Back when I was about 16 a friend of mine and I were "chasing" each other back to his house from a 7-11 run one night in our beater cars that could barely hit 60.

There's a construction company on the corner of the road we need to turn on with drives on both roads. Just messing around he whips in the drive to go around the buildings to the other road. I follow him and no sooner did I make the turn around the back of the building but I'm headed right at a local police cruiser completely dark.

I whip around it, but not before my headlights illuminate a freshly roused out of a nap officer with eyes as big as saucers. Lol, I can still picture his face to this day.

Anyways he must've figured we were just kids messing around and he just got busted sleeping as he didn't even come after us.

Turns out my friend had whipped around him first and he was definitely sleeping, but must have woke in time for me to get the reaction. I got.

I worked a total of about 7 years on midnights in my career. Back before mandatory overtime for court lawyers thought nothing of making an officer sit in the hallway at the courthouse for 6-7 hours after working a mid and then you would have to go back to work that night because of staffing. Officers often came to work like zombies. Bad stuff happened to officers who were fatigued. Once mandatory overtime kicked in the courts and the departments miraculously found ways to be concerned with the welfare of the officer who was sleep deprived. I have to admit that while I never fell asleep on duty, but several times found myself nodding off at stoplights while on the way home.

I fell asleep on the witness stand in the middle of a trial while the judge and lawyers were having a sidebar. Shortly afterward they had another and I dozed again. At that point the judge asked how long I’d been working straight and all was forgiven once I told him. Embarrassing though. It was not a small town or village court.

Back when I worked security for the SF Municipal Railway, I was in charge of a team doing a few weeks of surveillance at a tunnel during graveyard hours. We had two SFPD officers assigned to us who also worked out of Muni--a sergeant and patrol officer. The patrol guy happened to be a personal friend of mine. The sergeant was a total prick who enjoyed coming over to "inspect" our side of the tunnel. When that happened, I'd call the officer on his cell to wake him up and he'd come sauntering over from his car, which was hidden in a hospital parking lot. The sarge never realized what was happening.

Early 80's in the county out west I lived in. Deputy would park in the median, slouch down in the seat and pull his cowboy hat down low and nap facing oncoming traffic. Used the alarm mode on his radar unit as an alarm clock. This was during the 55 mph era, he set it above 70 so as not to ruin his nap. The violation for up to 70 in a 55 was only five dollars at the time, energy fine it was called.

I've seen it a few times. Never dimed the guy out, I don't know what he's got going on.

quote:

Originally posted by nukeandpave:
I've seen it a few times. Never dimed the guy out, I don't know what he's got going on.

I wouldn't consider it diming the officer out... it is a very poor safety scenario for an officer.

I suppose it depends on the context of the situation and where you are... I guess no big deal in Mayberry, but in other locales it would be a poor idea.

A few guys , still on the job, mentioned it already...You have no idea the toll that shifts, court appearances, training, meetings, etc. Take on your health and ability to get the rest you need. Then throw in some of the situations and scenes we have to endure. Lots of stress.

I can recall many 14-16 hr days and several 24 hr shifts. Especially during winter weather or summer fire season.

I surely dozed off at times, but never slept where the public could ever see me or a bad guy could find me. The cop job was pretty tough on a guys sleep schedule.

happened to me once. Working graves 8pm-6am. Got off shift in the morning and had to be in court at 8am for an all day jury trail. left court at 5pm got two hours of sleep and had to go back to work. At around 3am i was out riding the police bike to stay awake. Boss called and wanted to talk. I agreed to met him at my car. I pedaled over to my ride. Put the bike in the bike rack and sat down in the drivers seat. That's all I remember until the boss woke me up with his spot light. He teased me for a bit but since i agreed to meet him he knew it wasn't intentional.

We had another guy who fell a sleep on graves. We caught him. We placed a blanket over his car and then had dispatch make various emergency calls to wake him. The whole shift gathered and parked around to watch sleepy head when he finally woke up and climbed up from under his blanket covered car.

When I first started our schedule changed every week. Days, Mids, Nights back to Days...... if that doesn’t mess with your body clock nothing would.

I found this guy parked ominously in a speed enforcement zone in Loa, Utah several years ago....lol

quote:

Originally posted by thumperfbc:

quote:

Originally posted by nukeandpave:
I've seen it a few times. Never dimed the guy out, I don't know what he's got going on.

I wouldn't consider it diming the officer out... it is a very poor safety scenario for an officer.

I suppose it depends on the context of the situation and where you are... I guess no big deal in Mayberry, but in other locales it would be a poor idea.

This was my thought as well. If I were an officer there's no way in hell I'm sleeping in my car. Way too much hate out there these days.

I grew up in a small town. Kind of a bedroom community. We had one really prick cop. He hated teens, and we all returned the favor. The guy did manage to screw up the one murder case he was involved in. Really violated the perp's rights in his investigation and questioning.

So we all hated the bastard. Then one night he was visiting his "beat wife". It was a slow night I guess. He was inside and all the lights were out. And someone turned on his lights but not his siren. So there the cruiser sat lights going like mad for a long time. Finally a neighbor got tired of it and called in a complaint about the lights flashing in his windows. Chief had to get out of bed and go investigate. It was one good way to get off the night shift. He's lucky the woman's husband didn't come home.

Same officer patrolled at our football games. His goal in life was to catch the felons smoking under the bleachers. Not easy to sneak up on them with a field full of teens that hated his guts. One rainy night he managed to get under the stands and saw the red glow of the smokes the criminals were burning.

