From: Kevin Salcido
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 9:53 AM
Cc: Morgan Olsen; John Pickens (Chief of Police)
Subject: Protecting Safety Sensitive Information
As a university, ASU supports freedom of expression.
As an employer, ASU respects all laws pertaining to protected employee activity.
As we are all aware, the Integrity report blog has existed for some time now as a forum for some employees to express their opinions about ASU PD operations.
Recently, a staffing schedule was posted to the blog that described manpower levels at our campuses. This posting exceeds the bounds of free expression and protected activity because it has safety and security implications for the ASU community.
While ASU has remained neutral in matters pertaining to the blog, it should be understood that anyone who publicly shares or takes and posts sensitive operational information, obtained through any means , which could potentially compromise the security and safety of the ASU community can and will be subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination.
We have launched several programs in the ASU PD in the past few months aimed at improving officer recruitment, morale and retention. These programs are already showing positive results. As always, those wishing to report legitimate concerns can do so through their chain of command, the Office of Human Resources, the Office of Equity and Inclusion or through our Hotline program.
We should not lose sight of the fact that, personal opinions aside, we are here to create a safe environment for our students. Let’s work together in a professional and transparent manner to make the ASU PD a high performing law enforcement organization.
Sent on behalf of:
Kevin Salcido
Associate Vice President/Chief Human Resource Officer
Arizona State University
There are several inaccurate statements that are presented in this email from Mr. Salcido.
- First, ASU does not respect all laws pertaining to protected employee activity. In Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968), held that an employee’s interest as a citizen in making public comment needs to be balanced against the employer’s competing interest “in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.” This “balancing test” will weigh in favor of the employee when the speech is made as a citizen on a matter of public concern. In 2006 the Federal Circuit court ruled in Garcetti that an employee is protected only if the speech is unconnected to employment (ie, they are not speaking from their position as an officer or a teacher).
- In October 2012, U.S. District Judge William W. Caldwell ruled in Beyer v. Duncannon Borough that a former police officer’s anonymous online speech was a form of protected citizen speech because he was speaking matters of formal concern.
- Secondly, ASUPD has policies which are overly broad and seek to curtail ANY negative comments an employee has against the department. An example:
-
Employees of the Department shall not criticize or ridicule the Department, its policies, or other officers or employees by speech, writing, or other expression, when such speech, writing, or other expression:
1. is defamatory, obscene, or unlawful;
2. tends to interfere with or to undermine the effectiveness of the Department to
provide public services;
3. tends to interfere with the maintenance of proper discipline;
4. tends to adversely affect the confidence of the public in the integrity of the
Department and/or its officers and employees;
5. Improperly damages or impairs the reputation and efficiency of the
Department; or
6. is made with reckless disregard for truth.
- (The areas highlighted in bold are considered protected speech under the aforementioned court cases)
-
- 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.
- Fourth, name the programs you created (other than the officer recruitment program) that have been improving staffing and employee morale. Giving your employees a slight pay increase (which is maybe less compared to the loss of wages from no cost of living incentives or uniform allowance) hasn’t solved the morale or retention issues; morale continues to be non-existent at ASUPD, because the officers there are STILL overworked, and underpaid. Furthermore, hiring more people does NOT equal having more staff. These people still need to complete academies, pass through ASUPD’s stellar FTO program, and actually remain in the department for a significant amount of time.
- Fifth, no action has been taken in regard to the number of people that have come to your office, Kevin, to discuss their horrible experiences from ASUPD. Nothing.
- Finally, all of the PD’s employees are pretty transparent with their feelings and opinions on how they have seen ASUPD slowly fall apart since Chief Pickens has been at the helm. Why not extend your employees the same courtesy and have the same transparency yourself?
Thank you for your readership, Mr. Salcido; for a blog full of “disgruntled employees” (by your own admission), you sure appear to be giving it a significant amount of attention.
It’s good to see this addressed, but this really pisses me off. Releasing an old outdated schedule is a maximum security concern, but officers at all campuses being understaffed for years isn’t?!? All the concerns mentioned here over and over in detail aren’t a security / safety concern? Bullshit!
Go through a police academy, strap on a gun belt, and go face down a group of people doing shit they shouldn’t be doing while outnumbered without any backup in sight. Deal with a few combative people without backup before you talk about shit you don’t understand.
How about doing your fucking job so we can do ours with some degree of industry standard safety? Glossing over everything doesn’t cut it. You are probably one of the asshole civilians looking down on returning vets in the same way you dismiss the people doing this job. You are a behind the lines logistics man who should be supporting the front line patrol officer. If you did your job we could say, “Thanks for looking into this Kevin, he’s a good guy, have a nice day.”
Instead we are left with the thought, “This guy couldn’t care less, he’s just another overpaid self-serving civilian asshole, fuck him.” You get your marching orders from your bosses, we get it, so they are just as responsible as you for saying everything is A OK and ignoring the problems. Hopefully you all get sued civilly when the state gets sued. Maybe when it’s your money and your ass on the line financially you will give a shit. Until then I am sure it will be business as usual.
