15 ms·

New Records Show the NYPD’s Favored Punishment: Less Vacation Time

130 points by danso 5y ago

pgoggijr 5y ago
Seems counter-productive. "Hey you're clearly miserable and not doing your job properly, so we're gonna make sure that you spend more time on the job being miserable while doing it improperly".
- sonotathrowaway 5y ago
  Most officers will be placed on paid leave while they are being investigated for whatever crime they’re accused of. So it’s more like they have their vacation time adjusted to reflect their mandatory vacation.
  - kleiba 5y ago
    From an employer's perspective, this is fine because you don't want to lose more paid work hours without any return. From the employee's perspective, it's a different story of course. The point of vacation is that you can recuperate from work stress and get some energy back, so that you stay healthy and can deliver good work. I doubt very much that this goal can be reached when the reason for your time off work is that you're under investigation. For instance, I don't expect most cops to fly to Vegas to party during such a time.
  - _jal 5y ago
    This is just actual 'unlimited vacation'. Instead of a being a doublespeak name for eliminating vacation time, they actually can take time off at will. Just find someone powerless to take your frustrations out on, sign the union form and pack for the beach.
- Ar-Curunir 5y ago
  I don’t think most cops “are miserable”. They’re in that position because they enjoy being in power.
  - Judgmentality 5y ago
    Most megalomaniacs I know aren't particularly happy people. I don't think the sudden outbursts of rage that we've come to know from cops are because they're zen inside.
  - codyb 5y ago
    The officer at the polling place I worked Tuesday in Brownsville NYC went out and bought everyone cold water cause the community center was so hot. That was nice of her. I think a lot of the NYPD are fairly average humans who probably don't really enjoy... tackling people or whatever. Definitely hear a ton about the one's that do though. And there's some real pricks for sure as we saw during footage of the summer protests and police response.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      > The officer at the polling place I’m sorry, the what now?
      - lbotos 5y ago
        there was an election in NYC recently, and police were at the locations where folks cast ballots.
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        > police were at the locations where folks cast ballots Is that normal? That seems massively inappropriate to me.
        bberenberg 5y ago
        Yes it is normal. They are there to enforce the regulations around no campaigning within a certain distance, and other voting related laws. Plenty of crazies showing up insisting on inspecting ballots and stuff, and poll workers delegate dealing with this to cops.
        5y ago
thera2 5y ago
The reason their vacation is docked is because the actual punishment they're receiving is an unpaid suspension. But since going unpaid hurts, they take the suspension out of the vacation hours.
- djhaskin987 5y ago
  It doesn't seem so outrageous. I mean, when you move the slider, 20 vacation days for not securing the firearm translates to an enormous fine. Moving the slider all the way to the right the web page reads "4 cases resulting only in a loss of 45 vacation days.". ONLY 45 vacation days. 9 weeks pay is a lot of money, folks.
  - superkuh 5y ago
    Okay, losing vacation days does imply a significant lack of paid income. But at every other job when you do something that can or does get someone injured or killed you get fired.
    - thera2 5y ago
      Not every infraction involves someone getting injured or killed.
      - athenot 5y ago
        At other jobs, even committing an infraction that didn't injure nor kill anybody but was against company policy is enough to get terminated. It's often a liability issue for the company.
      - thera2 5y ago
        And that's still the case here? This is just one more possible punishment. I'm sure if at tech companies workers were receiving docked vacation they would be raging on HN.
        5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
username90 5y ago
> The loss of vacation days — which is equivalent to a fine No they are not equivalent. There is a reason workers fights so hard to get vacation days, they are important and money is not a substitute.
- the_lonely_road 5y ago
  They probably get paid out for unused PTO (common in US) and I would guess a very small number ever use up their vacation time, an exceedingly difficult thing to do in any American job outside of tech (and maybe even for a lot of tech workers). So taking away vacation days from those people would be literally equivalent to fining them the payout of their days wage.
  - caymanjim 5y ago
    Most US jobs don't allow you to accrue unlimited unused vacation time. Police, at least where I live, are allowed to. You often hear stories of large six-figure payouts on retirement, from years of accrued vacation time.
  - bigwavedave 5y ago
    > [snip] I would guess a very small number ever use up their vacation time, an exceedingly difficult thing to do in any American job outside of tech (and maybe even for a lot of tech workers). It is? Maybe I've just been very lucky in my jobs- even before I was in tech, when working night shift stocking shelves at Walmart or doing customer retention at a call center, I've never had a problem using PTO. I'm sure everyone's experience is different so I'm not saying you're wrong, just that this is a surprise to me.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      Depends on the company. It isn't unusual for some companies to have a few key people who can't take vacation because nobody else can do their job. Large companies like WalMart have learned that you dare not have such people (they can die unexpectedly - maybe you can stop them from quitting but death doesn't care) and so take effort to ensure everyone can be replaced as needed and so time off isn't an issue. Smaller companies often haven't learned this lesson and so will sometimes have people who can't be allowed to take time off.
anm89 5y ago
It boggles my mind that the average voter is ok(or at least ok enough not to make an issue out of it) with the status quo of how police departments operate. I've just come to terms with the fact that what seems acceptable to me in regards to how the police operate is drastically different than the consensus.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  I'm not ok with it, but the two sides of the issue seem to be status quo with more resources vs. actually shutting down law enforcement. The thought of going into small scale politics with my ideas has crossed my mind but A) I think I would alienate both sides and B) seriously concerned that someone would come try to shoot me (from either extreme).
