DEVIL’S IN DETAILS FOR COPS WITH OT
Experts warn of fatigue from increased schedule
Boston police officers and detectives earned millions of dollars in detail pay last year — with 17 pulling in more than $100,000 — in what some law enforcement experts warn is risky on-the-beat behavior that can lead to fatigue, potentially placing the public and even the cops in danger.
“If you’re fatigued and exhausted, the potential is there to not be as sharp as you need to be, to injure yourself and injure other people,” said Tom Nolan, an associate professor of criminology at Merrimack College in North Andover and a former Boston police lieutenant. “If you’re not 100 percent, the price that’s paid is not only paid by the public but by the officer. It definitely bears watching. It should be and is a concern.”
Nearly 1,600 police employees earned $39.7 million in details in 2016, according to city payroll data obtained by the Herald. Officer William Chen topped that list with $140,530 in detail pay — close to double his salary of $80,587. The city’s highest-paid earner — Det. Waiman Lee, who made $403,408 last year, as reported in the Herald yesterday — made $121,946 on details. The amount of detail pay has increased by $10 million since 2014, records show.
Detail pay is based on rank, with officers and detectives making $50.60 per hour of work, and detail assignments require a minimum of four hours’ pay. The companies hiring detail officers pay their costs, and officers and detectives are allowed by contract to have a maximum of 90 hours worked per week, which includes regular shifts, details and overtime.
Officials from the Boston Police Department, the Boston Police Patrolman’s Association and the Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society did not respond to requests for comment.
Officers can often be required to work overtime to cover shifts, Nolan said, meaning detail work adds even more hours to busy weeks. Lois James, an assistant professor at Washington State University who has studied sleep deprivation in police, said the 90-hour ceiling is high and could lead to fatigue on the job.
And that can affect officers’ health and public safety, James said. She said chronic fatigue has been linked to poor heart and mental health and a shorter life expectancy, and she added her research of police officers has shown fatigue is “intimately connected with collision rates.”
“The relationship between fatigue and use of deadly force is less clear but there seems to be a connection there as well, potentially reducing the threshold for moralistic decision-making,” James said.
And those split-second decisions are where an officer needs to be most alert, said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
“There’s a concern that the taxpayer is getting the full benefit of an officer coming to work sufficiently refreshed and able to be attentive,” said O’Donnell, a former NYPD officer. “You have to spring into action at a time not of your choosing — are you really emotionally and physiologically where you should be, or are you holding your eyes open with your hands?”
Nolan said most officers who work enough detail hours to approach the 90hour threshold are doing so week in and week out — and that comes at a cost.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Nolan said. “I was one of those guys who couldn’t do a lot of it. I could never understand how some of my colleagues would work so many hours.”