We broke down the meeting minutes piece by piece to share our thoughts on the topic. We could have discussed this document in even greater depth, but we decided to make it (somewhat) concise.
1. The Chief instructed his advisory board he wanted to keep the discussion “positive”. How do you have a constructive discussion about the departments’ problems in a “positive” way? Where do you go if the information isn’t positive? The Integrity Report on the ASU Police Department blog? The advisory board was assembled to fix the negativity Chief’s inactions and inattention have fostered, so the underlying purpose of the board will inherently be negative, even if the discussion itself is “positive”.
2. Make new employees feel welcome? Absolutely, always do. The people discussed in the blog, (the people Chief has protected for years), those are the people making new and old employees feel unwelcome and alienated. They have brought this organization to crisis mode, and that will continue to happen despite the number of fresh bodies you bring through the door for them to devour.
3. The community gives positive feedback on what we do here…that’s great. There is no correlation between a positive rating by the community and how happy/ appreciated your employees are. It simply means we won’t compromise what we do for others, compromise our ethics and integrity simply because we get treated like garbage from our department.
4. In regards to your community feedback: we love our community, but they don’t know squat about policing and quite frankly, they would be appalled if they knew how ASUPD treated its employees. Of course any feedback the community would give wouldn’t address major issues like staffing and retention, namely because the public has no idea this is transpiring! If the community could see Chief’s track records from his former agencies, they wouldn’t view the department in the same positive light.
5. Chief has placed a lot of urgency in this meeting on greeting new employees, making the testing process more expedient, referrals, posting vacancies… everything but addressing the people who put him in the current staffing situation. Your commanders and some of your sergeants created this exodus of new employees’ year after year right under your indifferent, inattentive nose. The only reason why Chief is “concerned” now is because it has become so obvious he can’t hide it from his superiors any longer.
6. For the Police Officer Recruiter position, it has yet to be filled. You are asking for higher criteria in this position than most of the ones at the police department, but with a fraction of the pay. Nobody wants to be honest with the Chief unless it’s anonymous. Even still, Chief denies these issues exist because acknowledging them requires a measure of accountability
7. How is ASUPD in the 90% salary range of surrounding agencies in the East Valley? Did you add over inflated command staff salaries to the average? The $160,000 the Chief makes, and the $70k the Sergeants make would skew the averages of salaries assessed for this statement. Let’s see the math on this.
8. Incentives are for FTO are good, but this isn’t the real reason you don’t have trainers. The past FTOs have seen what the predatory supervisors have done with the people they were training, and have refused to participate in the destruction of another rookie’s career. Until you can get a solid FTO program established, and an FTO Supervisor that won’t take their own interpretation on it, the FTO program cannot function.
9. A security fee to supplement our budget? Given the current ASU enrollment of approximately 76,000 students, that would total approximately 3.8 million dollars!! This is insane! The department’s total expenditures and his budget is information limited to the Chief and a few members of command staff. Does anyone but the chief know what’s in the budget or where the money is going? Does anyone know how much money is in the ASUPD budget so we can compare it to other university departments who publish what their budget is? Why the secrecy? This is a public university funded with public tax dollars!
10. The suggestion made by Cpl. Khalid on doing ride-alongs with an FTO is ridiculous. Focus your attention and efforts on retaining your CURRENT employees. Besides, having a prospective employee witness first-hand how ASUPD treats its employees will drive them away. However, the suggestion to look at how other departments are doing things is a good valid suggestion that will be ignored like the rest of the good ideas suggested by the advisory board.
11. On the “gossiping” issue: people talk in private because they see what happens to people when they talk openly about issues. If things are jacked up and employee complaints have been continually ignored then people are going to talk about it. If you are not happy with people talking about it then do something to fix the problem they are talking about! Unfortunately, a clique does run the department in the form of most of the commanders and a number of senior sergeants.
12. On the “Internal Affair Investigation Retention Program”: Your one and a half year of data leaves out the years of pattern IA’s that prove the point everyone already knows. How about an audit from the time the chief started until now? Look at the IA post cited here on the blog. Quite a different picture than the one being painted at the advisory board.
13. If a person was subject to so many IA’s why would the chief want to keep them in the PD? Because the chief has always needed people on the ground to continue doing the job making him look good . If you put enough internal generated IA’s in officer’s files you can keep good people from leaving. Other agencies hear the word “IA” and think about serious allegations of wrong doing; ASUPD’s “IAs” amount to silly nonsense that almost every other PD wouldn’t have the time or energy to investigate.