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    Small scale and NYPD aren’t in the same league. IIRC if the NYPD was a military organization it would be the fifth largest military in the world. Which itself may or may not be a problem.
    - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
      Tokyo metro is larger but the Japanese use their police as community servants.
      - vorpalhex 5y ago
        Japan is an insular, rigid and heavily values oriented society. Overall their crime rate is exceptionally low. It would be hard to apply Japanese policing styles to fundamentally different societies. That doesn't mean we can't learn good lessons from them, but we need to remember it's never an apples to apples comparison.
        unknown_error 5y ago
btown 5y ago
Does anyone else think this is an absurd way in which the department can reward itself for encouraging systemic misconduct? If, in aggregate, the department encourages officers to push the boundaries of misconduct, they end up getting free labor every time the officers step over the line. The incentives seem grossly reversed. If anything, you'd want a system where misconduct causes aggregate officer availability to decrease, giving police departments an incentive to reduce misconduct rates if they want more resources.
- Closi 5y ago
  Eh, Although I agree in theory I don’t personally agree that this is the way it works in practice. At the end of the day, police forces are made up of people, and people don’t like their holiday being taken away. The incentive for management you are describing is to dole out more punishment, but the incentive at an individual level would still be to be to avoid punishment. In fact, management may be incentivised to dole out punishment for more minor offences, which again force further good behaviour. Do I think it’s a good policy though? No I think it’s awful personally. People need holiday to relax and to do their jobs well, and taking away relaxation time can only lead to more stressed officers.
paulpauper 5y ago
Propublica is going after everyone now lol. billionaires. police departments...who is next?
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Isn't that something that's contractually agreed?? My work couldn't cut my holidays if they wanted to. They could make it difficult for me to actually book them by denying requests though. Ps didn't get to RTFA as I'm on the go sorry
geocrasher 5y ago
"The Beatings will Continue until Morale Improves!"
throwaway625 5y ago
I'd like to explain one of the 45 day "rips" (loss of vacation time is called a rip in the NYPD) because most of the commenters lack the context to fully understand what's going on. First, being ripped doesn't mean you lose money, it means you lose your vacation days. Vacation is assigned to you typically in blocks for 5 days, and members with 5.5 years or more of service get 26 days of vacation (5 weeks). Being ripped means you work the days you would have had off. In the end there is no real loss to pay. That being said, getting a 45 day rip essentially means you don't take vacation for 24 months, and the only days you have off are your RDOs(regular days off, they rotate throughout the year due to the nature of shift work.) Not being able to decompress for more than 2 days at a time is horrible in general and especially true in law enforcement, and I bet some members would rather lose thousands of dollars in pay in the form of a fine than not be able to take vacation for 2 years straight. This is not an option, you must lose the vacation days. Did knowingly associate with a person or organization reasonably believed to be engaged in, likely to engage in, or to have engaged in criminal activities. While on sick report, was wrongfully and without just cause absent from said residence without the permission of said officer's district surgeon and/or health services division sick desk supervisor. While on sick report, left the confines of the city and residence counties without approval of the deputy commissioner of personnel. Having changed her residence, did fail and neglect to notify her commanding officer by submitting form change of name, residence or social condition. Did fail and neglect to notify the department of criminal activity committed by a person known to the department. While on-duty, did wrongfully conduct personal business while on duty. While on-duty, did fail and neglect to maintain activity log. Essentially what this is, is a cop that was associating with a known criminal, but didn't necessarily do anything illegal. The department was looking for something to "get" them on, and how they "got" them was by following them home. When you call in sick in the NYPD, you report to a department doctor (district surgeon) and then you must be in your primary residence (that the NYPD was informed of) during the time of your normal shift. From time to time, they send people around to check to see if you're home. They most likely sent someone to check on this cop hoping/knowing they wouldn't be there. It turns out that this cop was in another location, which was reported to the NYPD as their primary residence. Many of the citations in their record deal with being punished for lying about where they live. "Personal business" could be anything not related to your job. For instance: they got you on a recording calling a friend on duty. "fail and neglect to maintain activity log" most likely means that the NYPD confiscated all of their memo books (you're required to keep every single one you've used from the moment you report to the police academy to the moment you retire. Cops accrue dozens and dozens over a typical career. Almost no one has perfect memo books, and this rule is selectively enforced to punish people when they can't find anything else. To summarize: This police officer was associating with someone the NYPD didn't want them associating with, and after investigation, held them accountable in the form of not being able to take vacation for 2 years because they were living at a different address than they reported, conducted personal business on duty, and did not have perfect memo books filled out to exacting standards over the course of their career. It's very likely that the person they were associating with was a real problem, and that is why they got such a relatively heavy punishment. There's no way to know for sure, those secrets remain secret forever. You may ask, Why are there so many convoluted rules regarding the minute to minute lives of the NYPD? and the answer is over 175 years of tradition and the collective bargaining agreement. Source: Member of the NYPD
pleb_nz 5y ago
Aren't days off stipulated by government and mandatory in New York? I couldn't see how they could take away leave that is a legal right?

