Tag Archives: Michael Crow

After 7 months of WAFFLING, 7 months of unsuccessful shopping for a dissenting opinion, Arizona State University under Michael Crow throws ASUPD Officer Ferrin under the bus after every official entity clears him.

 

 

 

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Content submitted by a guest writer who would like to remain anonymous.

On Thursday January 8th the majority of employees at the Arizona State University Police Department found out one of their own was being terminated by… their chief of police Michael Thompson? No. Were they told by his bosses Morgan Olsen, Kevin Salcido, Michael Crow, or any random dean that wants to boss a police chief around? No. Employees found out when the Arizona Republic ran an article about it because they knew prior to the employees of ASUPD. Employees of a state police department find out more about their department from the local news than their anti-transparent mismanagement team. Way to go!

http://www.azcentral.com/videos/news/local/tempe/2015/01/09/21484749/

http://www.azcentral.com/videos/news/local/tempe/2015/01/08/21433645/

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2015/01/07/asu-moves-fire-police-officer-arrested-professor/21423153/

We knew this was coming months ago, but now it’s official. We have been hearing for months how ASUPD command was on a new fault finding expedition, pouring through Officer Stewart Ferrin’s personnel file, opening new internal affairs complaints, and producing disciplinary paper in his absence. Yes…we know, and there’s so much more. The Arizona State University clears Officer Ferrin, the ASUPD clears him, but then the media blitz happens.

The ever compensating Michael Crow clown school at the Fulton center panics, gets cold feet, and waffles hard left on their previous decision.  The Maricopa County attorney, the AZ courts, and the FBI, all clear Officer Ferrin. Whatever your opinion is on this issue, those are the facts. As usual the public university, with a fist full of public dollars, will attempt to spend its way out a problem they invented despite being told by every state and federal entity there’s no case against Officer Ferrin and he did nothing wrong. How do you know if you are running with a fringe agenda? The sign on the door says push, but you keep pulling, it doesn’t open and you keep pulling. No matter what you hear, what you know, you keep pulling for your agenda.

You know what people think of you by the way you’re treated. It’s nothing new; the administration of this university does not care about public safety, its police department, and especially the low on the totem pole officers on patrol for this university. We get bullied by any dean that takes the time to bother, we get passed up for raises other officers have received for years, our department patrol numbers have remained nearly stagnant for a decade as the university balloons beyond comparison.

Time and time again we hire and fail to retain employees with very few making it to retirement. Our chief can’t even demote employees, fire employees, nor do anything to effectively run the department without explicit approval from ASU Human resources and ASU university administration.  I would like to tell you that lessons will be learned by the people making these decisions, but you know better. They have a theoretical thesis to support no matter what the evidence of reality supports.

Could both sides have been more courteous? Yes.  Only one was resisting a lawful arrest, only one kicked and assaulted the other, and it’s not the University employee they are attempting to fire. That’s the university employee they are keeping. Is Officer Stuart Ferrin the target of neo-racism, academic elitism, a fringe agenda, wafflehouse pussies, or all of the above? The writing is on the wall.

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ASU’s sexual assault problem: How ASU’s admin and PD failed

Sexual Assault article article Page 1

On Sunday, November 23rd, The Arizona Republic’s investigative journalist Anne Ryman exposed Arizona State University’s sexual assault problem; namely, how sexual assaults that occur at on campus are less likely to result in an arrest/conviction versus the same type of incident occurring off campus. The article also focuses on processes external to the criminal case–namely filing a complaint with the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities, Title IX requirements–as well as personal stories from two sexual assault survivors.

Due to the vast amount of information discussed in Ms. Ryman’s article, we will be narrowing the scope of this post to explore factors that contribute to ASUPD’s disproportionately low sexual assault case clearance and conviction rate. According to the article:

From 2011 to 2013, ASU police investigated 43 forcible sex offenses, a category which includes sexual assault and sexual abuse, with two cases ending in convictions, according to police. A 2012 case is still under review for possible charges by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

Police said victims declined to prosecute in 17 of the cases and nine cases submitted to the county were turned down or did not proceed based on “no likelihood of conviction.”

