TIRED COPS: PROBABLE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN FATIGUE AND THE PERFORMANCE, HEALTH AND SAFETY OF PATROL OFFICERS

Abstract

This paper proposes a number of connections between administratively controllable causes of fatigue and problems associated with police performance, health, and safety ‐ problems that have long been overlooked. The effects of fatigue on human behavior, performance, and physiology are well understood, and widely known. Excess fatigue arising from sleep loss, circadian disruption, and other factors tends to decrease alertness, impair performance, and worsen mood. It therefore may be expected to influence the performance, health, and safety of patrol officers. The argument is made that much of the fatigue experienced by patrol officers could be controlled administratively, just as we control the working hours of many other occupational groups. As was emphasized in a recent special issue of Human Factors devoted to fatigue, it is important to approach fatigue-related research in a holistic, interdisciplinary manner (Mital and Kumar, 1994:195-6). This paper examines ways in which interactions between physiological and psychological effects associated with fatigue may be expected to influence the performance, health, and safety of patrol officers. It also attempts to assess ways that the social, cultural, and economic construction of field police work may have obscured this problem and the potential for its control. After a brief overview, the discussion that follows uses research on police, anecdotal evidence, official statistics and the results of a preliminary overtime survey to identify what we do and do not know about the sources and pervasiveness of fatigue among police patrol officers. It then examines known and probable ways that the performance, health, and safety of these officers can be affected by both short-term and chronic fatigue. Next, the question of why researchers,