Indianapolis Police Will Start Working 10-Hour Shifts Next Year

Indianapolis police officers will begin working 10-hour shifts in the new year as part of a pilot program coming out of the city's labor deal with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).

The new shifts start Jan. 3, and the test period will run for the entire year, Chief Chris Bailey announced in September, when the program was approved. Under the new structure, officers will work five days with three days off, followed by working four days with four days off, WTHR-TV reports.  

"This will give us the chance to evaluate whether the schedule works for our officers, the department, and the community," Bailey said in a September statement. "Toward the end of next year, members will vote again to determine whether to make the schedule permanent or return to our current structure."

Currently, officers work 8.5-hour shifts, but the union is fully behind the change. The change will mean officers will have 37 more vacation days annually despite working the same number of hours, and the new shifts is expected to help recruitment and retention efforts, according to WTHR.

"It took nine years to actually come up with a viable plan that could work," FOP Vice President Bobby Ferguson told WTHR. "There's been other plans that's come up, but none of them look like this one."

When it comes to patrols, Bailey said more officers will be on duty during peak times between 11 and 2:30 a.m. During the hours outside peak times, the department will be expanding its protocol of having professional staffers handling non-emergency calls, such as vandalism, via phone or an online report system.

"I'm excited to try something new that I think will benefit both our community and our cops," Bailey told WTHR. "Our officers, this generation, demands something different, and so we listened."