Recently, a “taskforce” aimed to increase safety for students on ASU’s Tempe Campus met for the first time.
The group was originally formed in the fall of 2013, in response to an increase in the number of violent/alcohol related crimes in and around ASU’s main campus. It is comprised of the presidents of all three state universities (ASU, NAU, U of A), representatives from nearby apartment complexes, as well as Tempe Police Chief Ryff, and ASU Police Chief Pickens.
CBS 5 did a short story about the “taskforce”‘s initial meeting, complete with video footage/interviews shot on campus. Who was selected to represent ASU’s “taskforce for student safety” on ASU’s own turf? Ideally, it would have been someone from ASUPD, since their student populous is the primary focus of the meeting; however, it was Tempe PD’s Chief that spoke to the media about the dire crime situation the student population is facing (notice in one part of the video clip, Chief Ryff is holding a binder emblazoned with ASU’s logo).
According to Ryff, things like changing demographics of the student body and huge growth at ASU are factors that need to be looked at. “We have some serious issues with some catastrophic outcomes and our goal is to try to prevent that from happening again,” Ryff said.
Once again, ASUPD relies on Tempe PD to solve its crime problem, mainly because ASUPD is unable to do so as a result of inadequate staffing and training. It is embarrassing to watch this clip and see how Chief Ryff cares more about ASU’s crime problems than ASU’s own Chief does. Chief Ryff is also intelligent enough to realize the student population of ASU is growing so fast that even if ASUPD was fully-staffed, the department would still struggle to remain on top of the situation.
This is yet another reminder of the shortcomings on behalf of Chief Pickens and his command staff. They are unable to provide any viable discussion or suggestion on the topic of student safety; they are unable to recruit and retain a viable amount of officers (thus, not solving the staffing issue); they are unable to increase the morale of the current employees; they are unable to adequately supervise/train/discipline subordinates that routinely engage in inappropriate behavior; they are unable to effectively run a police department in any capacity.
Didn’t even know this existed. It was nice of chief Ryff to speak about it on the news so ASU officers could find out about it.
Can you imagine what all the members of the task force must be thinking when they look at the ASU representatives and ask to themselves, ” What in the hell are these people doing? They don’t have a clue. How is it we are able to manage all of our jurisdictions effectively, but ASU and ASUPD comes up so short? Maybe this is why their employees started a blog on their police department?”
Like you mentioned, where are the ASUPD representatives, are they hiding out like johns on a vice squad prostitution bust? That’s how it looks. When your football playbook is all about throwing interceptions and fumbles it’s good to hide your face. The only touchdowns happen by calling them out. Maybe when they’re out public safety dollars will actually go to…..public safety?!?
Look at what’s being presented here. The students are aware the Arizona State University is unsafe, the city of Tempe is aware the university is unsafe, but is the administration of ASU aware of how unsafe the university has become?
Apparently they are aware safety is a big problem, but take no responsibility for it. In this video you see a lot of ASU campus, but not a single administrator is anywhere to be found. ASU President Mike Crow, ASU Police Chief John Pickens, anyone…nope the city of Tempe PD’s Chief Ruff is left as the spokesman for ASU and the very serious public safety issues affecting the university.
ASU administration, ASUPD leadership, nobody seems to know how to put ASUPD back together again, but they sure know how to dodge the issues and shift responsibility entirely on the city of Tempe.
The administration of ASU looks on and does nothing about the ASUPD besides come up with a bunch of cheap novelties to entice nobody. People are climbing the walls to leave this place because of management.
The other reasons matter for departures matter, but don’t rate compared to this. Not many people leaving are going to want to lose a reference by telling that reference how bad they are when leaving.
It looks like the so called leadership at ASUPD is hiding out once again in mom’s basement while Tempe PD gets the job done and takes the date to the prom. That binder in his hands didn’t say Tempe, it said ASU. What a complete joke! If we had a functioning police department at ASU, not just one that costs twice the price of U of A’s police department for half the service, then we wouldn’t be here having this conversation.
