Yes folks, you heard that right. In the face of factual evidence, both Chief Pickens and Morgan Olson managed to convince the folks at the Fulton Center that the posts on indeed.com and this blog “aren’t real” and the majority of ASUPD’s employees are pleased as punch to come to work everyday.
We’d like to offer a challenge to those folks who are convinced that everything at ASUPD is A-OK. We understand your skepticism about the facts presented here by random internet posters; after all, we have the benefit of knowing you folks and how you operate, but the same can’t be said about us. Even if you completely discount what is being said here, we challenge you try and obtain your own answers through one of these methods:
- Create an anonymous survey, distribute it to the line-level officers and PAs, and tell us what you see.
- Assess the department’s retention rates (heck, even do five year retention rates!) and tell us what you see there.
- Look at the exorbitant amount of sick time being used (check out this article on “The High Cost of Unhappy Employees”).
We think these three tactics will shed some credibility on this site and our assertions.
It’s important to note that our intentions with this blog AREN’T to personally attack anyone. That being said, you’re all public figures paid for the taxpayers of the State of Arizona, and subsequently, your professional credibility is fair game. You have a duty and obligation to serve the people of the State of Arizona and students/faculty/staff at ASU, as well as uphold the law. If we as law enforcement officers are negligent or reckless in our jobs, we’re held accountable IMMEDIATELY…command staff and above are NO EXCEPTION.
The reaction on behalf of ASUPD’s admin as well as the university has been shocking for a blog with supposedly “no merit”. Going to the extent of tracking down IP addresses for posters and commenters that have maybe committed a policy violation (at most) is ridiculous, and is walking the very fine line between legal fact finding and illegal searches/curtailing of free speech.
We’ll end this discussion with two quotes that really speak to the core of the issue here…ones we’ll hope will cause some relatively intelligent person at Fulton/whatever to question the desperate motives of ASUPD to keep its dissenters silent.
First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”—Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Ashcroft V. Free Speech Coalition
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”— Harry Truman
What? None of this is real? I hope a bunch of people with doctorate degrees can come up with something better than denial. They need to look into the department and gather their own research before taking the denial approach. Denial just endangers more people because it doesn’t fix the problem.
This isn’t a game, it’s not a joke, this is public safety and something they need to take seriously for a change. If people start lawyering up and getting settlement amounts maybe that will get their attention, so far the ones that have haven’t changed anything.
It sounds like they have been deceived into believing this is an isolated issue with a few “disgruntled” people. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They really need to look at the facts.
It’s not real when it doesn’t affect you in any way. Denial is the cheapest form of therapy. When you sit in an air conditioned office and your greatest danger in life is burning your tongue on hot coffee being a cop means the same as being an astronaut. Imagining either job is like being on the moon to them, no clue, no desire to get one.