Dissecting ASUPD’s recruiting video

ASUPD recently put out a recruiting video (you can watch it here) that was very well produced, but it was full of inaccurate  or misleading statements. Here’s our dissection of ASUPD’s recruiting video.

#1 “Great New Facility” This is a misleading statement because the building is going on 8 years old. While this building is a huge improvement over the old one, it remains mostly empty except for the top heavy management third floor and one quarter of the second floor.

#2 “Specialty Assignments” This video gives you the impression that if you work hard you will get a specialty assignment, which is inaccurate. Specialty assignments, with the exception of investigations, are one person details that took half a law enforcement career to get into. All of these assignments are currently filled, and the people in them aren’t leaving anytime soon.

#3 “Bike Squad” There is no designated ASU bike squad, and there never has been. The phrase “Bike Squad” implies you are out patrolling on a bike alongside fellow officers as part of a team. The only ASU officer on a bike squad is the one loaned to Tempe to be a part of their bike squad. The only place you will see more than one ASU officer on a bike is at an ASU football game working overtime. It’s not a squad, it’s a once in a while overtime detail lasting a few hours. ASUPD policy requires more than one officer on duty in order for one to be allowed to ride bikes. The numbers of officers has been so low that no officers have been riding bikes for years unless it’s at a football game.

#4 “Narcotics Unit” There is no ASU Narcotics Unit whatsoever! The phrase “Narcotics Unit” implies you are part of a group of people going after drug dealers, suppliers. There should be one considering the amount of illegal drug use on campus (and the recent DPS bust of an ecstasy pill factory in Vista). We don’t even have a drug dog on campus!.  The only ASU officer on a narcotics unit is the one we loaned to Tempe to be a part of their narcotics unit.

#5 “Investigations” Investigations consists of a Sergeant and two officers currently. There is currently one competent detective left, as the other competent one left the department for another agency that appreciates his experience and work ethic. The footage shows the other remaining “detective”  dusting for prints inside the department. This “detective”  spent under a year on patrol after the academy before she moved into investigations.

#6 Joint Terrorism Taskforce Our only link with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Taskforce is the corporal we sent them to work full time in their office. His time in the JTTF has really no benefit for ASU, as he spends most of his time doing work unrelated to ASUPD. The footage here shows us at “the qualification range” which is a patch of desert on the Salt River Indian Reservation which is usually 110+ degrees in the summer time.

 Urban Environment: Not sure what benefit this is supposed to represent. Urban compared to Phoenix AZ? No. Urban compared to Gilbert  AZ Yes. Was this selling point supposed to represent all four of the campus’s we staff? Polytechnic campus is urban? No. The last officer in this slide quit the department for another department prior to the release of this video!

 Unique Modes of transportation: You get to be ridiculed for driving around in an electric powered hybrid Ford Escape mocked up to represent a police patrol vehicle.  If there’s more than one officer (and there never is unless you are at Tempe) you get a Segway like Paul Blart Mall Cop, or a mountain bike, or a small cc scooter…if you wait a year or many more for the training to come around. Remember, you can’t pedal a bicycle unless you’re trained.

 Special Events: Probably a third of the ASUPD staff work overtime for the university. The ASUPD earns half of what the vendors pay for your overtime and you get the other half. Too few ASUPD staff work overtime details that the events coordinator is required to offer outside agencies overtime details to get them filled.  After a group departure of dispatchers from three years ago we are still offering department overtime for outside agencies to work our dispatch.

Promote from within: Some internal promotions have been merit-based (we do have some Sergeants that genuinely care about their employees), but primarily promotion processes at ASUPD are riddled with politics. Factors such as who you know, how much brown nosing you accomplished, how you made yourself look competent by putting down others become standard. Promoting people with these character traits reinforces the idea that in this organization it’s not about what you can do in police work.

Tuition Waivers: Assuming you are looking to utilize this benefit, the department’s short staffing make it impossible to take advantage of this perk; after all, how can you plan your class schedule if your work schedule changing REGULARLY due to “poor staffing”

Join us in partnership: The most watered down, over used generic phrase imaginable. The department is a house divided against itself when it should be one team, so if the public doesn’t join us we have nothing.

In conclusion this video packed with half-truths  in order for the department to attract prospective employees. ASUPD has a lot of internal work to do before it will be able to respect and retain its employees, and thus eleminate the need for a video filled with fluff.  This gimmick video is the latest of a series of gimmicks enlisted to retain or attract employees without any effort or cost to the department.

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14 thoughts on “Dissecting ASUPD’s recruiting video

  1. DoneSon says:

    The amount of blatent lying going on in this video should make any officer who knew about how this was represented ashamed. I’m suspecting most of the people in the video didn’t know. I have to believe that.

    Lie after lie after lie. We are supposed to be the good guys, supposed to tell the truth remember? A lying sack of shit has no right to wear a badge, even for this place under chief J.P.

  2. WheresMy907 says:

    Two thumbs down for the lies, one thumb up for production value. It’s hard for me to comprehend how anyone else working in a law enforcement capacity could go through the trouble of lieing so completely about the Arizona State University Police Department.

