Arizona State University Police Department continues the annual tradition of police officers quiting en masse, mandatory overtime for event/regular shift coverage, and incompetant mismanagement.

Every year we get reports from employees at the Arizona State University Police Department about the low state of morale, incompetent sadistic leadership, lack of incentives to stay and seemingly endless incentives to leave. Throughout the tenure of former ASUPD Chief John Pickens all these issues prompted many 100’s of officers and employees to leave the department, taking millions of dollars of training and experience with them, only to be replaced with green eager recruits who would soon follow their lead. This process happens year after year with no end in sight. Most departing employees agree that they would have stayed if it wasn’t for the management completely lacking moral integrity, fairness, and professionalism. Management lackeys eager to please upper management blame the problems on money, but everyone else knows better and keeps their opinions to themselves for fear of the retaliation they see playing out on the careers of other employees.

What does the ASU University administration do about the ASUPD’s incompetent administration? Replace Pickens with an even worse chief Michael Thompson, absolutely nothing has changed as the department continues to be a revolving door for employees and inexperienced political appointments remain the norm.

If you are considering coming to the Arizona State University Police department for employment, here are some things to consider:

As an experienced lateral police officer coming to ASUPD:

Your years of experience will actually count against you and be held in insecure laden contempt by the many supervisors who only have mediocre college policing experience before being promoted. It’s common that you could be the only officer on a shift with two sergeants, a lieutenant, several commanders all looking to micro manage your activities and show you they can teach you something, put a feather in their cap for their next evaluation.

The only way to get a real pay raise is to promote because evaluations only provide minor pennies on the dollar raises. In your former police department, where internal affairs are done only for serious offences, and most complaints are handled at the sergeant level you will be in for a big surprise!

Highly experienced officers have been targeted by ASU officers and supervisors even in their training. The institutional insecurity overrides the value of professionalism every time. Veteran cops had to contend with fabricated complaints, filed by department admin, against their AZPOST peace officer certifications.

Their means of making a living for their family and career of honorary service slandered on a whim.

These frivaloud complaints always get dismissed as more of the same old frivolous attacks by ASUPD command.

Save yourself the hassle, don’t apply. If you do just get ready to do an about face to leave once you see it for yourself. Many, many lateral police officers felt compelled to leave in short order for these reasons and more. They were in shock of what they saw taking place within ASUPD. Here are some things to consider before applying:

As an new police officer starting your career with ASUPD:

Unlike lateral police officers who can rely on their former record of experience to save them from the inevitable attacks to come on their career, you are only going to be judged by what the admin of ASUPD decide to report about you. While you may have the idealistic notions of the police officer code of ethics in your mind, that is not what you’re going to find working at ASUPD, we guarantee that. If you are not one of the few able to make friends with the “right” people, then you become what they have termed as “a project”. Once you become “a project” your reputation becomes whatever they are willing to say about you because you lack the lateral record of a former department to dispute ASUPD claims and your days in law enforcement are numbered. 

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