Nationally, among the public at large, one-fifth of sexual assaults reported to police result in prosecution, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ). Of those who are prosecuted, about half are convicted of felonies.

Using the average case clearance rates provided by the DoJ, approximately 9 out of the 43 forcible sex offenses reported to ASUPD should result in conviction; however ASUPD had only two cases ending in conviction, with one more under review by the county attorney. Even if the 17 cases where the victim’s declined to aid in prosecution are thrown out of the equation, ASUPD’s case prosecution rates still fell below the DoJ averages. Compare ASUPD’s case clearance and conviction rate to that of the Tempe Police Department:

In 2013, Tempe police identified 13 cases that involved ASU students assaulted off campus and made arrests in three of those cases, documents say.

Tempe PD’s case clearance rates are consistent with the aforementioned DoJ prosecution rates of sexual assaults.

Why is there a significant discrepancy between the rates of arrest/prosecution of ASUPD’s sex assault cases compared to Tempe PD’s cases?

  • Failures in department leadership:
    • Department leadership may not view sex crimes as a serious problem compared to other types of crime, and may divert resources to other areas they view as more important (ASUPD emphasizes steps to avoid bike theft, as well as diverting department resources, such as personnel, to curtail the problem). Undoubtedly a major contributing factor under the Pickens-era leadership.
  • Negligent supervision:
    • Officers/detectives who are not properly supervised may not receive the on-the spot feedback needed to prevent similiar mistakes from happening in the future.
    • If a supervisor does not take interest in investigating a sex crime thoroughly, it shows subordinate employees that sex crimes are not important.
    • Employees may feel entitled/empowered to do whatever they want, because they are lacking adequate supervision.
      • This may or may not explain Sergeant T. Lewis’ abrupt removal from CIB under Chief Thompson.
  • Poor training:
    • Officers should receive additional sexual assault first responder training; most officers don’t receive additional training outside of the academy.
    • Officers should understand and be able to properly collect and impound physical evidence–while thoroughly adhering to procedures pertaining to chain of custody–so it may be preserved for future lab testing.
    • Detectives should receive ongoing, specialized training in interview techniques, evidence collection and preservation, as well as familiarity with laws pertaining to sex crimes.
      • Due to the frequency of sex related crimes on campus, sex crimes should comprise the “bread and butter” of investigations!
      • According to police reports released to The Arizona Republic, ASUPD only utilized a confrontation call ONCE in a three year time frame.
    • “Guilty until proven innocent” mindset of some detectives, characterized by: an emphasis that stranger rape is the only real rape; a belief that nonstranger sexual assault is not as serious as stranger rape and is often the victim‘s fault; statements that any victim inconsistency ruins her credibility; an emphasis on the ubiquity of false reporting and victims‘ lack of cooperation (cited from a 2012 DoJ research study).
    • Detectives have to WANT to work sex crimes cases, or they are at risk for developing the “guilty until proven innocent” approach.
    • Research revealed that often the cases that are presented to the County Attorney before an arrest is made are cases that have not been thoroughly investigated by law enforcement and are presented to the County Attorney in anticipation of a “reject”.
      • Half-assed criminal investigations are given to the County Attorney knowing they will be turned down
    • Whether a suspect is arrested should NOT be contingent on whether the prosecuting attorney believes that the case would result in a jury conviction

 Why did Arizona State University fail to release 19 sex assault reports to The Arizona Republic?

We’ve identified some possible reasons that may contribute to the disproportionate number of sex assault cases that are resolved at ASU (when compared to the City of Tempe), but we still do not have the complete picture. Arizona State University refused to release all public records requested by The Arizona Republic‘s Anne Ryman. There are a total of 19 cases and 36 victims that ASU is legally obligated to release to the media, but ASU’s defense is that the cases are”still under investigation” and that releasing the names of the victims could cause “flashbacks:”.

Let’s be real honest here, folks: it is extremely unlikely a case from three years ago is still under investigation, unless the case had zero leads and was deliberately left open “pending any new information”. Also, given the university’s track record of victim-blaming (there is a wealth of information on ASU’s mistreatment of sex assault victims here), it is also unlikely that ASU magically grew a heart and decided to give a shit about students who were sexually assaulted.

