DoJ’s analysis of university PDs, and how ASUPD falls short in comparison!

The US Department of Justice has published statistics which analyze a myriad of variables that are applicable to university/college police departments.

This include demographics of sworn officer to student ratio for a several population sizes of universities/colleges.  According to page 3 of the report:

  • Campuses using sworn officers employed on average 2.3 full-time officers per 1,000 students. Private campuses averaged 3 sworn officers per 1,000 students compared to 2.1 sworn officers per 1,000 students on public campuses.  

ASU currently has approximately 73,000 students enrolled on all four of its campuses. If ASU followed the national average of employing 2.1 sworn officers per 1,000 students, the department should employ 153 sworn employees. To put this number into perspective, ASUPD currently has 72 sworn employees (which includes the Chief, Assistant Chiefs, and several Commanders, none of which work patrol. This number also incorporates employees who are in the academy/being hired who should NOT be counted in the “sworn employee” total).

Which universities had the LARGEST amount of sworn employees? According to page 2 of the report:

  • Campus served/Full-time sworn officers:

    Howard University: 166

    Temple University: 119

    University of Pennsylvania: 100

    University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey: 97

    George Washington University: 95

    University of Florida: 86

    Georgia State University: 79

    Yale University: 78

    University of Maryland – College Park: 76

    Vanderbilt University: 76

Of these universities, the only one that has a comparable amount of enrolled students is the University of Florida, at approximately 49,000 students. Interesting to note that the then University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (which has since been incorporated into Rutgers University) had a student population of approximately 7,000, yet had MORE SWORN POLICE OFFICERS THAN ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY!

The DoJ also analyzed the demographics of its sworn employees, both by sex and race. According to page 5 of the report:

  • During the 2004-05 school year, 31% of sworn campus officers were a racial or ethnic minority. A sixth (17%) were women.

In it’s 2011 Final Report, CALEA noted that 88% of ASUPD’s officers were male (26% percent being a racial or ethnic minority), and 12% of its officers were female. The numbers of minority and female officers has also dropped considerably since 2011. CALEA also noted, in its report, that ASUPD “failed to reflect its available workforce (48.3% female) as it relates to female officers”.

The type of work the majority of sworn university/college police departments were engaged in was also analyzed. On page 6 of the report:

  • 90% or more of sworn police officers were responsible for routine patrol, special event security, violent crime investigation, property crime investigation, traffic enforcement
  • 90% or more of non-sworn security were responsible for routine patrol, building lockup/unlock, special event security, parking enforcement .

The latter sounds like the majority of work ASUPD’s officers are required to do by Command staff.

Perhaps after reading this post, Chief Pickens and his illustrious Command staff should read another publication by the Department of Justice, entitled Establishing Appropriate Staffing Levels for Campus Public Safety Departments.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

17 thoughts on “DoJ’s analysis of university PDs, and how ASUPD falls short in comparison!

  1. ASUPDsmokeNmirrors says:

    There’s the facts, the numbers, according to national standards ASU is unsafe. ASU has no real patrol presence, just call responders. This isn’t anything knew, morale has been low for years just like the pay and incentives to stay.

    Either Crow is believing the lies being told to him or public safety at ASU is a very low priority. One of the two is true, you can’t be on the fence on this issue. Judging by these stats and how long Pickens has been here I’m guessing it’s number 2.

  2. WheresMy907 says:

    Here it is, quantifiable comparisons that bring it home!It’s pathetic how outclassed our department is, how unprotected our campuses are, and how many people have been lulled into a false sense of security because a few men lie and can’t honor the oaths they forgot a long time ago.

    They want to tell you how they combat a property crime, while not telling you they are doing nothing to combat dangerous drugs or any number of threats that would really make you go blink. Bike thefts don’t scare people and lower expectations making people thing, “Oh that’s it? Ok.”

  3. Justanotherdispensible50 says:

    If the DOJ came here and did an assessment their report would be red inked all to hell. What the hell is going on when you have a campus as large as Arizona State University being virtually unprotected by a police department.

    The same complaints were being made about the chief’s last department, no patrol officers, and nobody seems to care. There are leaders and there are visionary leaders and unfortunately Chief JP is neither.

