For the officers, the new shifts means they have three consecutive days off every other week.
One group of officers will work 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., a second 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and a third from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. The third shift of two officers who overlap the 7-to-7 shifts “addresses the demand of service. Our research shows 66 percent of our call demand and 73 percent of our (vehicle) crashes occur during that overlap,” Evers said.
One week an officer would get two consecutive days off, the next week three consecutive days. The department started the new schedule June 2 and will monitor its effectiveness through the remainder of the year. The department has budgeted $150,000 for police overtime this year.
Brad Piasecki, president of the Beavercreek Fraternal Order of Police, said the union recognized the need for the change.
“It is advantageous to both the city and the officers. It gets more officers on the road when we need them,” he said.
Piasecki said the change will be evaluated later this year to see if it was a good decision.
“We want to be able to live up to our professional standards as police officers for our citizens,” he added.
The Fairborn Police Department has been on 12-hour shifts since around 2005, Chief Terry Barlow said.
“We’ve cut our overtime hours by half since 2005,” Barlow said. The chief said the department works with the local courts to schedule cases either toward the end or beginning of shifts so officers can testify with fewer overtime hours.
“It’s just a better management schedule,” he said. Barlow said one big advantage is that each shift works with the same supervisor. “The downside is we don’t see some officers on a regular basis. That’s where technology helps out to keep in contact with those officers.”
Barlow said the younger officers like the idea of the longer shifts and the three days off every other week. “The older officers tend not to like it … but they have come together. We’ve asked a couple times if they wanted a change. Overwhelmingly, it’s been stay on the 12-hour shift.”
A 2011 study by the Police Foundation, funded through the U.S. Department of Justice, looked at the impact of longer shifts on policing.
“The results of our national surveys seem to suggest that there is a great variation in shift schedules employed … but there has been little available data on the advantages and disadvantages associated with these shifts,” the authors wrote.
The national surveys done by the authors of randomly selected police departments in 2005 and 2009 found “there has been considerable conjecture about the benefits … e.g., it will increase employee morale, result in lower costs, and reduce overtime and absenteeism. There are, however, limited data to support these claims in law enforcement.”
The study noted it appears more departments are moving to longer shifts.
For many years, the Xenia Police Department was on 12-hour shifts. Police administration decided some years ago to go to 8-hour shifts for eight months a year and 12-hour shifts for May, June, July and August.
“It made for some lengthy days,” Capt. Doug Dougherty said of the 12-hour shifts. “It works in the summer as a change of pace and a chance for officers to work with new, different people.”
Dougherty said there appears to have been no change in overtime during the 12-hour shifts.
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