130 points by danso 5y ago

Seems counter-productive. "Hey you're clearly miserable and not doing your job properly, so we're gonna make sure that you spend more time on the job being miserable while doing it improperly".

sonotathrowaway 5y ago
Most officers will be placed on paid leave while they are being investigated for whatever crime they’re accused of. So it’s more like they have their vacation time adjusted to reflect their mandatory vacation.
- kleiba 5y ago
  From an employer's perspective, this is fine because you don't want to lose more paid work hours without any return. From the employee's perspective, it's a different story of course. The point of vacation is that you can recuperate from work stress and get some energy back, so that you stay healthy and can deliver good work. I doubt very much that this goal can be reached when the reason for your time off work is that you're under investigation. For instance, I don't expect most cops to fly to Vegas to party during such a time.
- _jal 5y ago
  This is just actual 'unlimited vacation'. Instead of a being a doublespeak name for eliminating vacation time, they actually can take time off at will. Just find someone powerless to take your frustrations out on, sign the union form and pack for the beach.
Ar-Curunir 5y ago
I don’t think most cops “are miserable”. They’re in that position because they enjoy being in power.
- Judgmentality 5y ago
  Most megalomaniacs I know aren't particularly happy people. I don't think the sudden outbursts of rage that we've come to know from cops are because they're zen inside.
- codyb 5y ago
  The officer at the polling place I worked Tuesday in Brownsville NYC went out and bought everyone cold water cause the community center was so hot. That was nice of her. I think a lot of the NYPD are fairly average humans who probably don't really enjoy... tackling people or whatever. Definitely hear a ton about the one's that do though. And there's some real pricks for sure as we saw during footage of the summer protests and police response.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > The officer at the polling place I’m sorry, the what now?
    - lbotos 5y ago
      there was an election in NYC recently, and police were at the locations where folks cast ballots.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        > police were at the locations where folks cast ballots Is that normal? That seems massively inappropriate to me.
        bberenberg 5y ago
        Yes it is normal. They are there to enforce the regulations around no campaigning within a certain distance, and other voting related laws. Plenty of crazies showing up insisting on inspecting ballots and stuff, and poll workers delegate dealing with this to cops.
        5y ago

thera2 5y ago

The reason their vacation is docked is because the actual punishment they're receiving is an unpaid suspension. But since going unpaid hurts, they take the suspension out of the vacation hours.

