ASU gets called out for redacting “embarrassing” information from its FOIA requests for the 2nd time this year.

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For the second time this year ASU gets called out by the Arizona Republic for redacting information from it’s FOIA (freedom of information act requests). The public might be asking itself, “What in the hell is going on over there?!?”

Read the full article here:

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/investigations/2014/12/07/asu-protecting-victims-names-breaking-law/20032797/

The previous article where ASU was called out for redacting potentially embarrassing information was here:

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2014/09/21/asu-police-staffing-lags-campus-growth/15999573/

And our response:

https://network23.org/theintegrityreport/2014/09/29/asu-gets-called-out-for-redacting-embarrassing-information-from-its-foia-requests/

Story pending…

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23 thoughts on “ASU gets called out for redacting “embarrassing” information from its FOIA requests for the 2nd time this year.

  1. DL500unit says:

    One thing is for certain. The problems will continue to snowball and be exposed to the public. The track record established by the administration of ASU is not one of transparency, trust, or respect. As public officials they are lacking in credibility. They are losing legitimacy by their denial that there are problems within ASUPD and we will continue the fight.

    Public officials afraid of transparency have something to hide. It’s the job of every good citizen to demand accountability of public officials. Without it you are writing a blank check to support corruption. The king makers at ASU don’t seem to realize the morale conviction and dogged perseverance of good police officers who don’t look the other way when wrongs are being committed.

    Our trust in the ASU administration and ASUPD command to address and solve problems has been lost and that’s why we’re here. The lack of respect we’ve been shown has only contributed to our drive to see more exposure of the issues so they can be fixed from outside. If you you can’t respect the people who put their life on the line for you, then who can you respect?

    I’m beginning to think the ASU administration are the same type of people who cringe at standing for the national anthem. They don’t respect basic democratic freedoms, the first amendment, freedom of information, freedom of the press, protectors of freedom, or accountability in public office. God bless America.

  2. Quick call Tempe! says:

    They were protecting victims? That’s bullshit. The title 9 investigation started, FOIA requests were submitted by the AZ Republic, and only then did ASU PD decide to give everyone sexual assault training with everyone doing it through an online presentation except detectives who went to a real AZPOST class.

    The first investigation takes place with an officer who just now took an online fill in the blank “training”. Is this supposed to make us better at investigation? I guess it’s better than the nothing we have had, but come on.

    Protecting victims? No. Covering their butts with the least amount of effort possible? Yes. How about just being honest and doing what you need to do? Is that just too old-fashioned?

  3. Embudo says:

    When you have individuals like Michael Crow, Morgan Olsen, Kevin Salcido, and a few in the ASU PD command who feel they are not accountable to anyone but themselves, that’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

    It would behoove those aforementioned ASU administrators and some in ASU PD command to reread that part of our country’s history when former President Richard Nixon also operated as if he was above the law during Watergate.

    What was key in ultimately holding President Nixon and some individuals in his administration accountable? The unrelenting media exposure that ultimately led to his resignation and jail time for individuals in his administration.

    What a humbling experience that probably was for President Nixon, the most powerful man on the planet, resigning the presidency of the United State in August 1974 in lieu of impeachment.

    Thank you to the countless individuals and entities that have demanded accountability from Arizona State University administrators and its police department.

    Thank God for our First Amendment rights when exercised responsibly and within the parameters of the law.

    • ASUPDsmokeNmirrors says:

      They are under the false impression that this will all go away and employees will forgive and forget. How long will it take them to realize that’s not going to happen? Corruption is a crime against the public order more destructive than most of the one’s we enforce everyday.

    • smokey261 says:

      They are under the same presumption as Nixon at the time. They believe they are too big to fail. They are too big to have to follow the law, too big to be embarrassed by upset employees, the media, but they are wrong. The lies and deceit are catching up to them.

    • indeedYOUsay says:

      This is America, nobody appreciates pompous entitled elitists less than Americans. I’m sure the university administration is very indignant about their positions, that there are no problems, that none of us should speak out publicly about these issues, that everyone should just keep their heads down and deal with it. We tried that, some much longer than others. That accomplished nothing. If you ignore another person’s problems long enough they just might become your problems.