As word gets out about how you don’t care about patrol, when you need 911 help, you might want to consider calling Tempe PD. Call the ASUPD sworn you do support, the chiefs will come, but will they be there to protect you or be more concerned about saving their own asses? We both know the answer to that.
Funny how the whistle gets blown on the old schedule, who cares about an old schedule? This email is saber rattling because they want to have something to stand on.
If you want something to stand on then do something worthwhile for the people who risk their lives for your safety. It looks like when it comes to human resources he will do everything to avoid the human component problems at our department.
It looks like people are disposable in their eyes. What kind of educated, civilized people think other people are disposable, think their concernd are meaningless? None.
Somebody’s off their rocker. Sensitive operational information this is not, but embarrassing it is to have what’s rumored to be a 11 million dollar budget for your police department and no cops on patrol.
They say, “…could potentially compromise the security and safety of the ASU community…” Wrong. This an old
schedule, posted after it came and went, and if potential threats wanted to assess our operational readiness they could do so by watching our repeated responses to bogus calls. Staffing is almost always critically low.
The part that says, “…can and will be subject to disciplinary action up to and including termination.” Our leadership created the biggest threat to the safety and security of the ASU community so start there and work downwards if you are serious.
Protecting Sensitive Information considered sensitive only because it will embarrass the ASU University Management, ASU Police Command Staff, and tell the public what is going on. They need to start taking safety seriously and stop trying to deny reality, it’s not fair, not ethical, to the public we swore to protect.
I would like to extend a hearty thank you to the head of the ASU Human Resources are Disposable Department for acknowledging The Integrity Report on the Arizona State University Police Department.
This has been the giant elephant in the room our command has ignored for six months now. I guess when people from other police departments start asking our people about the blog on our department the head in the sand game is officially over.
I would have to say that releasing an old schedule does not, “exceed the bounds of free expression and protected activity because it has safety and security implications for the ASU community.” This is a bogus attempt to get a foothold of legitimacy in a argument you’re I’ll equipped to win.
When you say, “We have launched several programs in the ASU PD in the past few months aimed at improving officer recruitment, morale and retention. These programs are already showing positive results.” you say so without seeing anything from the inside of this police agency. You are a hopeful outsider under pressure to force a resolution to problems you either don’t understand or willfully ignore.
You go on to say, “As always, those wishing to report legitimate concerns can do so through their chain of command, the Office of Human Resources, the Office of Equity and Inclusion or through our Hotline program.” This is another farce because you have done nothing about issues already presented to you.
If downplaying and minimizing liability to the university is your job you should be reclassified as insurance agent. As you mentioned, you have been aware of the blog, but you must not believe anyone has, “legitimate concerns” because simply running a get people, anyone, in the door campaign is a joke when one after another leaves because of a hostile workplace. When have we ever lost half the recruits we sent to the academy?
It’s pathetic that the head of human resources at the Arizona State University is more concerned with the safety implications for the ASU community from you releasing an old police staffing schedule than…
The human resource issues inside the ASU Police Department that have made it a somewhat less than desirable place to work at causing officers green and experienced to quit and go work elsewhere, causing a staffing crisis that has been a crisis for years and is only getting attention now due to the fact 10’s of thousands have no police coverage from the ASU Police Department to speak of. Students getting dragged off, murdered, assaulted, drug factories on campus, rapes, thefts, tend to get coverage when they happen as frequent as they do at ASU.
Look at what the people in this video are saying, does ASU sound safe to you? Maybe that’s why the police chief doing all the talking in this video is Tempe Police Department’s Chief Ryff, not ASUPD Chief John Pickens.
http://www.kpho.com/story/24759408/asus-new-task-force-on-student-safety-meets-for-first-time
He’s meeting at the Fulton Center, the biggest home of support for the ASUPD Illusionary Presence Campaign. If they would fix the leadership and human resource problems inside our department we wouldn’t be in this predicament because ASUPD would become a good place to work and retain cops! We need experienced cops, not university security guards pretending to be cops/leaders and not getting the job done.
Michael Crow and his confidants are busy knocking on the doors of Tempe city hall asking for more police coverage, asking for action, but what do they do about their own police department’s issues? Nothing. The ASUPD Clery reports, federally mandated, don’t seem to reflect all the crime on campus and in all areas adjacent to campus, how can this be? Maybe the lack of integrity within ASUPD leadership circles is what brought this whole spotlight into existence?
You’re right Kevin Salcido, the ASU Community needs a watchdog to look out for its safety concerns, it needs these concerns addressed and rectified, but you sir don’t appear to be taking them seriously by chasing your tail in circles and pointing the finger at this blog, not at the people who created the crisis simply being reported here.
Thanks for finding this special nugget. It says a lot. Look at what the students are saying and tey don’t know the half of it.
