‘Unsustainable strain’: NYPD’s 911 operators forced into 16-hour shifts

Emergency call operators with the NYPD are being pushed to work 16-hour shifts three days in a row every week to compensate for “chronic understaffing.” That’s what Tabitha Sheppard, the president of a union representing the Police Department’s communication technicians told City Council members at a joint hearing of three committees on Wednesday.

Sheppard, recently elected president of Local 5911, told Council members that she’s proposed scheduling patterns the union views as more sustainable but that those have been rejected by the city’s Office of Labor Relations. 

Instead, for at least the last three years, the agency has pushed NYPD management to institute forced overtime that obliges communications personnel scheduled for 10- or 12-hour shifts to work 16-hour shifts. Sheppard said this places an “unsustainable strain on our workforce” and does not address “the root cause of our understaffing.”

The NYPD is budgeted for 1,409 police communication technicians but has just 1,288 on staff,  Assistant Chief Richard Napolitano said at the hearing. He said that the PCTs provide “critical services” and that the department has hired over 200 new PCTs since April, with hiring this year expected to far surpass 2023’s and 2024’s numbers.

“We analyzed where inefficiencies existed in our deployment of PCTs and discovered that certain tours were understaffed while others were overstaffed,” Napolitano said. “These mistakes have been corrected."

He added that the department reintroduced 8-hour shifts, created voluntary overtime sign-ups, and allowed employees to swap shifts with one another, which “helped PCTs and decreased call delays.”

But Kadeem Denoon, Local 5911’s vice president, said many PCTs stay on the job for just a few months because of the low starting pay, which is between $42,000 and $48,000, according to the NYPD. Many of them take exams for other civil service positions, including for police officers, and only work the dispatching jobs until they are called off lists for those jobs, he said.

“We can get the bodies in, but we cannot keep them, because they’re not getting paid,” he said. “How is it that our staffing is low, our call volume is one of the highest, but we are the least paid. That makes absolutely no sense at all.”

Denoon added that all employees — even those working 8-hour shifts — expect to get forced overtime every shift they work, so most try to get scheduled for 10- or 12-hour days and work three days a week instead of four since they think they’ll end up working 16-hour days anyway. The long schedules forces workers to miss out on time with their family and friends and create issues on the job, he said.

“This has led to fatigue, decrease in morale and concerns of long-term health and job performance,” Denoon testified. “It threatens both wellbeing and quality of service.”

911 operators taking the oath of office during their September 2021 graduation ceremony.

NYPD

'We're not going anywhere'

Sheppard and Denoon were joined at the hearing by Oren Barzilay, the president of Local 2507, the union representing FDNY EMTs paramedics and fire protection inspectors, a workforce also suffering from turnover, and what Barzilay has long said is insufficient pay. To the frustration of the union leaders and Council members, the Office of Labor Relations did not show up to testify at the hearing, either with regard to PCT scheduling or EMS negotiations.

Local 2507 has been bargaining with the city since August and Barzilay testified that there’s been almost no movement made on salary negotiations. He said that OLR negotiators rejected the union’s request for paramedics — who he said make $59,000 after five years on the job — to reach parity with firefighters who can make $109,000 and also rejected other compromise proposals.

“The sign that OLR is not here reflects the exact way we are being dealt with when we sit down to negotiate,” said Barzilay.

A spokesperson for OLR did not respond to a request for comment. 

"EMS workers have made countless sacrifices to keep New Yorkers safe, and New York City owes them a debt of gratitude," a spokesperson for Mayor Adams said in a statement. This job is difficult, and they deserve our utmost respect and resources to support their health and wellness. The Adams administration also has a proven track record of reaching fair labor agreements with our represented employees, and we remain in negotiation with the EMS union."

Council Member Carmen De La Rosa, chair of the Labor and Civil Service committee, was one of several Council members to express her discontent with OLR’s absence and her support for EMS workers. “We share the frustration that the needle hasn’t moved,” she told Barzilay. “You have our commitment — we’re not going anywhere. We’re going to be here and continue to fight.”

De La Rosa added that both PCT and EMS roles “are not met with fair pay and working conditions that they deserve for their service.”

Joann Ariola, chair of the committee on Fire and Emergency Management, said that what’s happened to EMS is a “travesty."

"EMS salaries should be comparable to their counterparts in the FDNY and NYPD," she said. “By remedying this longstanding pay disparity, the city would help provide equality among EMS and other emergency medical personnel.”