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What is the graveyard shift?
The graveyard shift is the overnight tour — usually somewhere around eleven at night to seven in the morning. In policing it is also called midnights, the dogwatch, third watch or simply nights.
The names
Midnights is the most common term in American policing. Dogwatch comes from the navy. Third watch or third shift is the numbering used where the day is divided into three. They all describe the same tour.
Where the name came from
The likeliest explanation is the plainest: the streets are empty and quiet at that hour. The stories about watching graves are folklore rather than history.
What is different about it
Fewer calls, but the ones that come tend to be more serious. Fewer people around to help. And the part that wears officers down is not the shift — it is sleeping afterwards, in daylight, in a house that is awake.
Where it turns up
Sleeping after a night shift · Staying awake through the small hours · Pitman, where a crew stays on nights
Put your own rotation on the calendar
Save the pattern your agency runs once and the year fills itself in — forward as far as you want to look, and back over the months you have already worked.
Scan to install — or hold it up for the officer next to you.
