Law enforcement is a round the clock activity. Officers work all hours of the day and night just patrolling the city. There's also required training, hearings, pre-trial interviews, and court appearances to contend with. Fatigue is an officer's constant companion.
Sleepiness/fatigue in the work place can lead to poor concentration, absenteeism, accidents, errors, injuries, and fatalities. In the USA, shift work sleep disorder results in the loss of thousands of lives and approximately $18 billion annually.There's little doubt that fatigue affects one's cognitive ability. Interestingly "the tragedies of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Space Shuttle Columbia, and the Exxon Valdez all occurred during the night shift and were attributed to human fatigue"(Officer.com). A 2006 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin compared an officer's ability to drive a vehicle to that of someone who has over indulged.
• After 20 hours of wakefulness, neurobehavioral functions are impaired equivalent to that of a drunk with a BAC of 0.10. Noticeable impairment sets in well before that;Shift Work Sleep Disorder (SWSD) is a real and common problem in law enforcement and a 2007 Harvard sleep study placed the incidence of sleep disorder in the law enforcement community at 38.4%(ScienceDaily.com).
• Even moderate levels of sleepiness “can substantially impair the ability to drive safely,” even before you actually fall asleep at the wheel;
• The ability to maintain speed and road position on a driving simulator is significantly reduced when the normal awake period is prolonged by just 3 hours;
• “After 24 hours of sustained wakefulness, the brain’s metabolic activity can decrease by up to 65 percent in total and by up to 11 percent in specific areas of the brain, particularly those that play a role in judgment, attention, and visual functions;”
• As people, including officers, “try to fight through periods of fatigue, the human body, in an effort to rest, goes into microsleeps” where you literally fall asleep “anywhere from 2 to 10 seconds at a time. It is difficult to predict when a person, once fatigued, might slip into a microsleep.”
• As little as 2 hours of sleep loss on just one occasion “can result in degraded reaction time, cognitive functioning, memory, mood, and alertness;”
• “Fatigue is 4 times more likely to cause workplace impairment than alcohol and other drugs.” Ironically, chemical abuse normally is “addressed immediately by management. However, the lack of sleep, probably the most common condition adversely affecting personnel performance, often is ignored.”
APD made the switch to the new 5/8 system claiming that they were trying to improve response times.
Spurred by poor response times, Schultz said this week that he will change the shifts next month of all uniformed officers and detectives from four 10-hour days a week to five eight-hour days.You'll never guess what one of the first suggestions for combating fatigue among officers is... Yep, longer shifts with longer blocks of time off.
Consider alternative forms of organizing work schedules. Extended workdays of 10 or 12 hours have the advantage of fewer consecutive night shifts and longer blocks of time off.Providing 3 days off a week doesn't mean that officers will be lounging around the house driving their families crazy for 72 hours, particularly for junior officers whose lack of seniority results in having those days off during the work week. As we've told you (read it here), an officer's off-duty responsibilities are significant - 4/10s typically result in perhaps one day off and at least 3 days where the officer can get the crucial 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Our Eyes tell us that fatigue has already become a problem in just one short week. Officers aren't responding to radio calls promptly and are showing up to pre-shift briefings visibly fatigued.
The 5th Floor has decided to send out officers whose abilities to "comprehend complex situations," "manage events," "perform risk assessment," "control [their] mood," "recollect the timing of events," "monitor [their] personal performance," and "communicate effectively" (read it here) in order to improve response time?! Looks to us like the Boys on the 5th Floor have taken a step in the wrong direction and more importantly, increased the danger to the public.
30 comments:
What a shame, I guess with the "Eye's" logic I guess the only thing to do to combat this fatigue is to stop the overtime. Lets start with the Chief's OT program........What a bunch a cry babies...Try getting a real job & working 40 hours, see what fatigue really is...........
" Try getting a real job & working 40 hours". Are you retarded or just stupid? We typically work well over 40 hours a week and most times with insufficient rest. It is all done to keep sheep like you safe. What if you had to get up after just 3 hours of sleep and attend mandatory training or go to court. We still have to find time to maintain physical fitness and firearm proficiency. The shame is people like you!
This chief and his staff have really messed up APD. It will take years to recover from all their foolish decisions. This chief is the worsed administrator I have ever seen! APD's morale is the worsed it has ever been. Due the math, things just don't add up with this guy. He is just bad all the way around. At least if he was honest, but he covers up everything and lies. Not the making or trade mark of a good chief, No honesty and intergrity here! So much for him swearing to protect. Just the money he is making.
To start with...most cops work 50 to 60 hours a week working their 40 hours plus court, COT, etc. Secondly, how about the EYE check into DC Callaway's recent decision to violate the contract and short change the graveyard officers who are required to attend court in the morning after their shift. The DC is letting his own arrogance set the city up for a lawsuit. If the eye needs the email from Callaway to the Commanders...I'm sure that someone can provide it!!!
