For the better part of the last decade, nearly every waking hour of San Francisco Deputy Sheriff Barry Bloom’s life was spent on the clock.
Bloom, a public safety monitor at San Francisco City Hall, was on duty an average of 95 hours a week since 2016, and more than 100 hours a week over the last two fiscal years, according to city data. His workload of late leaves roughly 10 hours a day remaining for sleeping, eating and just about anything else not tied to his job as a sheriff’s deputy.
I am a paramedic/firefighter. Over the past few years our department has been crazy short handed. A lot of times I am the only paramedic on duty in the entire city (vs EMTs, who are a lower level of care). I essentially was not only allowed to work whenever I could but was sometimes required to. I think I averaged 96~ hours a week last year. I am not stealing from anyone other than time with my children. I am being compensated for my time and service i provide. Public servants are not ALL shitheads, sometimes we are filling vital roles and then get shit on for it. Pay better hourly and you get more employees and don’t have to pay people like me time and a half when a pandemic hits. I also work 24 hour shifts, so I would just work for 4 days go home for 3. It’s easier for me to hit those hours than someone who works a desk job.
It is Ironic that this dude is a safety monitor though. The main people that shit their pants when you work that many hours is payroll, obviously, and the safety officer.
No disrespect to you sir, or any other non-police first responder types, but the police are notorious for riding the clock for no good reason. Cops clock OT sleeping in their cars on the side of the road. They routinely steel from public funds with this bullshit. We need less funding for the police and they need less OT so we can hire and pay more other public servants who can do some good.
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Believe it or not, cops are public servants. They just seem to forget that fact.
There’s a difference between theory and practice. In theory? Yes. In practice? No. In practice they’re a huge gang of armed racist thugs who are a burden on every governments budget.
I think the reality somewhere between your view of them and they way they view themselves.
How do you work 24 hour shifts 4 days in a row?
I’m not OP, but from what I’ve heard, they stay and sleep at the firehouse on duty. If there’s an emergency, they wake up and are out the door very quickly, so they’re getting paid the whole time they are there. It’s one of the perks of the gig, except for probably being woken up at all times of the night with no guarantee for sleep.
I work with first responders of all kinds, and I can’t think of a single one who would call that a “perk of the gig”. Having one 24 hour shift with constantly interrupted sleep is taxing at best, and once you hit middle age it gets progressively harder as you get older. Throw in having to work multiple 24s in a row and the very real possibility that once you finally do get off, you don’t get to go home and rest, you have to go to your second (or third) job - usually one you own yourself, or one owned by a fellow firefighter/paramedic because it’s the only way to accommodate the crazy schedules - and play catch-up there. It screws with you mentally and physically, but given the piss-poor pay a good chunk of them make, it’s what’s got to be done.
Also, I don’t know any cops that sleep on OT (I don’t have much exposure to that scenario), but a lot of the ones around here sleep on their regular 12s. If I see two cop cars parked together in a median or pull-off, and they are parked facing opposite directions such that their drivers windows are next to each other so it looks like they can chat easily, one cop is almost certainly asleep while the other is standing watch. They don’t adjust to the mandatory day/night shift rotations well.
At that point it is called a 96