djhaskin987 5y ago
It doesn't seem so outrageous. I mean, when you move the slider, 20 vacation days for not securing the firearm translates to an enormous fine. Moving the slider all the way to the right the web page reads "4 cases resulting only in a loss of 45 vacation days.". ONLY 45 vacation days. 9 weeks pay is a lot of money, folks.
- superkuh 5y ago
  Okay, losing vacation days does imply a significant lack of paid income. But at every other job when you do something that can or does get someone injured or killed you get fired.
  - thera2 5y ago
    Not every infraction involves someone getting injured or killed.
    - athenot 5y ago
      At other jobs, even committing an infraction that didn't injure nor kill anybody but was against company policy is enough to get terminated. It's often a liability issue for the company.
    - thera2 5y ago
      And that's still the case here? This is just one more possible punishment. I'm sure if at tech companies workers were receiving docked vacation they would be raging on HN.
      - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

username90 5y ago

> The loss of vacation days — which is equivalent to a fine No they are not equivalent. There is a reason workers fights so hard to get vacation days, they are important and money is not a substitute.

the_lonely_road 5y ago
They probably get paid out for unused PTO (common in US) and I would guess a very small number ever use up their vacation time, an exceedingly difficult thing to do in any American job outside of tech (and maybe even for a lot of tech workers). So taking away vacation days from those people would be literally equivalent to fining them the payout of their days wage.
- caymanjim 5y ago
  Most US jobs don't allow you to accrue unlimited unused vacation time. Police, at least where I live, are allowed to. You often hear stories of large six-figure payouts on retirement, from years of accrued vacation time.
- bigwavedave 5y ago
  > [snip] I would guess a very small number ever use up their vacation time, an exceedingly difficult thing to do in any American job outside of tech (and maybe even for a lot of tech workers). It is? Maybe I've just been very lucky in my jobs- even before I was in tech, when working night shift stocking shelves at Walmart or doing customer retention at a call center, I've never had a problem using PTO. I'm sure everyone's experience is different so I'm not saying you're wrong, just that this is a surprise to me.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Depends on the company. It isn't unusual for some companies to have a few key people who can't take vacation because nobody else can do their job. Large companies like WalMart have learned that you dare not have such people (they can die unexpectedly - maybe you can stop them from quitting but death doesn't care) and so take effort to ensure everyone can be replaced as needed and so time off isn't an issue. Smaller companies often haven't learned this lesson and so will sometimes have people who can't be allowed to take time off.

anm89 5y ago

It boggles my mind that the average voter is ok(or at least ok enough not to make an issue out of it) with the status quo of how police departments operate. I've just come to terms with the fact that what seems acceptable to me in regards to how the police operate is drastically different than the consensus.

colechristensen 5y ago
I'm not ok with it, but the two sides of the issue seem to be status quo with more resources vs. actually shutting down law enforcement. The thought of going into small scale politics with my ideas has crossed my mind but A) I think I would alienate both sides and B) seriously concerned that someone would come try to shoot me (from either extreme).
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  Small scale and NYPD aren’t in the same league. IIRC if the NYPD was a military organization it would be the fifth largest military in the world. Which itself may or may not be a problem.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    Tokyo metro is larger but the Japanese use their police as community servants.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      Japan is an insular, rigid and heavily values oriented society. Overall their crime rate is exceptionally low. It would be hard to apply Japanese policing styles to fundamentally different societies. That doesn't mean we can't learn good lessons from them, but we need to remember it's never an apples to apples comparison.
      - unknown_error 5y ago

btown 5y ago

Does anyone else think this is an absurd way in which the department can reward itself for encouraging systemic misconduct? If, in aggregate, the department encourages officers to push the boundaries of misconduct, they end up getting free labor every time the officers step over the line. The incentives seem grossly reversed. If anything, you'd want a system where misconduct causes aggregate officer availability to decrease, giving police departments an incentive to reduce misconduct rates if they want more resources.

