The Hidden Threat Behind the Badge: Why Fatigue Management Must Be a Priority in Law Enforcement

Guest contributor Dr. Leah Kaylor, Ph.D., MSCP, is the FBI’s leading sleep expert, specializing in fatigue risk management for law enforcement and public safety professionals.

It’s not the shootouts, the foot chases, or the long nights that will break most officers. It’s the fatigue. And unlike a suspect you can cuff, fatigue is invisible—creeping in slowly, impairing decision-making, reaction time, emotional regulation, and judgment. In law enforcement, those are not minor inconveniences. They’re life-or-death variables.

We don’t talk enough about fatigue. But we should. It’s a silent threat that undermines everything from officer safety to community trust. Long shifts, mandatory overtime, disrupted sleep cycles, unpredictable court appearances, second jobs—these are common parts of the job, not exceptions. And they’re exhausting.

Fatigue Isn’t Weakness—It’s a Physiological Reality

The science is clear: sleep deprivation impairs performance as much as alcohol. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) highlights just how severe this impairment can be: staying awake for 24 hours is equivalent to having a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.10%. For reference, the legal limit for driving in most states is 0.08%, and impairments begin to show as low as 0.05%. In other words, a full day without sleep leaves you functioning as if you were intoxicated. It dramatically increases the risk of operational errors, vehicle crashes, and use-of-force mistakes.

Would we ever let an officer work drunk? Of course not. But we routinely allow them to work exhausted.

The troubling truth is this: if you show up drunk, you’ll sober up eventually. But if you show up sleep-deprived, you’ll only grow more impaired as the hours tick by.

Even more troubling, officers often don’t realize how impaired they actually are. Subjective sleepiness ratings do not match actual performance deficits (St. Hilaire et al., 2017). That means an officer may feel “fine” while their neurocognitive functioning is degraded to dangerous levels. This false confidence—thinking you're operating at full capacity when you're not—is a serious operational hazard.

A common myth in policing is that officers can “catch up” on sleep during days off. But recent research has thoroughly debunked that idea. In a tightly controlled study on chronic variable sleep deficiency, participants who had two nights of severe sleep restriction followed by a 10-hour recovery night showed temporary improvements—but when sleep loss resumed, their performance declined even faster than before. The recovery was incomplete and short-lived. Despite feeling subjectively better, participants were objectively worse when re-exposed to sleep loss (St. Hilaire et al., 2017).

Let that sink in: The brain doesn’t bounce back from sleep deprivation the way we’d hope. "Sleeping it off" is not a sustainable strategy. Rather than signaling full recovery, the improvement is transient—performance rebounds briefly before degrading more rapidly and severely with renewed sleep loss.

Departments invest millions in tactical gear but neglect the most powerful tool in an officer’s arsenal: a well-rested brain. We cannot afford to treat sleep as a personal problem. It is a mission-critical resource.

Good sleep is not about laziness or lack of grit—it’s about operational readiness. It sharpens attention, improves memory consolidation, and regulates mood. A rested officer is a safer officer.

So what can we do?

Prioritize sleep like you prioritize firearms training. Sleep isn’t optional for performance. Fatigue impairs performance just like impaired vision or poor marksmanship. Make fatigue risk management part of your agency’s safety policies.

Stop rewarding “toughing it out.” Command staff should model healthy sleep practices and avoid glorifying burnout. Leadership must set the tone.

Use science to guide shift work. Where possible, limit back-to-back night shifts and avoid backward-rotating schedules. Shift design must reflect human circadian biology - not work against it. 

Equip officers with actionable tools. Build sleep education into academy training and in-service refreshers.  Teach strategies like controlled napping, circadian alignment, blue-light management, and caffeine timing for optimal alertness.

Leverage technology to support fatigue management. Integrate emerging tools like mobile apps, such as Timeshifter, that help officers align sleep with erratic schedules. This platform offers personalized, data-driven guidance on when to sleep, nap, and recover—enhancing readiness in even the most unpredictable environments.

Utilize evidence-based treatments. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi) is the gold standard for treating chronic sleep issues—without relying on medication. Officers can access CBTi through free, science-backed mobile apps like CBT-i Coach, which guide users through structured strategies to retrain sleep patterns, challenge unhelpful beliefs, and build lasting habits.

The Bottom Line

If we want sharper decision-making, stronger community trust, and fewer line-of-duty injuries, we must elevate sleep and fatigue management to the same level of importance as firearms qualifications and tactical readiness. It deserves the same rigor, the same science, and the same seriousness.

As the FBI’s sleep expert, I’ve worked with service members, federal agents, and public safety professionals across the country. The message is consistent and urgent: fatigue is not an unfortunate side effect of the job—it’s a predictable, preventable risk. If we fail to address it, we are complicit in the consequences.