    • fixmycorruptpd says:

      They more they resist fixing the issues, the more determined we get to fix them ourselves. It’s really that simple.

  4. Embudo says:

    When you have individuals like Michael Crow, Morgan Olsen, Kevin Salcido, and a few in the ASU PD command who feel they are not accountable to anyone but themselves, that’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

    It would behoove those aforementioned ASU administrators and some in ASU PD command to reread that part of our country’s history when former President Richard Nixon also operated as if he was above the law during Watergate.

    What was key in ultimately holding President Nixon and some individuals in his administration accountable? The unrelenting media exposure that ultimately led to his resignation and jail time for individuals in his administration.

    What a humbling experience that probably was for President Nixon, the most powerful man on the planet, resigning the presidency of the United States in August 1974 in lieu of impeachment.

    Thank you to the countless individuals and entities that have demanded accountability from Arizona State University administrators and its police department.

    Thank God for our First Amendment rights when exercised within the parameters of the law.

  5. ASUPDsmokeNmirrors says:

    Minus the top two guys, our police department is led by a command who barely did the job here and have no prior experience at a police department where you can get the experience you need to run a whole department.

    Our command doesn’t know what they are doing with police management anymore than they know how to handle human resources. Years and years of fleeing employees are the proof in the pudding. Most of Pickens’s flunkies are still here and the news reports are guaranteed to continue.

    They have no work ethic, they subscribe to no standard of ethics, so the only thing keeping them employed is their instinct of self preservation and the unwillingness of the university to admit there’s a problem. That sounds like a solution for getting the job done.

  6. yurhuckleberry says:

    They are establishing a trend here and it’s not a favorable one. The continued game playing just shows they have something to hide. They have many things to hide. Many things that haven’t surfaced yet, even crimes. Here’s a few questions the investigators in the media might want to ask on this topic.

    1. What are the qualifications to be a detective at ASUPD? We have one detective who was off their first year of probation and she went right to detectives.

    2. What training do detectives get and is it consistent with incoming detectives?

    3. How many cases did detectives receive in a calendar year?

    4. How many of those cases were they able to close?

    5. Which detectives were closing them?

    6. What types of cases were they closing, what cases were not getting closed?

    7. Which detectives were not performing?

    8. In cases where detectives had probable cause to make an arrest, did they make an arrest or did they defer to the county attorney on whether or not they would prosecute first?

    9. If there are disturbing trends on the lack of work getting done in detectives how long has this been going on. Remember, John Pickens was chief for 14 years and accountability was just another standard ignored altogether because his boss and boss’s boss either had no idea what mismanagement was going on at ASU PD or they didn’t care.

    • smokey261 says:

      All good points. On the training aspect here’s one thing to consider, training opportunities have always been available, but who gets selected and sponsored by the agency to go to them?

      The department paid a lot of money for all the firearms people going to rifle schools, armoring schools, paying for ammo, but the only people carrying rifles are them.

      Maybe that money and time could have been spent more wisely on training for the job we do and not for a situation less probable than lightning striking the same spot twice? Training for rifles is a good thing, but having detectives that are trained is more practical for our day to day needs.

    • indeedYOUsay says:

      For years detectives has had no mandate for performance. Individuals do as much or as little work as they want. As long as we have dim witted leadership they will keep reacting to problems after they happen and only once the media points it out. After being there for years the Sgt over detectives only got bounced once the news got involved!

      If this administration had children living here on campus things would be different. The integrity report started documenting the mismanagement of our police department. Now it’s documenting and, along with the media, expanding the investigation of ASUPD mismanagement to ASU president Michael Crow’s office.

      I don’t know who you guys are, but I’m proud of every one here and it’s good to see there are other people with a moral backbone who are fed up and frustrated about the department issues and doing something about it besides just bitching!

    • fixmycorruptpd says:

      All good points. How many redacting markers will our people go through redacting everything or will they claim the files don’t exist? What do we have to hide when we shouldn’t be hiding anything?