Kevin Salcido is ssupposed to be in charge of managing human resource issues. In this email he appears to be an attorney for the accused. Maybe he needs to attend the safety meetings where all parties talk about how unsafe the campus is, there’s where the security and safety concerns for the ASU community are.
Mr. Salcido, the biggest threat to safety for the ASU community sits on the third floor of 325 E Apache, ASUPD command. Just like the state capital police, they need to be pink slipped and replaced. There’s plenty of highly qualified police leadership out there who would love to earn that money. We have a mult-million dollar Koolaide stand.
Thanks for officially acknowledging “The Integrity Report” blog, Mr. Salcido. Now the world knows that the university knows about the lack of sworn officers safeguarding and protecting the ASU community.
Truth be told, the university and the ASU PD have known for years about the shortage in sworn officers but, the university, has elected not to fund the ASU PD with additional sworn officers.
To our ASU community: Please contact your elected officials and have them demand answers from the university’s leadership on why we lack sworn officers. Some of our campuses, at times, have ZERO sworn officer presence! And the outside police agencies that respond to our routine and emergency calls, with regularity, have no clue where you, your loved one(s), or friend(s) are–that’s a fact!
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.
The new civilian Chief of the Arizona State University Police Department, Kevin Salcido acknowledges the blog, “The Integrity report on the ASU Police Department”. This email raises a few questions, many of which you covered in detail. I will use bullet points for clarity:
1. The head of HR is penning an email on behalf of the chief, the head of HR is deciding what, “…safety and security implications for the ASU community.” are. How was this conclusion arrived at? This is old information that has come and gone prior to publication. Everyone knows we are understaffed, this document proves the statement and came from an unsecured off site private business that does scheduling for many businesses.
2. The head of HR mentions launching programs for, “officer recruitment, morale and retention.” but everyone who has read this email has asked, “What have they done for morale and retention? Everything has been for recruitment only.” Was that statement for the public because nobody inside the department is fooled?
3. You mention ASUPD employees should go, “…through their chain of command, the Office of Human Resources, the Office of Equity and Inclusion or through our Hotline program.” Employees have, with legitimate concerns, and absolutely nothing has been acted on to review the issues brought to them. The idea of hope these “outlets” perpetuate is a joke, they are merely puppets of a regime looking out for their own jobs, nothing more. Nobody wants to upset the dictatorship.
4. Where is this transparency you speak of? We aren’t seeing it. You want transparency on our end because you want information to protect against liability, that’s it.
5. Finally with your closing statement, “We should not lose sight of the fact that, personal opinions aside, we are here to create a safe environment for our students. Let’s work together in a professional and transparent manner to make the ASU PD a high performing law enforcement organization.”
If you want to fix ASUPD you need to fix it from the top down. The old dogs won’t learn new tricks. Instead you have done everything to avoid tackling the issues. In doing so you and your bosses have opened yourselves up to further scrutiny, liability, scandal, enlarged the problem by empowering it, and the facts will come out.
We wouldn’t all be here if this wasn’t a problem. The integrity of an organization is only as good as the people running it. Our leadership has no integrity and integrity is essential for a performing police department. Leadership is nothing without integrity.
The public needs to have trust in a police department so it can accomplish its mission. The officers of that police department need to be able to trust their leadership.
Thanks for your opinion on the matter Kevin, the new badges, the uniforms, new brochures, recruiting videos, slight pay increases are nice but we are all waiting for you or someone above our chief to do something about the department before more victims pile up as a result of not having a working police department leadership. They run around telling everyone they didn’t know, they were unaware, and they have no recollection, and we all know better. It’s also their job to know what’s going on.
It’s a good thing Chief Pickens has Salcido to write his emails, Barb must have been on vacation.
In addition to the tough job of having other people write his emails chief is working with Salcido on new exciting retention plans. The latest is the Retention, Assistance, Program, for Employees. R.A.P.E.
R.A.P.E. occurs when officers are trying to leave the department and:
1. Command makes special phone calls badmouthing employed and unemployed officers to potential employers.
2. Command takes undue action against one officer to fire him for a training issue while taking no action against another officer who assaulted a prisoner four times in front of another officer they purposely never interviewed. No IA till months after it was reported here online, no admin leave, no fit for duty tests. Corruption.
3. Unethical junior supervisors like Katie Fuchtman did a bogus IA on an officer trying to leave for not turning in a time card on time. Wheres the IA for her buying stolen I pads on duty, on campus off a fence on Craigslist for a fraction of the cost?
And the list goes on…the ASUPD Retention, Assistance, Program, for Employees. R.A.P.E.
[…] of our posts (where we released an old schedule to show how dangerously low staffing levels are) prompted an email to be sent to all PD employees from Kevin Salcido. This email first discussed all the things the department is doing to turn itself around (none of […]
[…] points brought up in the body of this email. The “expectations” Salcido mentions refers to an email he sent to all PD employees on February, 2014. In his email, Salcido stated that posting an old schedule to illustrate how low officer staffing […]