It was pretty predictable, he came charging in one end and the teens ran out the other. But he was hot on their tail. Our field had a wire rope that extended the full 120 yards of the field, then went into the ground at an angle. It was raining cats and dogs, and each corner had a drain that sort of worked, usually. Not that night.

The kids ran along the track, they knew where the rope went in the ground and gave it a wide berth. So the chase went to the end. Kids didn't take the short cut over the rope, They ran aound the end. Ole Jack figured he could make up some distance on them. Bad choice, he caught his foot on the rope and did a belly flop into the small pond around the drain.

It was all ok, the crowd loved it. More action than the game. It was the only standing ovation that night. Afterwich he became known as "leapin' Leach". Only you'd better not be caught calling him that.

Small town cops sometimes carry along a lot of baggage. Any of their sins is remembered by all. A good guy can drop the nicknames and memories. Not a prick. That's been over 50 years now, and I still dislike the prick. Except that had died a while back.

Many years ago I decided to cherry patch a stop sign by a school. Problem was I parked there around 0400 hours. I woke up when the sun came up and people were staring at me as they drove by. talk about embarrassing!

quote:

Originally posted by az4783054:
Work a shift in his shoes...

This.

I spent four years in working for a PD (non sworn, but still shift work) and now rolling thru my 32nd yr in air traffic.

Shift work literally kills you.

Yes, the officer should not be sleeping, but give him a break.

I will relate one story, though:

On a Thanksgiving back in the 80's, it was 1st Watch (2300-0700) Thursday night into Friday...

...Everything was good until about 3 am. At that point, everyone was asleep. I mean everyone. The watch commander (his office was right next to the call center) was down for the count, the radio traffic was zero, the phones weren't ringing; nothing at all. We shared our radio freq with another dept and they were silent, too. Even the mopes (criminals) had their fill of turkey and were done for the night.

When I was a young patrol officer, I was lucky. I only had to work Morning Watch (10:00 PM to 8:00 AM) for a few months before going to the Night Shift (5:00 PM to 3:00 AM). I didn't have any problem with Nights, but Mornings were a killer. One night I managed to barely stay awake, then about an hour before EOW I finally was cleared for my lunch break. I thought I was doing ok, then somehow found myself facedown on my plate of cheese blintzes.

I spent about 12 years in detectives and promoted to sergeant. As a "junior" supervisor in my 50's, I spent 4.5 of the last six years of my career working Morning Watch patrol. I averaged about 3 hrs of sleep a day during my time off and was glad that I never got involved in a traffic collision because of my sleep deprivation. The men and women on my shift were frequently required to spend much of their time off in court. When they arrived for the beginning of their regular shift, it was easy to see who wasn't going to make it through the night safely. Myself or the other supervisors would literally order them to go to the officers' lounge where we had bunkbeds and pretend they were firefighters. If we needed them because something had occurred, we knew where they were and could call them. Safer for all concerned.

It sounds like police departments need a fatigue program similar to what we have in the airlines. It has proven to be EXTREMELY beneficial in my career...

Long ago we had a night watch homicide defective who, when he was catching, would come in for roll call, pick up a car and a portable, and go home. The dicks had a separate freq, and almost no traffic on mids. So this guy would go home, flop in the recliner, sleep all night if he didn't get a callout, come in at 0700 and hit off. Everyone but his Captain knew about it, but nobody narc-ed him out. The dicks had permanent bid shifts, so he did that until he could get days.

I've worked nights for most of my 16 year career. Twelve hour days 15-03, 16-04, 17-05 for most of the first half. A really terrible 4 months of 15-05 14 hour days. Had thirteen weeks "off" of nights for the academy, but they let me work overtime on the weekends, so I was living in both worlds. Switched agencies eight years ago and worked days and evenings for about two and a half months, but otherwise 23-07 overnights.

It takes a toll. I sleep five hours on the average most days. Make up a little bit on my days off. Average 800+ hours of overtime per year so the days off can become few and far between. I feel pretty well adapted to the schedule and am rarely so tired I feel like I'll fall asleep, but, like the others, I do have some stories.

I was training a guy who came over from another agency a few years ago. We're both just beat one night for some reason. We stopped for fuel about halfway through. I dozed off and when I woke up, my trainee was asleep in the driver's seat. I had that moment of panic about how long we had been there, but when I looked over, we were still pumping gas. Couldn't have been but a minute. We ended up going home early.

A deputy who retired from our sheriff's office about the time I was starting on my first PD fell asleep on his way home one morning waiting for a train to pass. It was apparently pre-cell phone so there weren't any pictures or anything. Still made for a good story.

One officer I used to work with went home on his meal break and fell asleep on his couch. He woke up a few hours later and it was mid morning. He was supposed to be off hours before and the car was still idling in his driveway. Somehow nobody noticed he didn't come in at the end of the watch. He drove the car back in and went home. Didn't tell anybody for years.

Found a lazy coworker sleeping in a car lot between cars in the back row. On my way out, I found another co-worker and we decided to toss a parking ticket on the car with our lieutenant's badge number and "see me" on it on his car and slip away. I went back into the lot and thing the lieutenant on his way out of the lot (probably saw the three cars there on AVL and wanted to see what was going on). Thankfully for the sleepy officer, he woke up before the boss found him. We had had folks stealing air bags, so he claimed to be staking them out.