Internal Affairs Spotlight: A Look at the Numbers

Tonight’s post comes courtesy of a guest writer, A.I. Thanks for the insight!!

Internal Affairs Spotlight:  Policing Ourselves in a Police State – A Look at the Numbers

ASU Police Department boasts regularly that they are proud of the fact that the majority of internal affairs (IAs) are generated internally and do not come from outside sources.  This is typical, backwards, ASU PD logic.  How is having more internal complaints better than having more external complaints?

If you look at the 3rd training bulletin on Blackboard for 2013 , there is a significant difference in the number of sustained complaints in the external complaints (hardly any) versus the number of sustained complaints in the internal complaints category (significantly higher).

This internal complaint system is perpetrated by a very select number of employees, referred to across the department as “the click”.  How are 4 employees responsible for more than 25% of internal complaints out of more than 130 employees?  The main five members of “the click” represent roughly 5% of the department staffing yet are responsible for the 25% of our internal IAs.  That is a huge red flag regarding these employees’ characters.  The Chief has acknowledged that there is a click and yet has done nothing to deal with it.  This unchecked power base stemming from line level supervisors to Commander shows how corrupt police management can lead to internal issues.

Here are some of the highlights of “The Click” and ACTUAL internal affairs investigations!!

Commander William Orr

  • ACTUAL IA: Illegally seized an employee’s personally owned firearm.  Tsk. Billy.  Didn’t your mother teach you that you can’t take things that aren’t yours?
  • ACTUAL IA: Busy chasing employees out of the department with bogus firearms issues. Well, I guess if Pam, Aston, and Louis couldn’t get you I will!!

Commander Louis Scichilone 

  • ACTUAL IA: Busy wasting time targeting an employee and trying to catch them sleeping on duty, numerous times. Great job Lou!!  The knees on your paints are looking warn from kneeling down to kiss so much of the Chief’s ass!
  • ACTUAL IA: Investigated an employee for driving 5 miles off of campus. Yes, 5 whole miles! Running code at 60 mph it would take exactly 1 minute to get to an emergency call.
  • Ran to Command Staff when an employee who was in the police association left a copy of an email talking about a staffing survey was found by Lou.  Again, get a life.  Oh wait, you make life size Star Wars characters. Enough said!
  • ACTUAL IA: Writing up employees who were late to work. Great use of the IA system Lou! It is clearly proves that you have nothing better to do then to mess with employees.

Sergeant Pam Osborne

  • Ran the FTO unit into the ground.  Proud of her FTO “failure rate”.  Too incompetent to understand that isn’t something to be proud of.
  • ACTUAL IA: Investigated employees for not using in-car video (which don’t work half of the time) on a traffic stop.  Really?  Maybe Pam should have spent time investigating why our equipment regularly doesn’t work instead!!
  • Talks down to employees she doesn’t like.  Pretends to know more about police work but is a coward and afraid to leave the station.  Want an IA ASUPD?  Go investigate how many times Pam actually leaves the station.
  • Ran a female police officer out of the department because she didn’t like her.  Refused to let the employee see her training records or DORS.  It’s because she had to go back and change things in order to get rid of this employee. Corrupt!

Sergeant Mark Aston

  • ACTUAL IA: Busy writing up Police Aides for not wearing a bicycle helmet. Great supervision there Sarge!
  • ACTUAL IA: Investigated a Police Aide for damaging a wall at a cop shop with a Segway.  Words escape me on this one!
  • ACTUAL IA: Was accused of racial bias from a citizen. Although, he was cleared this time look at the majority of people he has targeted with IAs or bullshit write ups:  Ray Kizee, Damion White, Matt Parker, Tony Momon, Luke Khalid, Rudy Freese (anyone noticing a “racial” pattern here). 

Also, notable is that every IA the Chief himself has initiated has been sustained findings.  If he is the accuser and the finder of facts doesn’t that amount to an obvious conflict of interest?  If the Chief initiates an IA shouldn’t an outside agency investigate the findings if it involves an employee’s termination?  Like a former female officer who was railroaded out of the department? One would think but not with “Slim” Pickens at the wheel.