To the poster above. You are a fool or you play golf all day with ray instead of working. And to spin doctor ray, can you tell the truth ? The truth is the five eights have nothing to do with response time. Its,all about the sixth area command marty wanted ! marty pulls the strings and ray jumps. But ray will blame officers everytime to cover the truth.
At first I hated this 8 hour shift schedule. Now it's not so bad, I am getting rich!!!!! There is no self-relieving squads on some days so we have to get dispatched at the end of our shift. Dispatch+end of shift=$$$$$$$$$$$$ Thanks!!!!!!
Would you like to have some cheese with your whinnneeee? Pussies, all of you! You don't like your schedule or going to court....QUIT! & go sell burgers at Wendys.
APD SUCKS!
To help the officers:
What ever happened to night court?
Sure, we can all quit but who are you going to call when your all scared,sucking on your thumb, and pissing your pants because your not man enough to stand up to those mean scary people, and to the turd that says we suck, I'm amazed at your stupidity and surprised you can even spell APD!!!!
Your chief and mayor decided to open a 6th area command without proper staffing. There were only 5 more officers in the field services bid (due to dispanding Community Resource Detective Units) this year than last year. Each of the current five area commands were stripped of a full squad and each of the remaining squads was made smaller. This was done to create nine more squads to run the new area command. There are fewer people in each area command answering the same number of calls. Due to this lack of staffing officers are being helod over at overtime rate past the end of their shift. This is costing the officers in regard to rest and time with their families. This ic costing the citizens of Albuquerque a ridiculous amount of money. Officers were placed on a 5-8 hour shift without regard for officer safety due to fatigue or the economic impact on the city budget. Overtired and overworkd officers are going to yield less safe, less productive, less polite, and less motivated officers.
To add another poor decision to the list....Now the 5th floor has decided to issue an order in direct violation of the police contract provision for court overtime for officers. When confronted about short changing the officers for their time and violating the contract...the 5th floor responded with WE MAKE THE RULES AND ISSUE THE ORDERS!
This series of unfortunate decisions made by Ray and the 5th Floor Jazz Band....will cost him his career. The press on this will be very poor and Marty cannot stand too many more ugly news cycles before he rids himself of the problem. Marty will need to make a head roll and Ray will be the biggest head!
I guess the school cop at La Cueva made some poor decisions based on fatigue. Was he really a cop?
It would seem to me that if you call some one “stupid,” you would surely know what a contraction is ... (Re: Sure, we can all quit but who are you going to call when your all scared, sucking on your thumb, and pissing your pants because your not man enough to stand up to those mean scary people, and to the turd that says we suck, I'm amazed at your stupidity and surprised you can even spell APD!!!!) ... A contraction for "you are" would normally be spelled "you're" instead of "your”.... I would be careful of making accusations before you have examined your own inadequacies first!
Sure, we can all quit but who are you going to call when your all scared,sucking on your thumb, and pissing your pants because your not man enough to stand up to those mean scary people,,,,,,,,
I'm certainly not going to call you. I'm going to take out my "Retired" APD Badge, my issued model 10 and deal with the situation just like I did for 25 years, rookie. Grow up
Drum Roll Pleezzzz........
Subpeonas are hot off the press. They know who we are.....
APD has a long history of supposedly needing more officers. How many officers are enough, and of what caliber/qualification?
There are a few main points to remember about all things politic. The government does not exist to help the populace.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and thus clamorous to be led to safety, by constantly menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them illusions." H.L. Mencken
I have a friend that worked as an officer in Sacramento, California. He said in about 1999, APD had recruiters at some sort of law enforcement convention out there. He walked up and upon seeing what APD paid certified law enforcement officers and knowing the cost of living out here, he laughed in the recruiters faces and asked who they thought they were going to hire, especially in California, for that salary. Although the COL is higher in Cali, simple armed security officers make more money than APD officers.
New Mexico is already, for some strange reason, a poor and under-developed state among our neighbors like Texas, Arizona, Colorado. I suspect NMs misfortune of having oil, coal and natural gas has something to do with that, but Utah has coal and such and Salt Lake City, though it has it's problems, makes Albuquerque look silly in a lot of ways. How is it they rate a pro basketball team? Perhaps the LDS leadership secretly running that state are a bit looser with their pockets than the Penitente/Opus Dei/Knight of Columbus (some of whom are actually admitted cryptic Jews (no offense intended)) that are our lords in NM.
At any rate, APD and other departments in NM are mere stepping stones for officers that will sooner or later move on to greener pastures like Dallas, Tx., SLC, Ut., Phoenix and Tuscon, Az., Denver, Co., and Las Vegas, Nv. That's also EXACTLY the way they want to keep it, too. It keeps the issue of "need for officers" alive so instructors and recruiters worthless as tits on a boar - but, hey, they have tenure - have job justification.
And APD IA? Forget about it. Far overqualified to even think about applying for APD, unless it was for chief, I asked an APD recruiter who said she also worked in IA what APDs level of corruption was in her opinion based on her training and experience. She said APD had no cases of corruption. Who did she think she was kidding?
