Ending special duty helps staff cruisers

If you’re not from Winnipeg, the first time you see it can be a little alarming.

You’ve come to the grocery store for a week’s groceries, gotten what you need, and made your way through the checkouts. And then, with your cart of bagged groceries out in front of you, you head to the door and meet a pair of fully-kitted-out police officers, standing and talking with their thumbs hooked into their vests.

Occasionally, they give you a once-over with that “are-you-going-to-make-trouble” stare that seems to be a particular talent of police officers. Often, they don’t look at you at all.

You look around. Has something happened?

“Is there a problem, officer?”

No, it’s just police officers making overtime pay by standing in stores and filling other roles at special events, and in the process, building up their pensionable time.

It’s called special duty hours, and it’s probably a heck of a lot more straightforward and non-threatening than heading to a call in a police cruiser.

It’s also coming to an end, at least as far as working in retail stores is concerned.

The number of WPS hours a retailer can book will be reduced by 50 per cent before a “full exit” May 1, 2027.

It was quite a thing: a Free Press analysis found more than 50,000 special duty hours booked per year. Hourly fees range from $141.75 (GST included) for a constable to $166.95 for a staff sergeant. The money collected for the shifts is paid to the officer minus the costs of operating the program.

The officers aren’t even doing security work.

They’re just there in case they are needed for on-site police work — something that’s led to the snide description of the program as “cops as props.”

It’s going away because officers working at the grocery store aren’t available to fill gaps in staffing at the police department.

“How this would affect the service is if we have shortages on our front lines, we often (ask) people to work overtime shifts, and often we’ve been recently unable to fill some of those required shifts to make sure we’re meeting our minimum strength on the street,” Winnipeg Police Service Chief Gene Bowers told the Free Press.

“We feel the amount of retail special duty has had a significant impact on our ability to fill those days where we need those members to fill those cruiser cars.”

You can understand both sides. Police officers probably like the idea of a calmer shift getting them both pay and a bump for their pensions.

But the police chief has only so many resources, and it must be difficult to be unable to staff cruisers while fully-trained officers are standing around listening to canned music and scoping out good offers in the nearby produce section.

Think of it this way: Your own time is your own time, but if your side gig as a night-time dance bar DJ means you can’t ever take overtime shifts or cover for other employees — and you’re too tired from your freelance work to handle everything at your day job — your employer is going to have some issues.

The final analysis is a simple one — if special duty hours make it difficult to fill gaps on the street, the program has to go.

For retailers, losing the officers will mean changes to their security plans.

Instead of calling the police when store security catches a shoplifter, the police were already there, front and centre.

It probably won’t be a popular decision with rank and file police officers.

But managing isn’t a popularity contest.

And Chief Bowers’ first responsibility is to Winnipeggers, not just retailers.