Dumb questions for law enforcement folks

[Jon Loomis]

A few dumb questions for crimespacers who work or have worked in law enforcement:

1.What do you call the schedule (roster?) that determines who works what shift? 

2.At what administrative level is that schedule usually prepared? 

3.I assume most of the time these operate based on seniority--the most senior cops get the day or evening shifts, the most junior work the graveyard.  But is this true?  Doesn't more crime happen in those late-night, early morning hours? 

4.Do the shifts break down the way I imagine: 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m. to midnight, midnight to 8:00 a.m.?  How much of that shift is typically spent on the street, vs at the desk?

5.How does the desk time typically break down in terms of paperwork, etc.? 

Many thanks for any help you can give me--

Jon

[I. J. Parker]

Check with Lee Lofland on THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT. He's a good guy.

[Camille LaGuire]

Also, if you don't get an answer here, most police departments have somebody in community outreach or publicity who will be glad to answer such questions. (I just took a peek at our own PD, and discovered that the new chief of police now has HER email as the public contact - though I still expect that the community relations office probably handles the email.)

[Karyn J. Powers]

Here's what I remember from The Wausau Citizen police Academy a couple years ago. The roster is called the "shift." The "Shift Supervisor" prepares it and that person in Wausau is a Lieutenant, but in massive dept.'s it could be a desk sergeant. The work day really depends upon how each city sets it up, but typcally it does not follow the factory shift work of 7 to 3, 3 to 11, 11 to 7. As far as who gets what shifts, it is seniority based, but an officer with enough time in grade to move, can decline to move to "days" when an opening is posted. Of course the higher you go, the fewer people there are with your rank, so the longer you have to wait for an opening on the day shift. Desk vs street time depends upon the kinds of arrests or citations they run into. The cops here said a single DUI can take them off the road for up to three hours. That is from the time they determine that the person is drunk, to in-take at the jail to completing the multiple page report that gets filed with the shift supervisor and sent to the DA and the county clerk to schedule court. Our dept was looking into a software program that sounded, to me, like "dragon-speak," but I'm guessing it was "drag and speak." It was voice recognition that completes their reports from dictation. It was supposed to speed up the report process to get them back on the street. Hope this helps.