    • Getitright says:

      You have good questions that will be answered by more excuses. Excuses didn’t help Pickens or Hardina fix the issues at ASUPD, they prolonged them.

    • WheresMy907 says:

      I would enjoy listening to someone at our department as they tried to answer these questions.

  7. fixmycorruptpd says:

    The university administration is in shock over the earth shattering bad press, exposure, and embarrassment coming from how our police department has been managed by former Chief Pickens.

    Judging from the lack of internal changes at our department the university administration is fearful to give up total control over the ASU Police department. The new chief can’t even demote or fire people the way our pathetic Chief Pickens could. Just because one underperforming, out of touch, incompetent chief put the department in a nose dive it doesn’t mean the new chief will. They fired the Phoenix chief after a vote of no confidence from his troops, does that mean city council should run the PD?

    At a city the police and fire departments earn respect for the jobs they do and the experience they earned over their careers. At Arizona State University we are seen as a necessary evil and treated like the hired help by too many senior administrators who have contempt for us for some unexplainable reason.

    Does the contempt come from the traditional extreme left point of view that all police are white racist, heartless, right-wing enforcers without compassion? That belief is debunked when you realize how many police officers and departments operate every year in the US without making the news.

    • Getitright says:

      They are unwilling to admit anything is wrong until it is exposed. Even then they can only admit error by making changes that address issues they previously ignored.

  8. Getitright says:

    The argument that ASU redacted the information to protect victims is an argument of convenience. Based on the work done by the Arizona Republic, victims want to be heard. The university knows the news investigators won’t release any information without permission from the victims.

    The victims lost their rights when crimes were committed, they lost justice when a under staffed, under trained police department handed their cases. With the redacting of so much information, withholding so many cases back to 2011, these victimized women lost another chance at having a voice. They weren’t given the option.

    Because the administration of a public university wanted to avoid another exposure of mismanagement at its police department these women weren’t given the option of having a voice and were victimized again.

  9. twocents says:

    Less and less people are surprised by the actions of the university because the word is really getting out.

  10. JustTheFacts says:

    Think of it as a poker game. You have the cards you are dealt. ASU is playing a losing game of bluff, bet, and fold. The chips of credibility keep going away with every new hand. Every new revelation represents an ethics test they are unable to pass because like the little boy made of wood they have a tell when they lie. Every lie can and will be verified. The American people are sick of being lied to by public officials who have a civic duty to tell the truth.

    The ASUPD command continues to tell its bosses at Fulton Center HQ that they are unaware of other issues that will come out in the future, that they have things under control, but they are brass-plated liars in new uniforms who will eat their words in due time. They know there are more issues because along with Pickens they created them for the department, for the university, and for the state of Arizona. The issues and the exposure of them aren’t going away.

    ASU has falsely played the redaction card before and got caught, just like it did here. In a nation who prides itself on civil liberties, the freedom of expression, a nation at war with world-wide tyranny since its founding this is especially embarrassing for the nation’s largest university branding itself as “The New American University”. With their handling of issues and disrespect for the civil liberties guaranteed to Americans the administrators have more in common with America’s enemies than the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.

    Being unable to admit any wrongdoing is the hallmark of current ASU administrators. Playing a bluff game with investigators is going to get them where exactly? Rest assured, the Arizona State University Police Department hired people of high and low moral character who are at odds with one another over fundamental differences of morality and the idea that one day we will all have to answer for what we have done.

    The truth is coming out with or without you, which side do you want to be on when it does? The ASU administration continues to protect the ASU command that brought this to their doorstep. Eventually the indictments will lead up to them. The university administration that protected those who did wrong will have some questions to answer because without truth on their side they are not holding a winning hand.

  11. WheresMy907 says:

    If they are content with playing games with the police department instead of fixing it, then I’m content with watching them be publicly exposed for the asses they are.

    At the end of the day the record will show they were more interested in suppressing voices than addressing the issues that gave them cause to speak in the first place.

    Perhaps the public will see their worth as public officials in the same light employees have and give them opportunities where they can do the least damage to public order.

    Pickens and his command still here chuckled at the saying “McDonald’s is always hiring.” without being bothered by the fact their police department was to.

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