The real reason? The talking heads over at the Fulton Center (Michael Crow, Morgan Olsen) panicked over The Arizona Republic‘s public requests request. They both knew–or had reason to know–that the university was likely to incur more negative media coverage due to the mismanagement of the PD under Pickens. Both knew that Ryman would most likely uncover a bunch of poorly-written, half-assed sexual assault reports, and that if Ryman contacted the victims in each report, they would most likely express displeasure at how their case was handled by ASUPD. Sensing extreme defeat in the court of public opinion, Crow and Olsen resorted to their usual tactic: fighting with a slew of publicly funded lawyers. Even though the legal battle has been underway since July (with the university standing their ground), Ryman still managed to embarrass the university with the information she was able to obtain. The public has a right to know the truth about public safety mismanagement.

ASUPD has made significant leaps forward since the departure of Pickens; Chief Thompson has, thus far, been able to clean up some of Pickens’ messes. However, many of Pickens’ failures to properly manage the department have led directly to ASU’s administration. Therefore, if Crow/Olsen/Salcido do not allow the PD to function independently of the university, no amount of proper leadership under Thompson will be able to salvage ASUPD. Thompson has enough problems dealing with Pickens’s incompetent command that was left behind.

Sexual Assault article article Page 2Sexual Assault article Cover Page

 

 

 

 

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Happy Thanksgiving to everyone helping to make positive changes in policing for the ASU community! ASU Police Lost Two of the Biggest “Turkeys” in 2014 due to your efforts.

ASU Police Thanksgiving! Lost two of our biggest turkeys and we're not missing them!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who contributed to positive change after 14 years of __________!

A very Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who contributed to the pursuit of truth, demanded straight answers from public officials reluctant to give them, and who uncovered what a wayward government entity would rather hide despite the laws of transparency. The working employees of ASU Police and the public owe you a debt of gratitude.

Thank you, Anne Ryman, Rob O’Dell, Stuart Warner, Emilie Eaton, D.S. Woodfill, Jim Romenesko, and Sundevilsagainstsexualassault. Your efforts have sped up the process of change towards accountability in public safety at ASUPD. We also thank the employees of ASUPD who realized that change can only come from the outside and had the courage and intelligence to pursue it and contact the media, post on the Integrity Report, despite the bullies, internal threats, and paper tigers of intimidation. The year 2014 has been productive, but we are nowhere near where we need to be within the Arizona State University Police Department so the fight continues, the exposure will continue, and we will double our efforts. Stand by!

2014 News Articles to date:

1. ASU police staffing trails campus growth – AZCentral.com

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

2. ASU, ASUPD under Federal Investigation

http://sundevilsagainstsexualassault.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/feds-asu-sex-assault-probe-ongoing/

3. ASU, community-college police got military surplus

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2014/09/17/asu-community-college-police-got-military-surplus/15812247/

4. ASU Police Officers Have 70 Semi-Automatic M-16s They Don’t Need

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2014/09/asu_police_officers_have_70_semi-automatic_m-16s_they_dont_need.php

5. ASU police plan to return surplus M-16 assault rifles

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2014/09/29/asu-police-plan-return-surplus-m-16-assault-rifles/16448959/

6. ASU police on heightened alert after violent sexual assault…

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2014/09/13/asu-sex-assault-heightened-alert/15604295/

7. ASU names new chief for embattled campus police force

 http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2014/10/31/asu-interim-chief-head-campus-police-force/18263117/

8. Sexual assaults at ASU rarely result in expulsions

http://www.azcentral.com/longform/news/local/tempe/2014/11/23/asu-sexual-assault-few-arrests-convictions/19286329/

9. Embarrassment a bad reason for government to redact facts

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/investigations/2014/09/28/embarrassment-government-facts/16376477/

10. Arizona State University won’t let the Arizona Republic see sexual assault victims’ names

http://jimromenesko.com/2014/11/18/arizona-state-university-wont-let-arizona-republic-see-sexual-assault-victims-names/

11. ASU Flouts Arizona Law, Refusing to Turn Over the Names of 36 Sexual Assault Victims

http://collegeinsurrection.com/2014/11/asu-flouts-arizona-law-refusing-to-turn-over-the-names-of-36-sexual-assault-victims/

12. Sun Devils Against Sexual Assault (Not an article, but plenty of good information about the problem of sexual assault at ASU)

http://sundevilsagainstsexualassault.wordpress.com/

13. Coming soon…

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ASU Police still struggles with internal legitimacy, The “Legitimacy Training” ignores it.

