Officer Shift Work Beat Intro Voiceover 00:00 This is the Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Interview Barry Bratburd 00:08 This is Barry Bratburd with the COPS Office. With us today is Dr. Karen Amendola, chief operations officer at the Police Foundation. Dr. Amendola is here with us today to talk about officer shift work. Dr. Amendola, you’re well known for your research at the Police Foundation. We’re interested in learning more about your most recent research and publication on officer shift work. What prompted you to conduct this study? Karen Amendola 00:33 Well, Barry, actually in working with police departments all across the country, I had heard that many agencies had been trying alternative types of shift schedules. I was really curious why that was and whether that was something that was a new trend or something that had been going on for some time. Barry 0:50 Can you tell us about your study design and what agencies participated as subjects? Karen 00:55 Sure. We had actually two phases of our study. The first one was a national survey that we did with 300 agencies to find out about what their practices were. The second was an experimental design where we randomly assigned officers to 8-, 10-, and 12-hour shifts. That happened both in Detroit, Michigan, and in Arlington, Texas. Barry 01:18 What did your study reveal? Karen 01:19 In terms of the national survey, we conducted that in 2005 and again in 2009. It was with the same 300 agencies. In 2005, we had about a 96% response rate. In 2009, we had 100% response rate. In that, we found that agencies had been moving away from 8-hour shifts. This seemed to be happening rather rapidly regardless of the agency size. One of the things that we were interested in knowing is what were they doing instead of doing 8-hour shifts. We knew that many agencies had adopted 10- and 12- hour shifts but, in fact, many of the agencies over the 4-year period had gone to very non-traditional schedules like 9-hour shifts, 11-hour shifts, even 13- or 13.5-hour shifts. That gave me reason for pause and it really helped to define what our experimental design would be. We had already had some idea that this was going on so when we designed the experiment, we thought we would test the 8, 10, and 12, and we hadn’t yet learned that there were these 9-, 11-, and 13-hour shifts. In the study where we did the experiment, what we found is—we did all kinds of measures to really get at a number of performance dimensions, health-related issues, safety-related concerns, and things like fatigue and sleep practices, as well as the very important issue of overtime and off-duty employment. What we found was somewhat surprising. Actually, there were advantages in the 10-hour shift and those advantages were not seen by the 8-hour shifts nor were they related to the 12-hour shifts, by and large. So what were those advantages? There were three primary ones. The first one, which is rather intuitive, is that the officers liked them more. They had a higher quality of work life. That was not true on the 8- and 12-hour shifts. However, they also—and this was probably the most surprising finding—they got about a half an hour more sleep per 24-hour period than did those on the 8-hour shifts. That amounts to about 3.5 hours a week, which over a year is like 170 hours. This is a substantial finding in light of past research by Bryan Vila and others that has shown that officers get less sleep than the average population. To be able to have a shift that, for some reason, would provide for additional sleep, was a very surprising finding and we think it reduces fatigue and would probably enhance safety and wellness issues. Why it’s the case I don’t know. In Bryan Vila’s work and others that had studied the length of sleep that officers typically get, they had found that on average officers were sleeping about 6.5 hours a night, you know, roughly. In our study, the average sleep amount across all shifts was about 7.5 hours, but for those on the 10s it was a half hour more than those on the 8s. It certainly made us think about the reasons why our study might have been different from others. I think what we found is that it’s not that those in Detroit or Arlington, Texas, for some reason sleep way more than other officers. I think it was the methodology that we used. We actually asked officers to not only log the hours that they had their primary sleep but also if they had naps or that type of thing involved. It may be that these officers are spending more time in taking naps and whatnot. The other key finding on the 10-hour shifts is that they worked, on average, 80% less overtime hours than those on the 8s. I think this is a significant finding related to these compressed work schedules where officers are working more hours in a day because of the costs associated with overtime. The director of the COPS Office during the COPS meeting, Director Melekian, said that there were safety concerns and that there were changes in the economic times. He had highlighted that many cities and counties across the country had had significant cutbacks. With that being a trend that’s happening with the tightening budgets, I think that the consideration of ways to reduce overtime is important. Now I will say that, for those on 12-hour shifts, they also had an advantage of less overtime worked. In fact, about two-thirds less than those on the 8-hours, but not as much as the 10s. The reason I have concerns, and I do have legitimate concerns about 12-hour shifts, not only based on past research but based on the findings from our research, is that the folks that worked the 12-hour shifts reported being less alert during each hour of their shift. We had them log each hour that they had worked and they were less alert, on average. They also reported being more subjectively fatigued. Now, we had done all kinds of objective measures, we administered laboratory measures and whatnot. Their performance did not differ, certainly not in driving simulators, not in regard to shooting, and not in regard to reaction time. However, it’s still very concerning for me. Many agencies have adopted 12s. We found, in the survey, that the smaller agencies had moved towards the 12-hour shifts more significantly. To us, that finding is really a critical one and reason for agencies to be concerned. I think, by and large, we found that the 10-hour shifts had certain advantages. I will add to that, in concluding what we basically found, that we work with these larger agencies—Arlington, Texas, is fairly significantly large, Detroit is even larger—many of the agencies that have adopted the 12s are very small. There could be some characteristics associated with a small agency that might actually limit the concerns that we have, but I don’t have a lot of evidence for that so far and other studies have shown similar things. Barry 07:48 Can you describe why this important to community policing? Karen 07:51 Sure. So health and safety, as Director Melekian has noted, are really key issues. It’s critical to serving the community. If an officer is fatigued or not safe, this can pose significant risk to the communities that they serve. Some research, although not in our research, has indicated that fatigued officers don’t interact as favorably with people—they’re shorter, more curt, and have more difficulty. It’s akin to the idea that when you get on an airplane, they say if there’s a need for oxygen, secure your mask first before helping children or others. It’s the same thing with officers. They need to make sure that they’re safe, healthy, and not fatigued in order to be of service to their communities. Barry 08:38 So what would be the one or two takeaways that you can provide us for agencies that might be considering implementing different shifts? Karen 08:46 I think that the two takeaways probably would be that agencies that are implementing 12-hour shifts—that they’d better monitor off duty and overtime. I think that’s something that can go to all agencies, but specifically in the 12-hour agencies. Past research has shown that 12-hour shifts and longer, when combined with more than 48 hours of work in a week, can be very dangerous and pose significant accident risk. Extensive hours in any case are an issue. I think the one area that we haven’t really looked at is how to monitor off-duty employment. We have policies on it but we don’t really monitor it. Barry 09:25 Great. Dr. Amendola, thank you so much for providing us with your expertise and your time. Karen 09:29 Thank you so much. Beat Exit Voiceover: 09:31 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems. ####END OF TRANSCRIPT####