PlanIt Police Blog

Re-evaluating 24/7 patrol schedules for your department? You came to the right place. We collected data from over 100 departments patrol schedules. We categorized the differences by number of personnel/department size and by hour length of shifts.

So, if you have about 75 officers and need to figure out an efficient schedule rotation for 24x7 patrol, this is a good article for you to evaluate.

First, what is important to you? If you are required or have set the shift length, you may want to check out these articles instead:

• 7 Different 12 Hour Shift Schedule Examples to Cover Round the Clock
• 3 Types of 10 Hour Shift Schedules to Cover Round the Clock
• 6 of the Best 8-Hour Shift Schedules to Cover 24x7

If you want to focus more on department or patrol personnel size, please see below:

We collected a total of 8 common rotations that our 75-person departments were using. The top 3 used were:

1. [4 on 3 off]
2. [4 on 3 off] [3 on 4 off] [3 on 3 off] [4 on 4 off]
3. [5 on 2 off]

*The Pitman schedule was actually the most common in 75-person departments but since we cover that in multiple other areas of our blog, we will skip over it for this article. To see that 12-hour schedule rotation in more detail please click here.

A. [4 on 3 off]

10-hour shifts

This is a basic 1 week patrol rotation schedule example - 4 days on, 3 days off using 10 hour shifts. You can use all these templates or just a couple of them to cover all 7 days of the week. The templates below show day shift so you would need additional templates to mirror them with a night squad and a swing shift since they are only 10-hour shifts.

Template 1

Template 2

Template 3

Template 4

Template 5

Template 6

Template  7

B. [4 on 3 off] [3 on 4 off] and [3 on 3 off] [4 on 4 off]

12-hour shifts

This one is a little different because there are 2 rotations for one squad. The templates below show the two rotations for day squad. All you need to do to complete this 24x7 schedule is to mirror the templates for 2 night squads. 

Template 1

Template 2

C. [5 on 2 off]

8-hour shifts

This is a widely known schedule rotation because of its simplicity. You can use all the templates shown below or just a couple to cover all 7 days of the week. Same as the examples above, these templates show day shift so you will need to mirror them for a mid and night squad as well to cover 24x7.

Template 1

Template 2

Template 3

Template 4

Template 5

Template 6

Template 7

How can you handle schedules like these?

One way is with scheduling software called PlanIt Police.

Check out PlanIt features here.

Scheduling software built for law enforcement will streamline your 24x7 patrol schedules, overtime hours, court appearances, extra duty shifts, and much more. Check it out today - www.planitpolice.com

Want to view all 8 examples in detail in a printer friendly PDF version?

Read More:

• 3 Reasons Why Police Departments Are Now Using Scheduling Templates
• Law Enforcement Schedules: Top 8, 10, and 12-Hour Shift Examples
• 5 Administration Problems You're Having - And How to Solve Them