Even better is the continuous violating of officers rights under Arizona law.  The department engages in a process called an “administrative review” instead of conducting an IA.  They do this so the rights for police officers under Arizona law do not apply.  Again, here is another example of police mismanagement and abusing employees.

Here is my message to the Chief: Take a hard look at the state of the department.  People are leaving in droves because they refuse to put up with the bullshit.  You have done this to the department and the morale because these people go unchecked.  You have created a “police state” inside of a “police department” instead of honorable and trustworthy employees.  Stop the nepotism, favoritism, and politicalism and get rid of the poisonous leeches that are ruining the department. 

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10 thoughts on “Internal Affairs Spotlight: A Look at the Numbers

  1. Justanotherdispensible50 says:

    This is greeeat! Putting names with deeds and numbers. Well done. William Orr, Louis Scichilone, Pam Osborne, Mark Aston, all the inbred rat bastard leading clique members who gutted out the ASU Police department under the chief’s nose. If the chief wants to be upset about all the Indeed posts, the blog activity, all the people pissed off and leaving the blame belongs to these people and the group they lead. Orr has a GED and is a University Commander without a degree from a department he spent 20 years at, so he doesn’t know his ass from a key hole. Besides taking Rudy’s personal property without cause he has led the clique down the path to ruining the chief’s department. It’s what it is today because of him and that’s why our department is woefully unprepared to meet the demands of protecting the largest student population in the nation, this man’s desire to play high school games in a university police department.

    L. Scichilone is a lying sack, one of the reasons command made the policy about not taping supervisors without their knowledge, they got tired of getting caught in lies and being embarrassed. He pretends to be friends with people, tries to use people to get information on the troops only to screw them with it later. They really should let him play with his toys at work in his Star Wars Darth Vader uniform, it will be less damaging for the department. Maybe then we’ll keep some people and have backup on calls within 5 years. Lou has a history of routinely using up all his sick time, does any one call him on it? Nope. The list goes on and on.

    Pam is another one who lives in fantasy land. She will be the last person to leave the station on calls, in fact she doesn’t leave, even on ones she’s called to. No consequences. She sits on her ass all day in her cubicle/office on the phone/computer and sends police aides to her officer calls. She used to routinely not show up to work, work from home, not change into uniform, consequences? Nope. Pam had no idea what the hell she was doing with the FTO program, she ruined it. This is one of the biggest reasons our staffing is so low. She used it to play games with people and dumped the mess on Larry’s lap. Apparently he doesn’t know what the hell to do either, but in fairness it’s hard to do something with nothing. There’s nobody that wants to train because the system is shit from Rourke on down.

    As far as Astonhole is concerned I think the original Indeed posters covered his resume well. Like the aforementioned people, based on their failing judgment, misdeeds, pettiness, immaturity he has no business judging others because none of them can do it impartially or without malice year after stinking year. They don’t know how to build this department, they have done everything they could to destroy it one employee at a time. Over time that adds up to a lot of people. The ones that aren’t forced out see what they do and leave on their own.

  2. indeedYOUsay says:

    Well it looks like the IA machine and miserable out of sync management is really paying off with SIX people taking off by the new year. The next person who scoffs at them just being disgruntled employees needs to go seek professional help. I agree with you AI, these people probably failed the high school popularity contest, so they use our workplace to prove something.

    Yes Aston hates colored people the way Luke hates white people. Go team! The people you mentioned, Damion White, Matt Parker, Tony Momon, Rudy Freese, are all good people. I didn’t get to know Kizee and Khalid has had his moments when he’s not being a dick or trying to prove something. Al Phillips and Stan Barzar were really good to work with, but they would have tossed Aston in a dumpster if he attempted to play his “games”.

    Justanotherdispensible50, I loved reading your take on the clique, funny and sad because it’s true. Losers always have to compensate for something, have something to prove. Well they have done it, they have proven nobody wants to work here, especially in Tempe, except them and their friends. Thanks Chief for finally bumping us to the pay levels of NAU and UofA after lieing to our faces about our state mandated raise only being 1.5% and you fighting for the other 1.5%. If the AZ public lies to me during an investigation I can take them to jail. I’ll wait to you retire and serve you the citation I wrote up. That’s fair right?

