Anyone who has worked the night shift cannot honestly say they have never fallen asleep at work. As a police who never wanted to work days, I have always chosen to work evenings or the late shift if I had a choice. Day shift is full of bosses, traffic details and dealing with reports. Night shift officers get to make arrests and do real police work. The main problem with working nights was always sleep deprivation.
When working nights the family life and demands are still there and often a police would forgo sleeping for the kid’s soccer game, open house or birthday party. If you have a normal job with a family, think of how tired you get dealing with family issues. Now add that you may only get two hours of sleep a night and think about how tired you would feel.
Add to the lack of sleep the police, dispatchers, corrections officers and others on nights are usually the new/younger members of the agency who have yet to build up seniority to get off nights. No college all-nighter can prepare a new officer for working all night, for months on end.
A recent study of police and corrections officers found that those officers who worked nights and tried to stay up for 20 hours would be working and have the same cognitive thinking skills as a person driving under the influence of alcohol who would test a .10% blood alcohol level.
The officer working under sleep deprivation is found to be more irritable, confused, angry and so on. A young officer working nights and trying to fight to stay awake are in a losing battle. The look on their face is that of a grump, not a person happy to be living the life they thought they would live as a police.
Now I see it in the jails. While all the inmates are in their bunks snoring away, the CO is keeping watch. Think about sitting in a gymnasium size room with 50 or so guys sleeping away and you are the one who has to stay awake and watch them.
I have found many a police officer sitting in a cruiser and nodding. It can’t be avoided. So what can be done about it? Common sense tells you that you have to get the sleep your body needs. For me, at least in this point of my life, it is 8 hours. Any more or less than 8 hours and I venture into the grumpy zone. Not having had two legged children has made it much easier for me to get the sleep I need to stay awake for my 12 hours shift and even be “Peppy.”
So what is my suggestion on how to deal with the lack of sleep? Prepare to be bored, tired and grumpy. Look at your life and think about what can be done to prevent burn out due to being sleepy. Eat little meals through the night to keep the body energy needed to work properly. Have the proper attitude. I tell stupid jokes to the inmates to keep their lives a little less mundane. Inmates have told me that a joke I told them made their child laugh during the last visit. I am also a voracious reader and use the late hours to read.
If you are thinking about a career in law enforcement think about the negative aspects of the job. If you are unable to spend a whole shift with nothing but your own mind to keep you company, then it is not a job for you. You will be bored to sleep, and that can get you killed.
