Quick question if you're a police officer...

[Gardenwalldilema]

...how often do your rest days get cancelled at short notice?
Thanks for any answers

Ex police - all the bloody time!!! Hence why ex, hardly get any double time now either! I mean never had ALL a whole series of RD cancelled but definitely a few days of them especially for football matches where we were for located first example.

hah... wife of ex police here...all the bloody time, and amazingly christmas and new year would take them all by complete surprise every godamned year.

That's interesting, thank you @sweetbabyrays and @laurieSchafferIsAllBitterNow
What happens if e.g. your DP is also police or a medical etc and you literally can't have your rest days cancelled without leaving very small children unattended?

I’m not sure what the regs are now but we had to have 24hrs notice. HR seemed to give zero fucks to be honest, depends on how nice your shift sgt etc was where I was but we were quite rural I.e not inner city so not as many on shifts and could get away with one being off. It very much felt like nature of the beast, which is why people leave in droves. Well that and getting abuse constantly 🙄

My DH got put on report as he refused to go into work on his rest day as we had guests down and they only have 4 hours notice.

We also had to cancel our honeymoon as he got told he had to work the day after which for his role meant going away for a month with little to no contact with me (very specialised role).

Euros, I barely saw him and he's very high ranking now.

Does this continue when someone becomes a Sergeant? If a Sgt wanted to could he put himself down to work the shift, rather than be ordered to?

I'm trying to work out if someone i know is being a horrible manipulative sod, or just very unlucky to have all his rest days cancelled every time his wife has something planned.

DH is a detective and it happens much less often now.

We must be extremely lucky by the sounds of it as I'm wife of police and he's never has a rest day cancelled in 5 years!

Not that often and only for a Major Incident.

It’s going to depend where he is and what specific job he does. Is he in Uniform or non uniform role? In the Met we have a Duties office who sort out cover for Aid ( events like football) and team shortages so you get told basically. Being a Sergeant wouldn’t give you any more control.

All the time especially when promoted. As for the question about children that's why I left. It's not a family friendly job.

As others said depends on the force and role. Custody Sergeant - all the bloody time, DC or DS less so but sometimes unpredictable due to it being very reactive. Most forces don’t seem to give a monkeys about whether it leaves childcare issues either hence one person having to “work around” these shifts and basically be always available. Gets a little better the higher the promotion but at sergeant level doesn’t make a difference IMO.

Depends how under staffed the force is. Regs is basically unforseen circumstances which translates as everything is unforseen so therefore allow RD cancellation at any point.
The notice period given basically is the difference between getting paid for the cancelled RD or getting the day back on your card.

I used to work in the duties dept and would try to make it fair so it wasn't the same people all the time and usually ask if anyone was willing to come in before ordering them. But then not everyone was as nice as me 😀

That said if the officer has specialist skills then there may be a higher proportion of their rd cancelled compared to others as not all cops are trained in everything i.e firearms.

I should add that some officers are very keen to work overtime and will volunteer to work rest days. My department has a lot of them and duties are quite strict about ensuring that they don’t work too many in a row.( because they would ). My friend works in a department where there are lots of cancelled rest days and she’s allowed to protect 2 a month which cannot be cancelled but it’s open season on the rest. I would find it unusual though to have all rest days cancelled ( 2 or 3 in a row) unless he worked on a sexy squad. ( NB. most squads are not sexy)

Ex PC. Rest days cancelled only happened very occasionally and usually lots of notice for an upcoming event. I would imagine that in cities it would be more common as they have more major events.
However, a few colleagues would use tell their partners that this was the case when in fact they went off to do other things, usually affairs.

DH is in a specialised role in the met & he’s had a few cancelled in the last 3 weeks. His name is in the book for overtime as well and they’ve certainly taken him up on it. They are extremely short staffed. Everyday there’s a text from duties asking for people to work.

DH has had them cancelled left right and centre at the moment due to lots of people getting pinged.