14. If the chief is complaining about not hearing about what’s going on, about the communication lines not reaching him, about people not speaking, up he only has to look here on the blog and read. It won’t get any more open and honest than here. Sure there are some snarky comments on occasion, but the everything asserted here is valid information this. The next chief can use this information to make this place a real good place to work!
15. Since you’ve been made aware of these problems, address them chief! It’s been two months and counting and the only thing done you’ve accomplished is speeding up requisitions for equipment and attempting to get more bodies in the door? You still haven’t address the REASON why people are leaving!
16. You have plenty of employees making six figures who should be offering you suggestions to fix the department, but instead you only get one with a plan: a civilian police aide making $30,000 a year. He has taken the time, done the research, planning, and implementing solutions the rest of your overpaid command staff can’t be bothered to do, or doesn’t have the mental capacity to do.
17. Party Patrol and Tempe Bike positions are highly political, and ASUPD’s solution is to loan them a few officers while secretly relying on Tempe PD’s officers to solve ASUPD’s staffing shortage. Tempe PD should NOT be a crutch to solve ASUPD’s problems!! When shit hits the fan, we all know Tempe PD, Phoenix PD (Downtown), and Mesa/Gilbert PD (Poly) will be the ones saving ASUPD’s ass.
18. The only additional training ASUPD’s officers is by MS Powerpoint and Blackboard. We need the outside police training because we can’t do it ourselves, it obviously isn’t working. We need active shooter training too! WE GET NONE!!
19. There is no uniformity in employee evaluations. Sergeants send up evaluations and frequently get them marked down to lower numbers by people who have never worked with the employee. The criteria for higher ratings changes from one supervisor to the next. How about having employees do evaluations of their supervisors to stay ahead of issues before they get out of control and affect more employees?
20. Promotions are not taken seriously when everyone at the department sees you pass over more qualified candidates’ process after process. The notes from the advisory board clearly state this problem: “a six year ASU officer will be promoted over a 30 year officer from another agency”. There is no incentive to stay.
21. Morale doesn’t exist. The ASUPD Indeed.com reviews, this blog, the chief’s advisory board all make this alarmingly clear, but ASUPD command ignores it all calling it, “…a few disgruntled people.”
22. You want honest assessments? Ask past employees, pay them to do an assessment so you can see the shocking reality of how awful ASUPD treats their employees. Otherwise, stand at attention and wait for the blog to report.
23. The report has just too few pages to get the ball moving down field. The thing is, it doesn’t matter how many pages are filled with solid answers to problems when the chief hears them and STILL does nothing. If the chief and his command are unable to put things in motion while the department falls apart it is time to find fresh new employees that can. The troops will be sure to give them warm welcomes and make them feel at home because they would provide hope that ASUPD could be a better place to work at.
All valid points. I would like to see command try and answer any of the things you pointed out. I would like to see what half a dozen commanders could come up with after a week of meetings. Anyone?
I remember when I first got here, this department appeared pretty promising, the pay wasn’t that great with no consideration for experience, low compared to other agencies, but it was a job. Everyone was fairly welcoming and friendly, but you had a group of people who talked a lot with each other and didn’t really associate with the majority of the people here. I guess this must be the click or group people have been writing about on here for some time.
As an outsider I wondered why this was and took a seat back to observe, I don’t really have any problems with people I work with, but I have seen first hand why many of the issues brought up are valid. Many of these issues are associated with people. When the same few names keep getting brought up by many people as problems that’s called a clue for civilians and leads, subjects of interest, or suspects in cop world.
I honestly don’t think anything will change here because the people in control don’t really give a shit what’s going on as long as it doesn’t affect them. This is a pathetic management approach, but look at what you already know.
Apparently these problems have been going on as long as the Chief has been here and none of them have been addressed in over 10 years? All of your points made in your response to the chief’s advisory board are good ones that demand answers. The only one I’m not so sure on is #9.
Nobody seems to know how much money is in the budget and what the budget contains. That seems odd, but there is an air of secrecy here operating more like a private business than a public institution. More money for police is always good, always, but if our leadership is blowing money in a frivolous fashion, using it to buy command loyalty than more officers, then that is an ethical concern worth looking into further. Like any organization if you follow the money you can know so much more about it.
Have you guys considered doing some forensic accounting exercises? When you see what’s on the back of those cards the game is over. You may want to consider reaching out to media once the new school year starts because it doesn’t look like these issues are being taken seriously at all. If this was a bike theft issue it would be priority rush.
I love it, these words are what the chief needs to hear if he is sincere about fixing things he will heed them and not ignore the road signs and traffic signals like every other time.
