Desperate To Stop Crime, Detroit Chief Orders Cops To Work 12-Hour Shifts

Detroit police patrol officers will be assigned twelve-hour shifts starting Monday, August 20.

"I need to get more police officers on the street, more boots on the ground. Obviously we're not going to get more police officers, so we have to reconfigure what we do," Chief Ralph Godbee told officers in a department teletype, Fox 2 reports.

The changes affect the Central, Northeastern and Eastern districts and the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th and 12th precincts. The new schedules will also affect the Gaming and Communications departments, and more units could be added at a later date.

The officers will be broken into two groups with new 84-hour schedules from August 20 to April 14, 2013. The groups will alternate between two days on and two days off with Friday, Saturday and Sunday off every other week on a day, afternoon or midnight shift.

Earlier this week, Godbee bristled when City Councilman Ken Cockrel Jr. criticized the management of the department.