Sixteen years after joining the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), fresh out of high school, Constable Dionne Holmes can actually stay in bed all day. And that is just what she did with her last day off, one of two for the week afforded to her under the 40-hour work week pilot for the police force.

The pilot, which began on October 15 in three police divisions, is the closest the constabulary has come to recognising something for which it has agitated for a number of years.

“It’s a dream come true,” sub officer in charge of the 135 cops at the Half-Way-Tree Police Station, Inspector Neville Williams, said. “I’m talking about a world of freedom. Imagine, I’ll be off on a holiday. I can pack up and go to the country for a day and come up and spend the next day at home.”

“It is really something refreshing for this force,” he added.

Before now, Williams said, policemen and women would work six days and get one day off, and work six weeks before getting a weekend off.

The pilot, which is currently in progress at Mobile Reserve, St Andrew central and St Ann police divisions, is expected to come to an end next March. At that time, the final assessment will take place. The first formal reports of the pilot are expected to come in this week, Superintendent Michael James, who is a member of the implementation team, told the Sunday Observer.

However, already one of the challenges that stations have to be dealing with is shortages.

“What we are going to be looking at is the impact on the availability of persons – in terms of shortages,” James said. He said the team will have to examine what measures stations took to deal with shortages.

Sergeant Nadine Franklyn, second in command at Half-Way-Tree, said there is no doubt that the 40-hour work week can become a long-term reality, just not with the current size of the force.

“I think it’s good. It’s happening in other parts of the world. I still believe we need more police for it to be totally effective,” Franklyn said.

Corporal Donna Hooper, who is in charge of setting duties at the Half-Way-Tree Police Station, said some areas have experienced obvious cutting back of personnel. But, she said, shortages are nothing new.

“We have to make it work. We have been working with the shortages for a long time,” Hooper said.

Her boss, Williams, said Half-Way-Tree needs 76 more police for the station to function optimally.

While committed officers will continue to work overtime with or without payment, Williams said, “down the road, there is the bright light of payment for overtime”. Now, officers are required to log overtime work for which they are expected to be paid starting next year.

That aside, however, policemen and women so far are enthused by the possibility of two days off, even if they don’t actually work 40 hours per week.

“People will never do 40 when it comes to the operational units,” Assistant Commissioner of Police Donald Pusey, who heads Mobile Reserve, said. “Unless there is some serious emergency, we strive to ensure that they get the two days off.”

He said members of the Mobile Reserve and the Special Anti-Crime Task Force work according to the “exigencies of the service”, which usually means long hours.

The certainty of time off, though, will change the police officers’ attitudes toward work, Williams said.

“The whole culture of work will change, people will want to work more,” Williams said, adding that the response from the cops has been “extremely good”.

Hooper testified to feeling better going to work after her days off. She said while she spent the first doing household chores, the second was filled with nothing.

“I just sat down, put up my feet and relaxed. I felt so good coming to work the other day. I was telling somebody that it’s a long time I hadn’t felt so good coming to work after a day off,” Hooper said.

Aside from the shortages, Williams, Pusey, and Deputy Superintendent Richard Brown, who is charge of the the pilot in the St Ann police division, said the pilot was progressing well, despite the absence of guidelines as to how it is to work.

Human Resources manager with the JCF, Robert Rainford, said a team will meet tomorrow to determine a final structure for the pilot.

The total list of police stations involved in the pilot are, in St Ann, Cave Valley, Moneague, Ocho Rios and Claremont; in St Andrew Central, Half-Way-Tree, Matilda’s Corner and August Town; and Mobile Reserve.

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