  4. Supervisor Facepalm says:

    The only thing the chief has proven at ASUPD during his time here is that he knows the value of delegating something you are too lazy or incapable to do yourself. He has been unable to tackle the issues that force people to leave and never look back.

    The chief takes departures from ASUPD personal, but feels everyone is just replaceable no matter what prior knowledge or skill sets they bring to the department. How can you grow a department with these contradictions and delusions? You can’t. This is something Michael Crow needs to recognize if he intends to make ASU safe for all who come here expecting safety and getting appearances.

  5. Captain Obvious says:

    The chief’s bosses (Michael Crow, Morgan Olsen) have no idea what level of mismanagement has been occurring at the ASU Police department for years. For that, shame on them! The corruption is one thing, the ignorant mismanagement is another, and Michael Crow, Morgan Olsen have decided to look the other way on both. Guess what, we’re not going away, not by a long shot.

    I went to Google and typed in “ASUPD”. The official ASUPD website comes up, then the Integrity Report on the ASU POLICE DEPARTMENT comes up NUMBER 2! Wait until it goes viral, wait until more publicity comes, more dirty secrets surface, and… it just doesn’t go away because you chose to do nothing and wait it out. The longer you keep our failed command staff the employees will have to talk about. If they managed competently there would be no postings online, but they created the need.

    The news of ASUPD Command mismanaging the department will be everywhere. Every potential ASU Student, in state, out of state, international will become aware of the public safety shortcomings prior to coming here. We know you care more about the money coming in, care more about your reputations, vanity, than you care about the people who are putting their lives on the line for you to keep you safe. Ok, if that’s the game you want to play, fine, we’re not done, there are plenty of options on the table. This is public safety, this isn’t a god damn game or the joke you allowed it to become.

  6. DL500unit says:

    Chief Pickens reminds me of the captain of the titanic. He’s proud, inattentive, cocky, confident, asleep at the wheel and unfit for the command of such a responsibility.

    His track record is a good predictor for future performance so Crow must be a gambling man playing Russian roulette with public safety and the near misses his police department keeps dodging, the near misses that would have legal writing checks until they ran out of ink.

    You don’t need a doctorate degree to make sense of these numbers and realize something is seriously wrong with ASUPD and those managing it. Congrats to the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey for taking public safety more seriously than the largest university in the country! Maybe our chief can spend some travel thousands there instead of wasting them swimming in the wake of our football team as “security”.

  7. RUkiddingMe says:

    Falling short in numbers is one thing, falling short in everything else but the pay scales for supervisors is quite another. Name one area where this department is moving ahead, not treading water, or falling behind? Besides new radios…

    Do we even have 72 sworn officers?!? That sounds really high, even adding in command, sergeants, useless special detail positions, the please help us Tempe we gave you an officer positions. I’m thinking this number is lower. I need to check the numbers on this.

    • EMBUDO says:

      Michael Crow, Morgan Olsen, Kevin Salcido and others, we know you are monitoring the Integrity Report blog. And we can only hope that you are taking many of our concerns that have been presented in this open forum to heart, especially the shortfall in police officers.

      The continual reliance on outside police agencies to cover our areas of responsibility is unacceptable! Barring public events, if we had to go it alone, as a department, we would have imploded long ago.

      Not appropriating additional funding for at least doubling the police officer force could be perceived as irresponsible at best and negligent at worst. This is not, and never has been, the time to nickel-and-dime the university’s PD.

      Our faculty, staff, students, and visitors are entitled to a level of safety and security that we, the ASU PD, cannot currently afford them while on the university’s four campuses.

      If you look at the university budget that totaled around 1.926 billion* in 2013, and if the ASU PD’s unofficial budget was around a paltry 11 million** during the same year, what’s wrong with that budgetary picture?

      Again, based on the above hypothetical/close-enough dollar figures, we should probably have, at a minimum, double the police officers currently allocated.

      *Source: Arizona State University 2013 Financial Report, with an addition of $211.9 million to Scholarships and Fellowships, resulting in Scholarships and Fellowships uses of $324.3 million.

      **Dollar number obtained by anonymous source; exact amount for 2013 is unknown officially due to a lack of transparency.

      Note: For our readers that are not familiar with Arizona State University (ASU), Dr. Michael M. Crow is the president at ASU; Dr. Morgan R. Olsen is Executive Vice President, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer at ASU; and Kevin Salcido is Associate Vice President and Chief HR Officer in the Office of Human Resources at ASU.