    This creates a disconnect for every honest person we have working for us and brings shame to the department and the university , and the public we serve.

  3. fixmycorruptpd says:

    The compounded amount of lies in this recruiting video prove the need for the ASUPD Integrity Report. If a government agency is willing to lie this much to get you in the door, just wait until you’re here.

    For any doubter go on a ride along and ask the people that work here, not just the person they partner you with, about these so called specialty positions, the chances of getting into one, etc. Do a ride along at the polytech or west campus, find out what people say before you make a big mistake and tie your career to this department.

  4. RUkiddingMe says:

    Audacity. The audacity to lie so big, so boldly, to people who know better. Maybe that’s not the target audience. It looks like the target audience is people who do no research into the place they plan to make a career. The department isn’t fooling anybody else.

    This recruiting video is such an embarrassing lie. It reflects poorly on all of us because Tempe knows we don’t have a bike unit, we don’t have a narcotics unit, and the list/lies go on.

    I wish our department had a narcotics unit because we need one. I wish our department had a bike unit for weekends, for large events, because we need one. I wish our department had a lot of things, but we don’t and we shouldn’t be lieing about it.

  5. popo39machine says:

    The recruiting video is good for a laugh, like a made up comic skit until you realize they’re seriously using this to deceptively get bodies into the agency.

    It’s a big lie and this will be obvious once the new people look into things. I wonder why the author disabled the comments section for this video and none of the others? Who cares right? There’s more exposure here anyway.

  6. Thinblueline1 says:

    As an officer I can tell you this is a pack of lies. If you have to lie this much about the ASU police department in order to promote it what does that tell you? What does lying do to the public’s trust in us? The producer should read up on what a Brady file is.

    Our reputation is so bad we supposedly have a full time media relations “unit”, so maybe you can list that job opportunity when that one person quits too? Are we calling that one person a “squad”, “unit”, or a “taskforce”? We might as well because that’s how we’re portraying these one man details nobody will leave for years unless a miracle happens, they promote, or retire.

    Once you come here to be an officer and try to leave (lateral) you will find yourself regretting you didn’t just try harder and test more for other departments as a recruit. At least there you get pay raises and do what’s associated with real police work, here you start low and don’t get raises unless you promote in a already top heavy department that doesn’t move.

  7. Supervisor Facepalm says:

    I know some people think this is funny, but after the first laugh it is embarrassing. That’s the first word that comes to mind for me. I wear this uniform, my name is one it, and now I’m tied to this.

    Anyone who knows our organization knows this video is full of gross inaccuracies that would make a snake oil salesman blush. I hope the gravity of the situation will finally hit one of the decision makers and they pull it, make it accurate and honest. That’s some of what we’re supposed to strive for, but our administration loses sight of that.

  8. DL500unit says:

    My jaw dropped when I first watched it. We literally don’t have any of these squads or units or anything except three people in investigations, two guys who work for TEMPE’S bike squad and narcotics units, one each. We have plenty of people certified to ride bikes, but can’t by policy, not enough units on patrol.

    They show a firearms shoot and claim JTTF, but in reality that’s one guy in plain clothes hanging out in cubicles. The so called “specialty units” are more cubicle warming sit jobs where they run around doing gopher jobs for command, try to cover overtime events people don’t want to work, produce recruiting materials, and pretend to look busy.

    I showed this video to people completely unconnected to law enforcement. Besides saying ,”what’s with the porno music?”, they wondered why they showed what’s supposed to be an undercover guy in a ski mask, but you zoomed in on his eyes? People can get identified by that.

    Also our school may be a crazy party school, but we never seized anything close to what they show, AZDPS comes here and does that. We get grams here and there, anything much more is unusual.

    If the official Arizona State University Police recruitment video is this full of lies that should give you a clue to what you can expect once you sign on. We have the potential to be a good agency someday, but it would take a power higher than our chief to realize it.

    • smokey261 says:

      Anyone coming here is going to see right through this joke. I hope they keep it up online. It just shows what type of people we have to work under. Lie now, lie tomorrow, because you can. Integrity is for the little guy, promote out of integrity.

  9. smokey261 says:

    I can only guess they thought they had to fib in order to make the department appealing, promising? It’s wrong, but not unbelievable. We just had a commander exhonerate an officer for tasing a handcuffed prisoner four times in front of another officer, with full audio of the incident, so anything is believable now. Of course they didn’t do an IA until months later when the incident was made public on here.

  10. FlamingPileMallcoppery says:

    The inaccuracies just smell like desperation. We are supposed to be above lieing, but as you can see not all of us are. This video is a integrity report in it’s own way.

    • ThySummons says:

      Biggest propaganda video about the Arizona State University Police Department; would even make the North Korean regime blush!

      Please, let’s have a little integrity. Remember, that’s one of the words in the department’s value statement.

  11. popo39machine says:

    Someone needs to download this before it gets yanked offline! This is more solid proof of the total absence of integrity running the Arizona State University Police Department. Did they think for a moment it would take more than a few seconds to blow the cover on this? Very funny.

  12. […] position on indeed.com, as well as started an employee referral program., and created a recruiting video and […]

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