

“This is an old story repeating itself,” she said.Īmendola calls for a hard limit of 12 hours for officer shifts. The situation in Rochester, she said, is playing out in police departments across the country and recalled a similar spike in overtime during the crime wave of the 1990s. “(Exhaustion) can not only cost an officer their life, but can also result in a decision with a detrimental effect to the community,” Amendola said. She said it places officers at risk of short- and long-term health issues, and the public at risk of an exhausted officer making poor decisions. Karen Amendola, a chief behavioral scientist with the National Policing Institute whose work delves into the potential public safety issues and health consequences linked to overworked cops, described overuse of overtime as a “rampant problem.” “This study indicates that there are no apparent advantages but considerable liabilities associated with 13-hour and 20-minute shifts for police officers,” the study read.
Rochester ny police blotter professional#
Researchers observed significant increases in reaction time, anticipatory errors, and filings of Professional Standards Bureau grievances among officers who worked the longer shifts. “So, if somebody works a double, which happens pretty frequently, officers can be forced to work a double, (limiting those) can be a safeguard.”Ī study of the Phoenix Police Department compared officers who worked 10-hour shifts with those who worked more than 13 hours. “We’re working towards limits, where someone can’t be working over 16-hour shifts without some sort of approval from above,” Bello said. Studies have linked excessive overtime to small increases in use-of-force incidents and ethics violations, heightened biases, and a surge in complaints against officers.īello said the department is taking steps to rein in overtime, particularly scaling back on successive double shifts, which he called “unsafe.”

In doing so, Sizer joined an exclusive Rochester community that is poised to grow: The quarter-million-dollar-cop club. By the end of the year, he had racked up 2,448 hours of overtime and took home $255,760 in pay.
Rochester ny police blotter full#
On any given day of the week last year, Rochester Police Officer Kevin Sizer put in a full shift as treasurer at the police union hall, then donned his department-issued blues and climbed into a cruiser for another shift patrolling the city.īy the end of any given week, police payroll records show, he logged an average of almost 92 hours on the clock.
