Police Scheduling - A Unique Challenge

The question was posed, “What would you recommend for twelve street officers wanting to work twelve hour shifts, when the city does not want overtime used?”

Fortunately, there is a very straightforward solution to this scheduling problem that highlights some basic principles of 12 hour schedules. The graphic below shows the recommended schedule to address this problem.  We’ll explore some of the key ideas behind it.

1.  Officers are paired off with opposing schedules, i.e., when one officer is
     working, the other is off and vice-versa.
2. Every officer has a designated “Short Day” when he/she works
     only 8 hours instead of 12.
3. Officers are allocated to the two shifts according to need. In this case,
     they are evenly split between the day shift and night shift.  Just be
     sure that when you move officers between shifts you move both officers in a
     pair (see item 1 above).
4. Officers’ short days are spread around the week so that no single day is
     too short during the 4 hours of the shift they are not covering.

The start and end times of the shifts are completely discretionary. Many agencies use 6:00 - 18:00 and 18:00 - 6:00 because this aligns with daily fluctuations in activity, but this varies from agency to agency.  Another thing to keep in mind is that you can schedule the 8 hour short shift for any time during the normal 12 hour shift (beginning, middle or end), depending on your needs.

How can I apply this to 5 officers working 24/7 coverage with 2 sergeants they insist on supervising and not working their own shifts?

How do you factor in shift change in this schedule (night to day and day to night? Going from long work week to another long week, or from a night shift to a day shift?