??????????The “Legitimacy Training” goes on and on…

The employees of the Arizona State University Police Department have been given two mandatory training sessions totaling 8 hours on the issue of legitimacy, calling it “Legitimacy Training”. In particular, this means the legitimacy of the ASU Police Department in the eyes of the public. Again the legitimacy of the police department to its own employees is ignored for this solution to a problem that doesn’t exist here. The presenters of the training stated repeatedly that no one incident brought about the training, but neglected to specify which incidents did. This is the lying by omission we have come to expect from PD leadership who treat transparency within the agency like its Ebola. If you are running the ASUPD with integrity, then transparency within the agency to build legitimacy among the troops is a no-brainer.

What prompted our “Legitimacy Training”?

Employees understand this so-called “training” to be the result of the Officer Stuart Ferrin and Professor Ursula Ore contact because quite frankly, what else is there in the eyes of the public? Never mind that the Arizona State University cleared Officer Ferrin, the county attorney cleared Officer Ferrin, the courts of Arizona cleared Officer Ferrin, and now the FBI cleared him with the university still failing to act accordingly on the findings. Why wasn’t he at the “Legitimacy training” with the rest of his brothers instead of being forced to stay home? The university is searching for information to support its New American thesis on this issue and still can’t find it.

Unaddressed internal issues decrease ASUPD legitimacy.

The public isn’t aware of other issues with contacts that were alarming to the majority of seasoned officers at ASUPD. Are they aware of the white suspect being assaulted, tased in handcuffs by a black officer who has a preoccupation with race? Probably not. Where is the outrage over that? Where’s the questioning about the use of force, the internal affair investigation, the admin leave? There won’t be any. The people who promote themselves and their agenda by trading in race issues suffered by the generations who came before them have nothing to gain from this story. By turning the cheek on this issue they become part of the problem of racism and why it persists.

Unrelated distractions decrease internal ASUPD legitimacy.

When a police department listens to a college professor exclaim, “…350 years of oppression and 100 years of Jim Crow!” is that supposed to apply to us? It does not. We would have been more impressed with quotations from people who united us than people who pulled us apart. Whether you are African American with this heritage, Jewish with a heritage of 1000 years of oppression, genocide, or have American Indian heritage with hundreds of years of genocide it still does not apply to what we are talking about here today. While all of these things are horrible things, none of it still has anything to do with the ASU police department or what took place on the Officer Ferrin/Assistant Professor Ore contact. Attempting to draw a tie to them when there isn’t one is not only insulting to those who suffered through those eras, but it keeps hate alive.

The university’s emphasis on publicity instead of solutions decreases internal and external ASUPD legitimacy.

The heads of the Arizona State University don’t take any interest in the ASU Police Department unless the department makes the news in a negative manner. Even when the department makes the news the university is interested in a public relations and spin instead of making a lasting change in how it conducts business and holding PD management responsible. The university and its PD management can curse “the blog” all it wants, it can reach out to its corrupt counterparts in AZDPS for a last chance fascist stab at its critics who utilized their 1st amendment rights, but at the end of the day we will be fully engaged on a continual basis because we are not writing the narrative here. The mismanagement of the ASUPD is done with the tacit approval of the ASU university administration who ultimately provide the content and write the narrative. The commanders failed the last chief and they will fail this one. This will go on and on, so you might need more Julie Newbergs unless you intend to fix the problem and stop insulting the personnel who swore to protect you and protect the public whose needs you ignore.

Distractions from the issues and generic solutions decrease internal ASUPD legitimacy.

The first session of the legitimacy training was a tepid coverage of the fundamental rule; treat others the way you would like to be treated. While the ASUPD is a relatively small department it has a diverse group of people who do the policing, not diverse in issues of race, but diverse in their experience and manners of policing. To understand how the ASUPD handles perceived problems it usually ignores them, picks on individuals with no personal connection to ASUPD command, or issues generic blanket statements of intent to the department as a whole where they hit the windows trash bin at the speed of sound.

