Five 8's!?

Before we take another plug out of the ship and shove five 8-hour shifts down everyone's throat please do some research. If you want to fix the shifts, then how about this? Ditch the 8-hour evening shift!

Days 6:30 am – 4:30 pm
Evenings 2:30 pm – 12:30 am
Midnights 9:30 pm – 7:30 am

Look at that! It provides extra coverage in the evenings. It gives day and evening shift enough overlap to complete reports on duty instead of on overtime. And instead of the idiotic plan of having no overlap between midnights and days twice a week, it actually provides an hour of overlap. I am willing to bet this would cut down on overtime.

There are multiple ways to finalize the shifts. A few are bidding for days off, 4 on 4 off, or just picking one day for overlap. Multiple squads can be created in each district to provide the coverage needed. Maybe on the overlap day one squad can do something pro-active (probably frowned upon around here). I am not certain of the St. Pete schedule, but I believe they do something like this where officers get to do something more than just hump calls once in a while.

The main point is five 8's are horrible. Might as well go work for Home Depot. A 12 hour shift would be even easier to schedule. A 12 hour day is pushing it, but better than an 8 hour day.

Boost morale, don't destroy it! Money can be saved without taking away one of the last benefits we have left...KEEP FOUR 10'S!

[Billy The Kid]

Morale?.....Staff morale is great so why worry about the heart of the department when you have all you ever wanted of strived for? For all of you out there that have not realized it yet, STAFF DOES NOT GIVE A #$%& ABOUT PATROL. They only care about themselves and and there twisted egos. THey only care about their so called genius ideas about how to "make the department better" LOL!!!! We are officially the worst department in the county with regard to benefits. OOHHH I cannot wait until they take a day off away from most of us and make us spend more of our hard earned money on extra gasoline driving into and from work that extra day every week. Add that up, it is a considerable number. To top it off, there will be less overtime to make up that difference. Gee, I hope the citizens like our new slower response times when we are holding calls so that we can complete reports with our shifts. This is a debacle, we need to do something about this before it gets out of hand. Too bad the SO is not hiring,...maybe Tampa.......maybe Walmart.....CIS.....hhmmm.

Dear Union,

Please research any angle you can to prevent this 5-8's nonsense from happening. You can start by researching the way many California departments have gone to 4-12's and have proven that it saves money and gives guys extra days off during the year.....