TEMPE, AZ – Tempe and ASU police went door-to-door Monday, trying to prevent problems before school starts, by talking with residents in neighborhoods surrounding campus.
On Monday, officers from both departments, ASU students and city officials teamed up to talk with residents in the neighborhoods surrounding Daily Park off Apache Boulevard about any problems they have or had with ASU students.
Tempe police Lt. Mike Pooley said the purpose is to foresee what could be a potential problem and stop it before students start school.
In 2014, ASU moved 24 of its fraternities back onto college-campus housing at the Villas at Vista del Sol apartments.
In 2012, ASU closed Alpha Drive, where fraternities and sororities had houses.
The majority of fraternities moved into neighborhoods off of: Broadway Road to University Drive and McClintock to Mill Avenue.
Tempe police called the area the “Loud Party Corridor” in a 21-page document, outlining the problems in the neighborhood.
The main message Monday – no matter which agency a person contacts about a problem, everyone will work together to solve it.
ASU officials say they want to make sure the first few weeks of school are as safe as possible as many students transition into their new lives as Sun Devils.
Yet again, ASUPD’s Command Staff has shown the world they are merely along for the ride while Tempe PD does the actual work during the start of the “Safe and Sober” campaign. ASUPD Chief Thompson went “door to door” with TPD to express his concern about the increase in loud parties caused by ASU students living in Tempe. He was so concerned, in fact, that he proactively stood by while Tempe’s Command Staff contacted local residents (watch the video here). Thompson’s body language tells Tempe’s residents all they need to know about ASUPD’s stance on crime: we will stand by, look concerned, and then let Tempe PD fix the problem.
Perhaps, Chief Thompson, you should have informed Tempe’s residents that your department is grossly understaffed, and is already running its officers call-to-call…and the school year hasn’t even started! Surely they will be completely understanding about the lack of police presence if they become victims of crimes, right?
This is nothing more than a desperate act of publicity before the games begin and it’s fooling nobody. The glad handing don’t solve the problems of ASUPD. The clique destroyed this department and continue to undermine it’s mission behind the backs of leadership. Very few new officers are going to stick around for this game when they can easily leave for departments that value team and offer so much more. They also pay you more money.
For Acting chief Thompson or any other mouthpiece for hire ASU inserts into the maelstrom the truth remains the same. ASUPD cannot function and manage it’s own affairs without outside help.
For years we have hired other agency officers to work our overtime, we have hired other agency dispatchers to keep dispatch afloat, and onview patrol has been reduced to being an agency that merely reacts to traffic by showing up to take paper and document the crime that took place. The idea that we are a functional police department that can go assist Tempe pd is a lie. Wait and see.
The management of the university have tolerated this failure for years and the command of ASUPD have perpetuated it.
When members of a state run police department have been false reporting to the federal government about crime stats for years what is done about it?
I blame Dr. Michael Crow and his management team as much as Pickens and his management team for the state of affairs at the asupd.
Michael Crow and his management team don’t know shit about police work but want to direct how it is run. This created a huge conflict of interest. They are literally gambling with lives to make the campus appear safer than it really is.
Pickens and his management team sucked the life and talent out of this department because they felt the need to make it their little country club. Like the Crow management team all of the past leadership never did real policing or have any idea what the hell it is.
Both these negligent, self-important, cheat to win management styles enjoyed one another’s company for 14 years.
Did Thompson get his AZPOST certification out of a god Damn box of lucky charms!!?? What a waste he is.
The school year will show, look how the quiet summer went. The smell of bullshit will fill the room no matter how many air fresheners are deployed.
How much time and money was wasted for this hollow media dog show? This is what you have to do when you don’t deliver the goods on a regular basis. Lip service won’t save lives, it only endangers them with a false sense of security.
That is why Thompson will eventually meet with the same fate as Pickens. Pack your shit and get out of the PD along with your acting assistant chief, Michele Rourke, who can’t seem to tell the truth about our pathetic staffing numbers.
How long did he work the street in Mesa before he became a sergeant there and started sleeping with other officer’s wives?
Let’s walk around making promises we can’t keep with officers we don’t have. This is the type of jackass smoke and mirrors bullshit that gave us the problems we have today.
The facts remain, Michael Crow doesn’t value campus safety, he values the appearance of it with artificially low falsely reported crime stats to lure more paying bodies into this institution without paying to protect them.
The families of victims need to start naming the university administration chain and the police department in their lawsuits. The university leadership loves to throw around state money for your silence and change nothing. They might change something if it hits them personally in the balls/their finances.
Liability for failure to fix well known and documented problems.
Great idea! They created the situation, not the tax payers of Arizona. This state university needs more state management to get it off the self-entitled liberal tax and spend ideology.
I agreed with a lot of things here, but this time you’re wrong.
Here’s why. Talking to a couple of nearby houses in Tempe looks like it accomplished a lot…for “the blog”. It shows these bobbleheads trick or treating in August making grand generalized statements that mean as much as any political promise. This department can’t even handle it’s own issues, so what are we going to do for Tempe? Do what we did this past year, claim to be a part of Tempe party patrol with one officer and then go to the ASU calls for lack of regular available shift units. We lost a full squad of officers in the first half of 2014. Where are we getting people to help Tempe again?
