Melrose - In an overhaul of the Melrose Police Department’s current detail pay policy, the department will restrict each officer from working more than 18 hours within a 24-hour period — including regular duty, overtime and details, Chief Mike Lyle announced this week.

Lyle said when he became chief last year, the department performed a self-review that revealed the officers were “exhausted,” partially due to a lack of manpower and the extra hours they were often forced to work to provide coverage.

“At some point during the course of the year when I came in, we had guys that got extended [military service], they went overseas, we had several officers out injured, so we were getting really taxed here,” Lyle said.

Lyle formed a detail committee last August comprised of himself, the Patrolmen’s Union president, Officer Jim Applegate, the Superior Officers’ Union president, Det. Sgt. Barry Campbell, and the vice presidents of each union.

The committee, which will also review any possible violations of the new policy, agreed on the 18-hour limit, Lyle said, who added there are no state-mandated restrictions on work time for police officers in the Massachusetts General Laws.

“I said, whoa, wait a minute. The fatigue factor? People exhausted, they make a poor decision, they’re carrying weapons? They’re driving a police car?” the chief said. “[Being on duty] can go from five miles an hour to 40 miles an hour in a minute, and you have to make split second decisions.”

Applegate echoed Lyle’s remarks that detail work is an officer’s “part-time job.

“We want to be able to work, but your main thing is to work for the city,” Applegate said. “We want to be able to be refreshed for your eight-hour shift. We were shorthanded last year, we had forced overtimes, so it wasn’t just all details. We had a lot of guys working overtimes. With the loss of manpower, we were getting guys forced to work.”

Applegate said that last year, officers would get off a midnight shift and be told they would have to stay for the next eight-hour shift.

Campbell said the previous detail policy only limited time worked for details, not allowing more than 16 consecutive hours of detail work within a 24-hour period. The new policy includes all time spent working, whether detail, regular duty or overtime.

“This is not reinventing the wheel,” he said. “I don’t believe there were too many instances last year where people worked more than 18 hours in a day.”

Campbell said the department has a minimum number of officers it needs working at any time to provide proper service to the city. When the scheduling falls below that minimum, either due to injury, vacation, military leave or otherwise, officers are forced to work overtime, although they can only do a maximum two consecutive shifts.

“The staffing level is key to this. We used to be a 60-man department and until we got our three new hires, we were down under 40,” Campbell said. “So, you’re trying to cover the city with two-thirds of the manpower that we should have, and it was just totally insane the amount of road work that was going on in the summertime. I think they were calling sometimes in the excess 15 guys from out of the city who were working in Melrose at one time.”
 

More details than available officers

Applegate said the current system has each officer who wishes to work details sign up on a sheet in the department, and the officer with the lowest number of hours is taken first from the signup sheet. He said that with the amount of roadwork undertaken in the city last year, many officers working details came from surrounding communities such as Everett, Malden and Wakefield.

“We had more details than we had guys working here,” he said.
Lyle added that the department was averaging “like, 20 details a day.”

The current detail pay rate in Melrose is $38 per hour for patrolmen and $48 per hour for supervisors. They also receive time-and-a-half after eight hours. According to the city auditor’s office, in fiscal 2007 — from July 1, 2006 through June 30, 2007 — the city paid just under $258,500 for detail work.

In the current fiscal year so far, beginning July 1, 2007 through Jan. 10, the city has paid $316,700.

The city also receives an administrative fee, about 10 percent, of an officer’s wages for detail work. In fiscal 2007, the city received just under $82,800. So far in fiscal 2008, the city has received just over $28,000.

In comparison, Stoneham’s detail pay rate $41.82 per hour for patrolmen and $49.80 per hour for supervisors.

Ronald Florino, Stoneham’s town accountant, said in fiscal 2007 the city paid $850,000 for detail work, but “that’s unusual for us, because the big factor was we had a strike in town and that probably meant an additional 30 to 40 percent more [paid out] in detail. Normally, it’s more like $500,000, $600,000 a year.”

This fiscal year, through Dec. 31, 2007, Stoneham has paid $354,000 for details, Florino said. Stoneham also charges a 10 percent administrative fee, like Melrose, for any work done by an outside company and not a Stoneham town department.

 Mayor Rob Dolan said that while “no one wants to limit the right for people to make money” — and while acknowledging the importance of police details in public safety situations — “a Melrose police officer’s first job and commitment should be to his regular duty.

“I think this [restriction] is a very moderate approach to ensuring that some individuals have an opportunity to make as money as they choose to make,” Dolan said. “It’s a high-stress, high-anxiety job where you need to be on your game all the time. If you’re not in top condition, then you can’t be a good police officer and that’s why I hired you.”

Dolan, who supports using civilian “flag men” for certain details away from heavy vehicular or foot traffic, said it is difficult to fill detail jobs with so many construction and roadway projects underway in the city, noting that the city had more details than officers.

“My position on detail reform is not to hurt police officers. They’re not getting the paycheck for free, they’re actually working for the paycheck,” he said. “But it doesn’t make any sense to not allow trained people to do these jobs. If you’re allowing citizens … a police officer can still have more details than they can fill. There has to be a happy medium, a moderate medium, and a recognition it can save cities money.”

Asked about whether forced overtimes due to lack of manpower contributes to the problem, Dolan said, “that is such a small percentage,” but said he did not want to focus on the officers’ incomes.

“Just because someone makes a lot of money doesn’t make them a bad person,” he said. “If the detail becomes your primary responsibility, your primary focus, and you’re burning the wick at both ends, these people aren’t behind a desk. These people are police officers … I want them sharp, engaged, out of their cruiser, engaging young people at parks.”