Don’t believe it for a second brother, look at the record of promises, the records of lies, JP and his minions are politicians more than willing to tell you what you want to here. They forgot their obligations to the public and turned this place into a whore house where it’s all about money.
Hope buys time for everyone to forget, forgive, and move on while more employees go into the grinder here. There’s right and there’s wrong, some of these guys don’t care as long as they get theirs. JP is one of them.
Nailed it! Nailed it! Now their response will be silence and inactivity as usual. They are pleading the 5th to this whole enterprise and that just screams guilt, guilt, guilt.
Indeed!
Leadership, answer the questions, give us guidance… Your responses should really be addressed in the next advisory board and placed higher than equipment conformity. The irony to this whole thing is the people who are the biggest roadblocks to department success in fighting crime and retaining skilled employees are the people running it.
They won’t listen to a single thing simply because they don’t like where the good ideas come from and they didn’t come up with them. Pride. Furthermore they could never admit the problems relate to people because they can’t relate to people below themselves. Hubris.
The irony continues. Instead of helping themselves, helping others, they continue looking outward pointing fingers. These ideas would solve the department issues and ultimately saving their jobs once a critical incident happens and they are caught with their pants down.
The truth hurts. They don’t have shit to say because there is nothing to say that sounds good in their favor. While they have been padding their salaries year after year the average officer makes significantly less every year with inflation.
To add insult to injury they will pay a recruit the same as officers with years on who haven’t made friends with the right people to get their 5 when others can only get a 3. People are sick and tired of the bullshit where they are leaving a half dozen at a time. It’s all on them right? They have bad attitudes right?
How many will skip town year after year before someone above a 100 unit (chief) figures out this is bad for business and increases the likelihood of bad things happening, litigation, and getting in the media reports?
It sounds like AC Hardwhiner needs to buckle down on these comments and figure out why his half of the house is burning to the ground, not that the other half of the house hasn’t been on fire, it is! It shouldn’t be hard to do the work with so many people doing your homework for you on this site and at work.
Nevermind, he is probably finding time to PT, fingerpaint, or stare off into a land of everything is wonderful, anything but fixing the problems outlined by the advisory board and given a summary beating here. In other words, anything but doing his six figure job and getting the department into fit shape to fight crime because he’s looking to minimize stats by any means necessary. Hobbled police department, check…
As a rule I don’t trust little pretentious snakes. He sees this whole enterprise as the mongoose coming for his head and he’s scared fighting for his once comfortable existence so he can go back to ignoring the duties of his position. Find us leaders instead of a “sneerers”.
Hopefully the chief and the rest of command can see everything brought up on the advisory board and the integrity report and act on it to make the department a better place to work for current and future employees.
Sure there are some stinging comments floating around, but you can never get to a solution if you never acknowledge there is a problem. This seems to be the biggest stumbling point for command right now, to just admit there are problems and to say what they are.
Are we dealing with people in a 12 step process with a substance abuse problem? It seems like it some times. It’s really not that hard to admit a mistake, unless you are used to denying mistakes occur. You have lost a lot of good officers, you will lose more good experienced officers, try to positively reverse the trend and make ASUPD a great place to work because the potential is there.
My advice, take this information your people came to you with and do something productive with it. I have been privy to the secret, not so secret, unofficial IA you have been conducting on your people there. What’s the point? Are you there to protect lives and serve the public or serve yourself? It’s a simple defining question, answer it and hopefully you will have a productive outlook for the organization and the people it serves.
I appreciate that you contributed much to the online effort, but you’re overly optimistic if you think the chief will do shit about the “people problem” beneath him. The record stands for itself, look at the prior meetings, there’s no wonder why he kept it secret, none. The record is embarrassing when you go year after stinking year with the same unresolved problems.
I’m sure command is scrambling to find deflective smart ass answers the barrage of questions, to continue the thread of lies, deception, and maintain the idea that everything is under control. Their contract jobs depend on maintain this illusion. The real pressing needs of public safety on ASU’s four campuses depend on this illusion going away.
Again, The bullshit charade needs to end before one of us gets hurt or killed on a call because our chief promoted an absolute shit hole working environment where nobody wants to stick around, where ethics and professionalism flew the coup, and employees are left to fend for themselves because the people who are supposed to give a shit don’t.
You think brining a load of new know nothing bodies into this fire is going to make a difference? You can see from the 2009 meeting that this is more hocus pocus bullshit to mesmerize the believers, the new people unaware of the donkey show they signed up for.