Interesting.
Check out these meeting minutes from the Chief’s Advisory Board from 2009; notice how several issues the department is currently struggling with–officer pay, not having proper equipment, training, IAs–are being discussed. Chief Pickens also gave nearly the same exact spiel about wanting to discuss the frequency of meetings, talking about how IAs are essential for people to learn from their mistakes, and urging anyone with issues to address him specifically.
Nothing will ever change at ASUPD without someone capable running the place. When those people come along, when you have a “I work for them as much as they work for me” mentality you have the foundation for a team. Without that foundation the workplace is wanting.
There truly is a ASUPD mindset that retards development, common sense, and progress. The University grows and the ASUPD struggles behind unable to keep up and meet demands. Until ASUPD stops doing the same thing over and over, stops ignoring department problems, then all of this will repeat from 2009, 2013, 20??, until somebody with pull says enough is enough.
Things have changed over the years but nothing that would actually benefit the PD. When I started the chief was in the lower hundred thousand range. Now he’s making $160.000. The commanders we had (former chiefs of the individual PDs were respectable good men. Now that they have moved on, chief has promoted his own cronies who wouldn’t know how to handle a simple call for service let alone a serious investigation. They get retention bonuses like 1) they would ever leave to a place they had to do real police work & 2) anyone else wants them. Things won’t change until this regime is gone and the department is rebuilt. Were talking a decade to undo everything. None of that will happen until this chief is gone. Most of the the officers wont stick around that long. If the chief does retire he’ll have no conscience about what he’s done, he’ll only care about himself as always. Good job JP, you’ve cemented your legacy of yet another F’d up university PD. Hats off to you.
Staff will be dancing in the streets when he leaves. His lifetime law enforcement achievement award would be a toilet seat engraved with the current and former university police departments he soiled.
Our police department management embraces the “New happy faces” approach. Lose experienced people every year who don’t fit into the Orr’s boys clique and replace them with “New happy faces” until they are here for 1-2 years and replace them with “New happy faces”.
We keep losing good experienced people, the clique that runs this department from commanders on down stays in control, and nothing ever changes other than the policing responsibility increases and our ability to meet it decreases.
Some day lawyers are going to realize how much negligent liability money is to be made following ASUPD around and things will change, until then fleeing embittered employees are just another day in the life of the department. These are the costs of keeping lazy commanders and their Sgt. buddies happy.
There will be Chief advisory boards five years from now, filled with “New happy faces” saying the same old shit. By then the university will have 100,000 students and the PD will implode unable to lie it’s way through.
That’s so damn true.
It’s only a matter of time before repeating the same old failed measures can’t hold back the policing responsibilities at ASU, someone will get hurt, and then the press will gather asking the tough questions they ignored. Hopefully chief’s bosses are doing their own research on how a police department should be run, staffed, paid. You can only lean on Tempe and outside agencies so much.
More proof these guys want to create the illusion of hope and change to the rank and file while flipping the bird once again to the whole process in private.
John Pickens is the highest paid clown in a police uniform the world has ever seen. His track record makes him more suited for Ronald’s job at McDonalds.
If he was in charge there a Big Mac would cost $20.00, the burger flippers would make less than minimum wage, and the manager would make six figures to sit holed up in his office.
It would take 30 minutes to get my fast food combo meal because nobody would work there but the manager and assistant managers who forgot how to work the machines.
For those of you who think he should be a Walmart greeter do you really want to explain to the kids that the middle finger means you’re number one?
I love the fast food analogy. The chief likes comparing police officers to McDonald’s employees and he wonders why turnover is so high here, hmmm.
Here is the proof M. Crow, M. Olsen, K. Salcido need to prove Pickens and his command have no ability to affect positive change in the ASUPD.
If Pickens wasn’t a dunce cap flunky of prior failed University only police departments the nepotism, special buddy system, the firearms club, all the good ol’ boy crap would be flushed out of the pipes before it came back and soiled everyone working there.
The time to fix the department is before something bad happens. Fix it. Get us a new command staff, don’t keep a single person unless they have qualifications they earned outside the department.
M. Crow, M. Olsen, JP just doesn’t get it. The University has outgrown Chief Pickens’s ability to meet the policing needs of the University. Look at this meeting in 2009, the accreditation meeting a year or two later, the two chief’s advisory board meetings of 2013. JP just doesn’t get it. Public safety depends on you making proactive decisions on how this department is managed.
[…] In hindsight, however, we know that the issues brought forth from the past two meetings are identical to the issues from meetings in 2009 . What is perhaps the most telling about this email (besides the obvious attempt to pretend that […]
The chief and our ASU only home schooled command have no intention of changing their ways because they don’t know another way. They promoted on a ladder of daggers in the backs of other cops, not by their own merit.
There’s simply not enough police work here to shine, so they find fault to demonstrate they are supervisers and renew the cancer eating away at this organization, which could be a great place to work if we had real supportive leadership.
Advisory board ended 2009, resurrected 2013, same problems as 2009, looks like another hope and change is all hope and no change.