The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE Christie administration has decided to give time off to hundreds of active police officers who worked 12-hour shifts in 2013 and 2014 and to give financial compensation to officers who worked overtime during that period but have since retired, according to Wayne Munroe, attorney representing the Police Staff Association in the matter.

Although it is unclear how many police officers have retired since 2014, a source told The Tribune more than 100 people fall into this category, suggesting they are all eligible for a financial payout.

This comes after the Court of Appeal earlier this year upheld a landmark Supreme Court ruling ordering the government to compensate police officers for working 12-hour shifts at different periods in 2013 and 2014.

Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade has previously said the issue of compensation for overtime work was “moot”.

However, Supreme Court Justice Milton Evans ruled in 2015 that a Force Order issued by former Police Commissioner Paul Farquharson in 2003 was relevant to the case as it mandated that public officers be paid when they work for more than 40 hours in a normal work week.

The government had argued that the order wasn’t applicable because of its references to the Employment Act, which it said does not apply to police officers.

The PSA calculated that the government would have had to pay as much as $16.4m to police officers to fulfil the judge’s order if it decided to go that route. However, various options were available to the government, including giving officers time off or offering a combination of this and financial compensation.

Contacted yesterday, PSA Chairman Dwight Smith said he was not consulted by Commissioner Greenslade on the decision of how to proceed on the matter.

Earlier this year he expressed a preference for having a financial compensation made to all officers.

He said yesterday that among the issues that are unclear is how many days off will be given to police officers.

“How are we doing the calculation on a 13-week 12-hour shift?” he asked. “When Junkanoo happens and an officer works a 12-hour shift, he or she normally gets three days off. And when we work elections, we get five days off because the work is for more than eight hours. Which one of these will determine how we do it? Even if you give the officers one day back for the 12-hour shift they work, our calculation says each officer would be entitled to 63 days off. That’s a lot of days given that, according to the court order, all those persons must use up that time back within a 12-month span. I still believe it would’ve been cheaper to give money to everybody.”