Closi 5y ago
Eh, Although I agree in theory I don’t personally agree that this is the way it works in practice. At the end of the day, police forces are made up of people, and people don’t like their holiday being taken away. The incentive for management you are describing is to dole out more punishment, but the incentive at an individual level would still be to be to avoid punishment. In fact, management may be incentivised to dole out punishment for more minor offences, which again force further good behaviour. Do I think it’s a good policy though? No I think it’s awful personally. People need holiday to relax and to do their jobs well, and taking away relaxation time can only lead to more stressed officers.

paulpauper 5y ago

Propublica is going after everyone now lol. billionaires. police departments...who is next?

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Isn't that something that's contractually agreed?? My work couldn't cut my holidays if they wanted to. They could make it difficult for me to actually book them by denying requests though. Ps didn't get to RTFA as I'm on the go sorry

geocrasher 5y ago

"The Beatings will Continue until Morale Improves!"

throwaway625 5y ago

I'd like to explain one of the 45 day "rips" (loss of vacation time is called a rip in the NYPD) because most of the commenters lack the context to fully understand what's going on. First, being ripped doesn't mean you lose money, it means you lose your vacation days. Vacation is assigned to you typically in blocks for 5 days, and members with 5.5 years or more of service get 26 days of vacation (5 weeks). Being ripped means you work the days you would have had off. In the end there is no real loss to pay. That being said, getting a 45 day rip essentially means you don't take vacation for 24 months, and the only days you have off are your RDOs(regular days off, they rotate throughout the year due to the nature of shift work.) Not being able to decompress for more than 2 days at a time is horrible in general and especially true in law enforcement, and I bet some members would rather lose thousands of dollars in pay in the form of a fine than not be able to take vacation for 2 years straight. This is not an option, you must lose the vacation days. Did knowingly associate with a person or organization reasonably believed to be engaged in, likely to engage in, or to have engaged in criminal activities. While on sick report, was wrongfully and without just cause absent from said residence without the permission of said officer's district surgeon and/or health services division sick desk supervisor. While on sick report, left the confines of the city and residence counties without approval of the deputy commissioner of personnel. Having changed her residence, did fail and neglect to notify her commanding officer by submitting form change of name, residence or social condition. Did fail and neglect to notify the department of criminal activity committed by a person known to the department. While on-duty, did wrongfully conduct personal business while on duty. While on-duty, did fail and neglect to maintain activity log. Essentially what this is, is a cop that was associating with a known criminal, but didn't necessarily do anything illegal. The department was looking for something to "get" them on, and how they "got" them was by following them home. When you call in sick in the NYPD, you report to a department doctor (district surgeon) and then you must be in your primary residence (that the NYPD was informed of) during the time of your normal shift. From time to time, they send people around to check to see if you're home. They most likely sent someone to check on this cop hoping/knowing they wouldn't be there. It turns out that this cop was in another location, which was reported to the NYPD as their primary residence. Many of the citations in their record deal with being punished for lying about where they live. "Personal business" could be anything not related to your job. For instance: they got you on a recording calling a friend on duty. "fail and neglect to maintain activity log" most likely means that the NYPD confiscated all of their memo books (you're required to keep every single one you've used from the moment you report to the police academy to the moment you retire. Cops accrue dozens and dozens over a typical career. Almost no one has perfect memo books, and this rule is selectively enforced to punish people when they can't find anything else. To summarize: This police officer was associating with someone the NYPD didn't want them associating with, and after investigation, held them accountable in the form of not being able to take vacation for 2 years because they were living at a different address than they reported, conducted personal business on duty, and did not have perfect memo books filled out to exacting standards over the course of their career. It's very likely that the person they were associating with was a real problem, and that is why they got such a relatively heavy punishment. There's no way to know for sure, those secrets remain secret forever. You may ask, Why are there so many convoluted rules regarding the minute to minute lives of the NYPD? and the answer is over 175 years of tradition and the collective bargaining agreement. Source: Member of the NYPD

pleb_nz 5y ago

Aren't days off stipulated by government and mandatory in New York? I couldn't see how they could take away leave that is a legal right?