The Police and Sleep

Email sent to the Professional Standards Division of a Town Police Department

I would appreciate a brief meeting, mostly to listen to your side of the story, and to your concerns and objections to a change in Department policy on sleep. I do not want to be advocating any change with a naive and incomplete information about the situation.

If you wish, I can provide information about sleep for your review.

1) Famous disasters involving sleep, including the destruction of the space shuttle, the Challenger;

2) sleepy people are as impaired as legally intoxicated people on standardized tests of performance, such as on driving simulators (would you allow a visibly intoxicated officer to get into a department car or to answer a call?);

3) the department itself causes sleep problems by requiring night shift officers to testify in the daytime;

4) the department punishes sleepy officers, inducing a cover up of the problem rather than a solution to it;

5) it is unknown if sleep is a factor in adverse police incidents; for example, it is unknown if the officers were sleepy when they blasted a law abiding black immigrant, taking a wallet out of his pocket; and NYC had to pay $millions in compensation; but the incident was in the middle of the night.

I did receive a copy of your rule on fitness for duty. I lost my copy, and would appreciate another copy. As I recall, it requires that officers arrive fit for duty.

I would like to change to a more realistic, real world wording.

Officers may self report sleepiness, with impunity. If a supervisor discovers sleepiness, sanctions could take place. The officer should clock out, go to a car or elsewhere and try to go to sleep fully for a minimum of a half an hour. If refreshed, clock back in, return to work.

If duty requires that officers respond despite being sleepy, they may have a dose of prescribed Modafinil, 200 mg, a medication FDA approved for shift worker sleep disorder.

In future investigations by your division, you will include a question about the alertness of the officers at the time of the incident. You will then add up the fraction of incidents involving impairment from sleepiness.

I do not have an easy answer to thinness of coverage, and now we are having sleeping officers, out of circulation. That is why I would like to hear your side of the story.