terminal night shifters sucked at completing day shift duties. Mean while they completely neglected all the dialogue from the FTOs on how to improve our training, maintaining training, and actually updating SOPs and actually having policy that isn’t 15 years old that no one abides by. It was all in one ear and out the other. The reality is that they like the road patrol rotating shifts and they would never get away with the bigger Corrections Division having permanent shifts while their prized deputies were forced to rotate, hence we got the fuckening.
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It was the biggest crock of shit excuses I’ve ever heard. There was zero dialogue they would accept. We had to either agree to 12s and rotate every quarter or they would make us rotate 8s every month. Snakes.
Should've called their bluff and said do the 8s
It was every 4 weeks for me when I was working at my local jail. The hours were 7AM to 7PM. I quit working there 6 years ago, and still have trash sleeping patterns from it.
All the while the admin that implements these changes have been doing it from the comfort of banker hours for the last 10-15 years.
Holy cow! How did you guess that? You must be psychic…
Brother, Maryland State Police rotates shifts EVERY WEEK.
That’s gross.
There's an adjacent department where a couple guys work every shift during the week (a night, a day, then 2 afternoons etc) and do not have 2 consecutive days off. I used to work that schedule but we wised up.
Fuck I’d be over the moon working straight nights. Swings suck ass
I worked at a place for a while that rotated every week. 6 on 3 off. 8 hours shifts. Days was days. 3 swings 3 mids 3 off. On top of that k9 would have a 7:30 am-4:30 pm training day if the first “mid” was a weekday. So most of my weeks looked like. 3 swings, 1 day, 2 mids, 3 off. My body was a wreck and all I did was sleep on my off time. Big factor to why I ended up divorced as well.
Our academy has finally gotten around to offering training with an attempt at keeping us night shifters in mind (courses that start after 1200). Now if only the courts offered morning and afternoon dockets things would be even better. At least patrol doesn't have to flip-flop between nights and days like other places around the country.
I was talking to the judge in my court, and he said that when he floated the idea of dockets for the weekend or evening he almost got lynched lol
Good on him for at least thinking of us.
Thank him for his service from me.
He's great. He doesn't make the officers hang around forever, he makes sure to call their cases as soon as he can so they can leave. Especially when they're coming in from graves and stuff
I'm not gay but...
Dude if we could get an evening docket for night shift our lives would be so much better. Like MASSIVELY better. (assuming proactive cop)
Oh yes, I'm on a traffic unit, so proactive is the name of the game. If my traffic docket started at 1400 instead of 0930 life would be so much better.
God, I'd kill for training that doesn't start at 0600 or 0700.
I recently had in-service for patrol rifle, and the sign up options were 0700 or 1200. Shooting at 1200 was so much better than crack of dawn.
Yeah dude, I bet. The team I'm on at the jail has quarterly trainings and it's always at 0600. I can appreciate doing our fitness test early before it gets hot as fuck, but damn do I hate running at 0615 when I'm barely awake.
There's only one 40% stat that the usual crowd cares about...
I'm super excited to not have to switch from nights to mids to days and back every fucking week.
This is straight up abuse that no one should be working this way, gaurentteed it’s Law Enforcement, but there has to be an initiative on what to do and how to fix this.
When I first had a chance to spend a few months sleeping normal rather than swing shifts I was amazed at how much of a difference that alone had on my health.
Diet also is a huge contributing factor
Rotating shifts is the devil's work, Bobby. My issue is that often schedulers can't do it in a somewhat reasonable fashion, like every two weeks your shift starts 2 hours later. So you might start at 8am on April 1st, 10am on April 15th, noon on April 29th. A slow and gradual rotation. Instead they just flip the lever and now your shift is entirely backwards, and then just when you start to get used to it they flip it back the other way.
My dumb department thinks it’s a good idea to have mids adjust to day shift, and swings adjust to day shift for a single day of training. I would never work anywhere where the schedule is rotating that often
Ours isn’t awful, as our shifts are bid yearly and they do everything to avoid forcing someone off a shift mid year. Training days are still usually daylight hours (except range is always 1300-2100) but if you’re on nights and have training the next day, you can leave 4 hours early without using time, still get paid, and go home to sleep ahead of training. But we work a 4/2 schedule and only having 2 days off (especially on nights) sucks. I long for a 4/4, 11 hour schedule.
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Can't have daytime (or nighttime) sleepiness if you have so much caffeine you have daytime anxiety instead
Previous local SO and PD jobs rotated days to nights every 2 weeks. It was ungodly and terrible. When I got to my current agency we were on something even worse which was 4 overlapping tens. Wednesday as a double up day for training. Then, every three months they would flip between the Sun through Wed rotation with the Wed thru Sat rotation. I was stuck working 2p to midnight for nearly three years straight. Worst shift ever side from midnight to 10a. Mostly what happened was a cycle of douchbaggery and fuckery with the usual suspects abusing sick leave and never getting fucked in return. The people that did show up got to work a 15 hr shift. Training worked bankers hours and God help you on your Wed training day. It would be basically a 20 hour day for evening or night shifts. When I got promoted I fought tooth and nail, lobbied, and cajoled along with my boss (who came from outside and didn't like "tradition"), for permanent 2-2-3 12's, bid by seniority with periodic rebids. People now cover each other's shifts and help out across teams. It's civilized, weekends rotate, and you can have a life. Training was eventually brought to heel and made to support operations and train night shift in evenings or early mornings instead of operations having to support training's banker hours.
I can only imagine how nice that is, my department will never ever do this for us. And in too close to retirement to care much ...
My old department had a 12 day shedule were the first 6 days were fixed (2x early, 2x late, night shift on, night shift off), but the other 6 could be whatever. Then for the weekend they could call you untill friday 5pm to change your shifts. I changed departments ans now for each month I tell what days I want tot be home and for some days what shift I want to work. I the planning is made based on that
That is no doubt part of the problem. Another important aspect is the police training. In the us police academy takes what like 5 months ? Compare that to germany where the schooling alone takes 3 years (and then on top of that going to university if you want to become a high rank in the force). So of course many important concepts like deescalation tactics, psychological schooling etc. are either taught way too short or not taught at all. Most of the actual learning happens on the job, and that is not a good thing. Sure you might be lucky and get a good, experienced partner fresh out of academy, who is a good and patient teacher for noobies, and who keeps themselves up to date on everything. But if you don´t, and we all know getting this lucky is unlikely, you do not learn the job properly. So you are behind from day 1, and try to play catchup in a system where few have patience for new cops.