high on Saturday of 18.2 percent. Friday and Saturday accounted for 35.4 percent of all weekly
offenses. The provost marshal may want to give additional weight to certain offenses such as assaults
and robberies. Your patrol distribution plan must reflect the logical requests for police service in the
area.
Once the high offense days of the week are known, the high offense hours of the day must be
determined. Again, referring to the chart in Figure 1-2, we see that 3.1 percent of all offenses occur
between 0001-0100 hours. Sixty-one offenses occurred during these hours, nine of which were on
Saturday.
(3) The next step is to use the information to plan the distribution of patrols in working shifts.
The shift arrangement worked by patrol personnel determines the level of their morale, job satisfaction,
and effectiveness. The number of shift designs is unlimited. We will discuss shifts later in this lesson.
The two major questions of concern in distribution planning are--
o How many work hours of patrol time are available in a 24-hour period?
o What is the best way to distribute these hours to obtain the most effective patrol coverage?
Let's assume that the provost marshal has a 35-person staff available for patrol duty per 24-hour day;
each member will work a 40-hour week (8-hour days, 5-day week). This equals 1,400 work hours of
available patrol service per week.
35 X 40 = 1,400
In the sample plan, days off, leave, holidays, will not be considered. The traditional 0001-0800; 0800-
1600; and 1600-2400 hours shift will be used. Figure 1-3 is a manpower distribution table which can be
used to plan the actual personnel distribution.. The supporting information comes from Figure 1-2.
Take the percentages of complaints from the top of Figure 1-3 and place them under the headings of
Sunday through Saturday on Figure 1-3.
Enter the total number of personnel and work hours available at the top of Figure 1-3.
1-5
MP2000
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