This latest “training” is one of those generic blanket statements of intent to pacify people who only are making the issue about race and don’t understand it to be a greater problem within ASUPD. The statement in this case is two-fold. The first part is, “You police officers need to treat the public the way you would expect to be treated.” This statement is empty and useless for the majority of our staff because they already do that. We are insulted by the lukewarm attempt to address an issue that doesn’t pertain to us and pertains to a few who are never and will never be disciplined for it. The Pickens protection racket clique still remains intact holding the department back. Either Chief Thompson doesn’t have the will to contend with it or the University administration is micro-managing the department. In either case we will be inspired to seek redress outside the university until the issues are resolved.

What’s the real reason for the ASUPD going to “Legitimacy Training”?

The university management (Morgan Olsen, Kevin Salcido) failed to supervise the university police department management (The command of John L Pickens), who then in turn failed to supervise the police department middle management (Night Sergeants, in this specific case Sergeant Mark Aston), who then failed to supervise officers in the field who made needlessly aggressive contacts common practice. Doing what you think a “cop” is supposed to do isn’t the same as being a cop. Hollywood gets it wrong more than it gets it right and the university policing environment might as well be Hollywood to a city beat cop dealing with serious criminals. We have the luxury of dealing with junky bike thieves or a woman j-walking across a street and refusing to identify herself because she distrusts law enforcement. We are in the media spotlight not because one officer went too far, but because a top heavy with management police department failed to do the one thing it has more than enough staffing for; management.

Establish leadership legitimacy or repeat the “egg on the face” process over and over again.

Michael Crow, Morgan Olsen, Kevin Salcido, this is why more outside non-university police department leadership is essential; they know the reality from the fantasy. Now that we have a chief originally from a city agency running the department, so empower them to do so. Allow the chief to do what he sees necessary to fix this department and if he fails hold him accountable like anyone else. If he fails with no power to make decisions and succeed then who do we have to blame except university leadership? You are not going to get results without establishing internal legitimacy within ASUPD first.

Who knows more about the day to day operations of a police department? People with 20+ years in the business or people who never did the job?  We need people who know the dynamics of the department, who can identify the specific problems of ASUPD and develop solutions for them. The “clique” within ASUPD needs to be out of business ASAP because it has been bad for business. It has been good to its members who received promotion after promotion, self-awarded accolades, special training, out of state paid for trips to do it, much higher than average evaluations done by their friends, and any specialty position they apply for. Don’t put a new chief in the same category as Pickens who turned this place into a country club and referred to us all as “worker bees” while lying to us and you about department issues, and doing nothing effective about them.

Experienced police leadership knows this is a training issue that should have been addressed for a number of officers, not just Ferrin. They know this is a training issue for their corporals, sergeants, who were all standing by watching these events with indifference for years until one of them stopped someone with a voice who could find people to listen.

Experienced police leadership knows this is more than a training issue for the commanders who approved of these trends for years without seeing this problem or many others that could have led to litigation many times over if pursued by the public. The university administration has itself to blame for the public relation fires it’s currently scrambling to put out because it neglected its human resources within ASUPD, it turned its back on its protectors, and we aren’t going to take it. This is over when the problems get fixed; consider this a vote of no confidence in command. If we see changes we can believe in then we will believe, we’ll blog about it. After fourteen years of collective disappointment that’s the way it has to be.

 

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ASU continues its “reign of incompetence” by promoting Mike Thompson to Police Chief

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From azcentral.com:

Arizona State University has named acting police chief Michael Thompson to take over a department that has struggled with staffing, morale and questions over use of force against a university professor.

Thompson, 47, has been leading the department since July.

In June, the university announced then-chief John Pickens was stepping aside to take on a new role as executive director of University Security Initiatives after 14 years at the helm.

Thompson, a native Arizonan, has been with the department since 2008 and most recently was an assistant chief. Before that, he worked for the Mesa Police Department for 20 years.