  3. Supervisor Facepalm says:

    While I’m not quite as pissed off by this place as others it’s probably because I have been less affected by what I see other people contending with here. An outsider from our department would go, “IA’s just don’t generate themselves, people make choices, people make mistakes.” That perspective is reasonable as long as you don’t work at the Arizona State University Police Department…period.

    It sucks seeing really people not under your supervision getting treated like crap, singled out, and fed up. This isn’t the exception, it’s the norm. These are people who at one point wanted to work here and it’s a shame they have supervisors who have nothing better to do than play games with them.

    • Supervisor Facepalm says:

      When you think about how these people have operated over the years, the negative impact they have had on the department, it’s really substantial. They wormed themselves into positions where they have the chief’s ear and I’m sure they spin their side of the story, make villains of their workplace targets, and make a convincing argument that whatever they are doing is right and justified. A whole lot of trusting without verifying.

      It’s pathetic because we are all supposed to be working for the same team, but that has never been the case in the years I have been working there. I don’t trust any of the IA TEAM listed here for anything. Orr, Scichilone, Pam, Aston, and the click list goes on. They have played their games for so long that all the other people facing them are tired of playing. We lose one crop of people after the next and nobody seems to care. People can’t believe the chief doesn’t know what’s going on?

    • Supervisor Facepalm says:

      I’m on the fence here. These guys are professional panderers and quite frankly the chief has been out of touch. Remember, the chief gets their rehashed version of events and their “solutions” without hearing a peep from their targets. Command signs off on people’s spoken words all the time, more than you would think, and more than they should. It’s laziness.

      Whether or not the chief knows is immaterial, he’s supposed to know what’s going on in his agency, especially when it’s this small. It takes a people person to weed out untrustworthy people and if the chief was that sort of person, a leader, these department games wouldn’t have gone this far out of control.

      Chief, just because a crowd might have more people against you than for you doesn’t mean you turn inward, run away, and give up the podium. Don’t take it personal even though it is, be above the ego end of it, do something positive about it. Win them over by fixing the breakers, replace them with builders. Also thanks for the raise Chief. Indeed, I think you share some of the responsibility, but I can’t admit that openly.

  4. DoneSon says:

    Wondering why officers and even aides are leaving well here it is. These slugs have done so much damage to the department, the University, and their self-defeating garbage is becoming more clear every day. I believe in the University, I believe in our mission, but these people have had an agenda that runs contrary to the good of everyone.

    Every officer here with the exception of these people and their few friends are busy making plans to leave, this is no joke, this is real. The problem of saving the department from ruin is FAR more complex than scaring up warm bodies to fill vacant spots. Our department has hired numerous veteran lateral officers from all over the country, we have hired tons of recruits and put them through the academy, and guess what?

    They all leave ASAP, one after another adding more to the steaming pile of shit that represents the career of John Pickens at ASUPD. He’s the autocrat that allowed all this to happen and his dunce cap command towed the line compounding the problem. There are 1000’s of capable, experienced, qualified police officer leaders who could do the job right. Give your department a chance to meet the need by giving qualified people a chance, otherwise the broken 1 tune record of failure will continue unabated.

  5. DL500unit says:

    Middle supervisors did a lot of damage to this organization and became senior supervisors at the command level. Now their friends are in their old positions doing the same thing. It really is a culture.

    I just go to work and get through it, nothing will change unless I leave, that’s the sad fact. This place could have a lot of potential to be a good place to work if the potential was realized, but given the circumstances and past precedent you have to be realistic.

  6. Godhelpasupd says:

    It looks like the chief can thank these people first for the lack of shift coverage with more and more making their departures to greener pastures.

  7. […] have previously mentioned several allegations of racially-charged comments and possible bias on behalf of Sgt. Mark Aston in a previous post (Aston was also mentioned at length in our post about ASUPD’s firearms training). Some of […]

  8. […] issues raised on The Integrity Report involving training and supervision of ASUPD employees and transparency/fairness in internal affairs […]

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