Not being pessimistic here, but when we can’t deliver for lack of people or plan then what?
Sit back and watch the implosion, the blog just writes itself.
It’s all about appearances, blowing smoke up all the right chimneys. Other police departments have strategic plans to accomplish their goals, it’s called doing shit.
Playing political games and hard charging public relations doesn’t fix the police department and make it so you can honor theses promises. Right now you can’t!
Whoops, caught red handed on camera not giving a fuck. It’s a real life re-run of liar liar. While there have been some improvements over do nothing screw the troops Pickens, I’m not really seeing anything substantial.
This was a negative photo op. Julie Newberg has a concussion from hitting her head against the wall.
So far it’s been a same shit as usual occupation, more promises of hope and change gone unfullfilled, Mike Thompson 2014, campaign slogan, Yes We Can…Pickens set the bar so low Thompson could go on a year vacation and do less damage to the department than his predecessor.
I know there’s a deep concern about Thompson not acting fast enough to fix agency issues, doing nothing to remove the Orr’s boys flunky model of leadership, and not addressing issues but what if…
What if Thompson brings in enough real police talent from Mesa retirees to replace the two years to the top Pickens leadership program? That would be huge.
The Pickens special needs program did serious damage to this agency and a piece by piece replacement of the shit leadership would do miracles. The level of service we are able to provide would be noticed, not ridiculed. We might even retain some officers. Any thoughts?
I’ll believe it when I see it otherwise this will be another lemon on a used car lot. The participants responsible for ruining the department are still at the commander/sgt level, so everyone is far from impressed and nothing will change.
Get ready for more departures, more games, and more new faces after the old new faces left. I used to be impressed on how Crow grew the university, but not how he allowed public safety to decay.
Here’s the problem with Thompson. During the Pickens’ era he did absolutely nothing when Pickens and the rest of Pickens’ self-serving and dysfunctional command staff were driving the department into the ground. Did he not see what was going on? Why didn’t he intervene when he was aware and saw wrongdoing occurring?
Buying into his BS, “I’m going to fix the department” is no more than smoke and mirrors and deception that apparently many are falling for. He has no real integrity and ethics. Check his past history at Mesa PD. Ask around, do your own research and then come to your own conclusion. He’s a wolf in sheepskin that wants nothing more than to be installed as the permanent chief of police.
God save this department if anyone thinks he’s the messiah. Besides wanting to be chief of police, the only reason he’s attempting to feebly change things after years in the department is because he knows his ass is on the line and there’s a good possibility that he’ll meet the same fate as Pickens and Hardina.
Bottom line, he’s no better than the rest of Orr’s boys and needs to be shown the door. We desperately need new outside leadership at the top and mid-level or things will never change, period.
If Thompson were a true leader, would Off. Ferrin still be on leave? Havent seen any kind of support from the PD Admin on that issue.
Here are the facts.
1. Every other department not hiring before will be hiring now. The numbers in numbers out game is over. We are in trouble.
2.We had trouble, failed, at retaining officers when nobody was really hiring. We are in trouble.
3. Summer was slow and before the school year started we were working at full capacity. What happens if something happens or traffic ramps up? We are in trouble and the public is to.
There’s a theme here.
If the university leaves the old ASUPD command intact then everyone is in trouble. This is a crucial moment for the university administration to head off the crisis or wait and see the ugly side of diminishing returns in public safety.
At OneFlewOverTheCuckoo’sPD, I don’t see anyone believing it. His lack of decisive action on the real issues only serves as encouragement for more officers to head for the hills.
While that’s an outstanding idea I haven’t been impressed with what I’ve seen.
ImJohnDoe, No one in the position of chief of police at the ASU PD can be a leader. Why would this be? Because the way the ASU PD is integrated within the university.
President Michael Crow and his henchman, Dr. Morgan Olsen, will always control how the university’s police department operates. When you hold the purse strings you control everything, including how many sworn officers are allocated for the police department.
The ex-chief, John Pickens, reigned for 14-years because he was merely a puppet chief who probably never once dissented with his bosses on how they wanted the university’s police department staffed and operated.
Unfortunately, that joint operational failure has always jeopardized the safety and security of the ASU community by not having the optimal sworn officers, on all four campuses, in accordance with the Department of Justice recommendation of 2.1 sworn officers per every 1,000 students at public universities.
I saw the video and laughed, how hard was it to complete this public relations opportunity? Clearly Acting Chief Thompson wasn’t interested in interacting with the public. The phone text must have been really important.
What did they think the locals had to offer? Tell us it’s noisy, that drunks are everywhere, and the whole place smells like weed after dark? Yes, we feel and smell your pain. What did we tell them? Did we lie and pretend to have the staffing to be of assistance?
Another bull shit meet the press fluff campaign and he couldn’t bother to pretend to care, at least he was honest right? That’s what we all want, a restoration of honor and integrity to the offices of command that have no confidence with the troops. Don’t hold your breath people.
Talk is cheap, but promises from an ASU police chief are as cheap as it gets.