      N

  8. indeedYOUsay says:

    Additional resources need to be utilized in order to get the ball rolling to change AssUPpd to ASUPD. This department resembles more of a banana republic than a public safety facility. Our command lies every chance they get, these numbers don’t.

  9. DoneSon says:

    We fall short in numbers, training, equipment (quantity and quality), morale, retention, transparency, accountability, preparedness, and the list goes on. We excel in pay scale for commanders and above.

    The law enforcement community is becoming more and more aware of ASUPD. Eventually the public will become educated on how dysfunctional this department is and how much of a liability it represents. Until the blog these the chief and his flunkies had a minimal work schedule.

    They were more concerned with picking out new badges, new patch designs, and new uniforms than fixing department issues. Now they are hitting panic buttons and shitting kittens.

  10. smokey261 says:

    The chief doesn’t get it and his bosses don’t know enough about police work to care either. Gross negligence occurs because it can, until it can’t be kept out of the press, out if public knowledge.

    In the eyes of the ivory tower on the NE corner of College and University, asupd adds negative revenue dollars to ASU. It’s all about money. They don’t see that a capable police department with a competent chief could save them millions. They will, it’s only a matter of time.

  11. guerriero says:

    Crow’s office is much more concerned about a few punks acting like asses at a private party on MLK day than fixing the ASU Police Department so 76,000 students can be safe. Sounds like it’s all about appearances with him.

    I think what the frat did was wrong, but theres a lot of things we don’t like. If they aren’t breaking a law and we as a government institution take punitive action against them with policy that operates as defacto law how are we not violating their first amendment rights?

    Comedians are making fun of ever type of person based on race, ethnicity, everything all the time. I don’t see people marching the streets against them. The tyranny of the majority says their first amendment rights are protected, but not these guys? The westboro baptist church, but not these guys? The neo-Nazis can march on capital hill protected with police escort, but no protection for these guys?

    Seems a little hypocritical, a lot like our black chief protecting a black officer, L.Q. for assaulting a prisoner in handcuffs with his tazer 4 times, but firing a hispanic officer for a training issue at the firearms range. Bullshit.

  12. popo39machine says:

    It shouldn’t take a room full of administrators making six figures years figure out this problem. You have a chief leading a department that supposedly has been struggling with the same problems for over a decade. Something isn’t right with this picture.

    In the private sector, when you show up to work and don’t do your job they don’t reward you with years of paychecks and bonuses. In government jobs that seems to be normal, that’s why the unqualified people ruining America in government jobs are one of the biggest threats our nation has ever faced, why we could slip from first world status if the trend continues.

  13. Supervisor Facepalm says:

    The Arizona State University Police Department, attached to the largest university in the nation has had a lot of catching up to do for years. Nothing will change. Let’s put this in simple terms. Is it funding? No. Is it structured like an upside down pyramid? Yes.

    Is leadership insulating itself with a house full of supervisors with no money left to support a patrol? Yes. Will the current command at ASUPD do anything about it? No. Have they done anything to fix the department’s problems since their campus by campus public apology tours? No.

  14. […] Third, the security issue you claim The Integrity Report has created by posting a portion of the schedule is nonsense. We posted a schedule that had already happened and was old (save for one day). We redacted names of the employees listed out of respect for their privacy. The security issues illustrated are the ones that the department created by having an inadequate number of officers to effectively police all of ASUPD’s campuses, hands down. The only safety and security implications this has for the ASU community is showing them how understaffed and overworked ASUPD’s officers are, and how ill-equipped the department is to handle a major incident on campus. The number of officers working at ASUPD are  far BELOW the national averages for number of officers per 1,000 students on public universities/colleges, according to the Department of Justice. […]

  15. […] lack of staffing on ASU’s four campuses, you might recall in January, we posted a link to a Department of Justice study that analyzed staffing at university/college campuses. In the post, we illustrated how grossly […]

  16. […] lack of staffing on ASU’s four campuses, you might recall in January 2014, we posted a link to a Department of Justice study that analyzed staffing at university/college campuses. In the post, we illustrated how grossly […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *