Officers assigned to work midnight to 8 a.m. might be asked to report at 8 p.m. one night and work until 4 a.m., Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Ross said. Officers accustomed to working 4 p.m. to midnight might one day be asked to come in at 8 p.m. instead.
The police union's contract allows commanders to change an officer's shift by up to four hours six times a year, Ross said.
"The budget being what it is, we have to look at what's available to us," Ramsey said. "We've got to deal with what's going on right now. We have to get our crime numbers down, and to do that we have to take advantage of what we have."
The city's homicide count stood at 171 Wednesday morning, up from 158 a year earlier. Nonfatal shootings are also on the rise, 905 compared with 788 a year ago.
The numbers don't approach the city's 2007 figures, when Ramsey joined the department. That year, the city had 224 homicides by mid-July.
Violent crime overall is still down 5 percent from last year, Ross said, but the numbers are troubling.
"We don't ever want to return to those days," he said, referring to 2007. "We have to be vigilant. We needed to respond to this."
Last week, Mayor Nutter announced $47 million in cuts to the city's budget, including $6.3 million from the police overtime budget. Ramsey has said the department's budget will be trimmed by $13.7 million through several rounds of cuts.
Ramsey has canceled two police academy classes, and has redeployed 60 officers from special units to patrol until Oct. 9.
John McNesby, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, praised Ramsey's crime-fighting efforts and said the budget cuts had placed the commissioner in an impossible position.