There’s no trust, no transparency, no accountability, no initiative, no integrity, and no leadership within the Arizona State University Police Department command structure. Without these qualities a police department ceases to exist anywhere but on paper. This is why M. Crow keeps putting pressure on the city of Tempe to do the job his police department is supposed to be doing.
The tax payers and students of ASU are paying Chief John Pickens and his “7 Dwarves”, command flunkies, premium rates to deliver years of resounding subpar failure endangering students for years. Pickens hasn’t listened to a damn advisor for years and has been winging it.
If I was the governor, ABOR, and saw how this place was run I would wipe the broken pieces off the map and replace it with AZDPS. It worked with Capital PD, it will work here. Enough is enough.
Why do I say this? Look at the record. ASUPD has been dealing with the same problems for over a decade and they have only worsened and came to light because the university is too big to ignore anymore. Sweeping everything under the rug is the failed business plan and it has yet to work.
Look at the numbers of supervisors to officers; is that a sound business management model? Would any corporation be successful with one highly paid manager per employee? This isn’t far from how it is at ASUPD and playing the smoke and mirrors game is only going to endanger more people, us included. Anyone that things this is acceptable either lost their mind or doesn’t have all the facts.
The 7 dwarves…Lou S, Bill O, Michelle R, Chris S, K Williams, James H, Mike T, and John P as Snow White. Ok it’s all coming together. Seriously now, how many of them does it take to come up with a schedule or any plan of action for fixing the department?
This looks like the administration of ASU gave up on ASUPD and is looking outside their own police department for answers. Have Tempe PD, AZDPS, and MCSO do assessments of ASUPD’s readiness. All the red ink would look like a crime scene, but the professionalism, experience, and honesty would create a better, safer ASU.
What message are you sending by parading somebody else’s police chief in front of the news camera instead if your own? If Michael Crow takes public safety at our university seriously he should fix his own police department. I was asking the same question that was asked before, where are the representatives from ASU?
If you were in charge of a police department going down in flames would you show your face on tv? Shifting the blame and responsibilities of ASUPD over to Tempe PD won’t solve anything and everyone sees through it.
Is this Crow’s way of admitting the ASUPD is a broken police department and incapable of doing the police work necessary to keep the Arizona State University out of the local, national, and world news? You can bet your ass it’s not about doing the job, only the appearance of doing it. Image is everything to them, people don’t matter.
Can ASU just lease Chief Ryff from Tempe with an option to buy if he does a good job? This video is wonderful. It clears away all the smoke to reveal the joke. ASU stopped taking campus safety seriously years ago and it gets worse every year. It can’t be continually ignored without consequences. I get the feeling scandal is on the horizon.
Since when is the policing issue for Arizona State University the chief of Tempe PD’s concern? The only thing I see here is the larger entity of ASU putting a tremendous amount of pressure on the smaller entity of the city of Tempe.
You can’t fix a problem if you can’t admit and talk about the problem. The Arizona State University Police Department gets millions of dollars to handle the policing issues of the university, we have a command staff equal in number to most city agencies in the valley, but all of them can’t figure out how to run a police department, can’t tackle the issues? Tempe city management should be asking critical questions of the university and it’s management about what’s going on at ASUPD and why it can’t walk the walk.
Maybe then a real plan of action will be put together and we won’t have police management that listens to nobody repeating the same errors, committing the same oversights. We need accountability because before more victims pile up.
I heard Crow and his people are putting the pressure on Tempe. Will they put up with the bullying? Hopefully not. There is simply no good excuse for tolerating the failure at ASUPD. You would be hard pressed to find a more unimaginative, inexperienced, and uncharismatic leadership.
If this doesn’t make our Chief look like an ineffective ass, then what will? Maybe if he knew what he was doing, knew what leadership was, axed the right questions, and knew what hostile trends were taking place under his command we wouldn’t be so far behind the eight ball. How would you rate the student’s view of campus safety after watching that video?
The students look pretty concerned about crime. If they knew the full story it would be more like outrage.
It’s good to see someone’s chief of police taking ASU’s crime problems seriously in front of the media. The problem is it’s the wrong chief.