Pugh: Change How Police Officers Are Scheduled

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh says she wants to restructure how police officers are scheduled, in hopes of reducing the amount the city pays out in overtime.

"Our police officers work four days on, three days off. Nowhere else in the country" has police officers work those kinds of shifts, Pugh told C4 in studio Friday. "Firemen sleep in the firehouse, and so they sleep four days in the firehouse so if something happens any time of night, they're there."

She said it wasn't acceptable that the city, just before she came into office, froze 200 police officer positions while also spending more than $40 million annually on police overtime.

"It is very difficult--and the police commissioner has said that--to scale a police department in the way that it should on this kind of shift [scheduling]," Pugh said. "Everybody wants to see a police officer in their communities and neighborhoods, protecting their communities."

However, she said even hiring 1,000 officers alone won't fix the city's deeper problems.

"Unemployment, homelessness, all of these are symptomatic of the problems that we're facing," Pugh said. "It's not just about locking people up."

Pugh also touched on topics including a bill in the City Council that would raise Baltimore's minimum wage to $15 an hour. It still faces a final council vote. She said she's still not sure whether or not she'll veto the measure, because it would take effect right away and would impact city coffers already impacted by the police consent decree and the push to close the city's structural deficit.

"And what a minimum wage will do for just my agencies, 800 people, I have to look at this from a total perspective of what's going to be best for Baltimore," Pugh said. "As I look at it right now, Baltimore needs to be inline with the rest of the state, so I'm looking at it."