If one is looking for moral uprightness among public servants on planet earth, and especially in big time Rio Grande/I-25 drug corridor Albuquerque, NM, that person is barking up the wrong tree.
And get used to it. The more things change, the more they stay the same and there's nothing anyone can or will do about it.
William Randolph Hurst style media hype had Former US Secretary of State Warren Christopher's talks with Russians as far back as 1995 scaring us to death about nuclear Iran. Think about it-13 years so far of fear over nuclear Iran, and it's still the same exact story.
Fear. Consume. Obey.
WTF? (To poster with the diatribe about nothing specific and everything in general). You better be careful we've got a few LDS officers on APD you might rile them up and get more subpoenas written!!!
Getting back to the point, many departments are moving towards 3-12's but in terms of addressing calls, studies show its not going to make a difference even if APD's response time is rapid. Our crime trends will continue regardless of the efforts of units on the street.
To this poster:: "Subpeonas are hot off the press. They know who we are....."" posted May 3, 2008 8:06:00 PM MDT
--- The state of NM is notorisous for being one slight stutter step short of socialism. Our courts and our juries notorious for believing the most ridiculous defense claims. Warrants and subpeonas harder to get than in any surrounding state and politicians and apellate courts that are hell bent on coming down squarely on the side of the defense bar. And then someone comes along and tries to start a stampede by telling folks on a blog that their IP addresses were subpeonaed? Seriously, is this your first day with internet access? If anyone was going to get posters IP addresses via subpeona it would be sites like Michelle Malkin or Sean Hannity or Amren.com or any of about a thousand others. If you honestly have knowledge that someone went about doing this then hang on to your shorts, and if you actually had a part in it pay up your "Pre paid legal" dues because you are going to need it. The area of law enforcement I worked in for many years was the guys who would have gotten the call to do this and I can bet you dollars to Donuts right now that they did not... and no Fed agency would touch this when the blowback would include the fact that they get shit for trying to wiretap terror suspects WITH the use of FISA and the Patriot act so why in the hell would they risk this sort of crap to get some mid-level functionary in trouble?
Seriously, aren't some of you folks who try to scare people off this site a bit worried that your ham handed attempts at coercion by threat totally show exactly who or what you truly are?
Here's a thought, did you know the word gullible is not in the dictionary? (Short pause while you go check... there back now?)
Here's a thought, did you know the word gullible is not in the dictionary? (Short pause while you go check... there back now?).....
Nice try but we don't buy it. We see everyday what type of decisions are handed down by the courts here in NM....I am certain that my contacts in Dist Court have the true skinny..the paperwork has been filed and it won't be long before the subpeonas are issued...
Above poster with the contact in Dist Court -- you guys keep leaving one thing out of these comments : what is the CRIMINAL PREDICATE?? What is the CRIME that occurred to necessitate (or validate - give prob. cause for) the subpeona? I have not seen a crime on these pages --- have you?
It's just DC's Bastro and Cullaway on the above posts with their worthless UOP degrees that have taught them nothing in the art of management!
""Not all of the cases heard in Dist Court are criminal dumb shit....""
You are hinting that this is a civil subpeona? Which would then have to be part of a tort for what...defamation?
To the gentelman who thinks we are "Dumb shits" I give you this:
IV:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Crickets, I'm hearing crickets again.............
The last time I checked we still live in America. Everything in these blogs is considered FREE SPEECH.
Of course it's free speech - what is interesting is that someone or several someone(s) seem to think it is worth the effort to try to scare folks into not venting (on their own time, on their own computers, in a constitutionally protected manner). I never really thought that there was much to worry about in the city until they started doing that. Now I am somewhat afraid that they protest too much. Could it be that a few nuggets of truth are floating around on this blog and it scared some admin pogue into thinking they were smart?
Hey! The donuts are hot at Krisp....Oh, heck, they're closed. No wonder you cops are so bitter & depressed.............
Oh crap, this blog is getting way to "wordy"--it used to be fun!! What's up with that??
So here goes my "good cop story" whether or not anyone wants to hear it...My son's girlfriend lent him her brand-new Mercedes so he could take me out to dinner on mother's day. He came to pick me up (around 6pm)and said he needed to get gas first. I begged him to PLEASE let me drive the mercedes just to gas station. He reluctanly agreed. Soon as I pull out of my street and onto Juan Tabo the car dies and runs out of gas! I'm freaking out because people are just driving like A**holes barely missing us. Anyway a cop car sees us, makes a U, lights us up and blocks other vehicles from running us down. They said they could push the Mercedes with their front bumper, but we said no because it might scratch it. So the 2 officers joined us in pushing the car off the street to a parking lot.
I was so freaked out because I thought the mercedes for sure would be hit by some idiot that I didn't look at their badge numbers or name tags.
They're probably from the foothills sub.
This is an example of the kind of Officers APD has--helpful and nice and all about doing the right thing for the citizens of Albuquerque.
Thanks again Officers!
''No wonder you cops are so bitter & depressed.............''
posted at May 10, 2008 2:34:00 PM MDT
Barack?? Is that you??
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