The Baltimore Police union on Wednesday advised its members to begin sharing any feelings of exhaustion with their supervisors — and documenting the response — amid ongoing personnel shortages in patrol, The Baltimore Sun reports. In a message to rank-and-file officers obtained by The Baltimore Sun, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3 President Sgt. Mike Mancuso suggested the officers had to look out for themselves because the department wasn’t doing it — instead failing to recruit enough officers to outpace attrition and forcing existing officers in the department to work overtime shifts.
“Due to the extensive number of hours that each of you is required to work you are being confronted by sleep deprivation and the loss of the down time necessary to mitigate the stress of our profession,” Mancuso wrote. He said the department has 500 fewer patrol officers than it needs, and that there are fewer officers manning patrol cars today than there were when Commissioner Michael Harrison started at the department in February.