“Overall, the department does a good job keeping the community safe,” he said in an interview Friday with The Arizona Republic.

His goals include increased engagement with the community and making sure the department is meeting people’s needs, he said.

The department was thrust into the spotlight this summer after a video went viral of an ASU police officer arresting a university professor. The confrontation prompted debate over whether the officer used excessive force and whether English professor Ersula Ore was targeted because she is Black. An investigation into the incident is ongoing.

The police department also has had difficult staffing all its patrol shifts. In September, a story in The Republic detailed how the department struggled to schedule a full complement of patrol officers, failing to meet its own requirements a majority of the days during the spring semester.

As a result, supervisors had to either pay overtime, reassign someone from another job or leave positions on a shift vacant. The department couldn’t say how often it left a post empty on any given patrol shift.

ASU has hired more police officers this year to bolster department resources.

The department had 74 full-time sworn officers on June 30. Thompson said on Friday the number of officers is 87, which includes five who are in police academy training.

“We’re doing pretty good,” he said.

An anonymous blog, called the Integrity Report, which details the inner-workings of the ASU Police Department, was pushing for ASU to bring in an outsider for the position.

The university conducted a national search, but Morgan Olsen, ASU’s executive Vice President and chief financial officer, said in a statement that Thompson has proven his leadership skills through a range of past jobs and more recently as acting chief.

“We are confident he will build on his career experience and personal attributes to be an exceptional leader,” Olsen said.

Thompson said he brings advantages having already worked at ASU. He knows the university and the surrounding community.

“There’s a lot of things I can hit the ground on running,” he said.

In a move that surprised no one, ASU announced today it was promoting interim chief Michael Thompson to the top cop spot at the university. Thompson’s promotion has sent a clear message to ASUPD’s employees that the department will continue to press on with  its head in the sand, unable and unwilling to acknowledge any problems such as staffing, morale, and lack of adequate training.

Thompson stated his goals for ASUPD included “engaging with the community” and “meeting [other] peoples’ needs”, despite the fact that the department is in the midst of a meltdown and is barely able to function. Noticeably absent from his list of goals are ideas that pertain to his own employees, such as improving departmental morale and increasing employee retention. Thompson’s desire to put his own agenda ahead of the department’s needs sound reminiscent of the Pickens-era attitude of shameless self promotion.

Yes, more bodies have come through the door, but for how long?  In the Chief’s Advisory Board meeting minutes from December 2013, Pickens was bragging about having 5 more police officer recruits; of those 5 recruits, only half are left at the department. Including your police recruits amongst the total number of sworn officers is not only deceiving to the public, it is just a bold-faced lie to designed to inflate the number of employees.  Clearly, Thompson has yet to learn from the mistakes his predecessor made and shouldn’t be counting his chickens before they hatch, so to speak.

The only advantage Thompson had over the other candidates is that he knew how to appease ASU’s administrators (Olsen, Crow) by playing politics and kissing ass. He has no more insight into the university and the surrounding community than the external applicants did.  If Thompson did truly understand the needs of the ASU community, he would be actively working to solve issues that concern ASU’s students, faculty–such as having a safe, secure campus. Instead, Thompson has done little more than stand by while Tempe PD proactively reaches out to local residents.

Looking busy while someone else actually does the hard work seems to be the mantra that Thompson lives by nowadays….that seemed to work out fairly well for John Pickens, too.

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Acting Chief Thompson pitches desperate PR scheme / ignores internal “legitimacy” issues

 

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ASU Police Interim Chief Thompson happy happy joy joy email

Translation? We are going to continue to ignore the REAL reasons why our department has lost legitimacy with its employees/the public and move forward with our “warm fuzzy” PR campaign.

The public wasn’t too happy with ASU’s “in your face” approach from the recent “Safe and Sober” campaign, why would this endeavor be any different?

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ASU desperately wants people to view the PD as “legitimate”

Legitimacy training

It’s no secret that the Arizona State University Police Department has been pummeled by the media as of late.

Media outlets, such as The Arizona Republic, have publicly dissected several problems which have plagued ASUPD for years–staffing, and morale, to name a few. In turn, this has raised many questions about ASUPD’s legitimacy as a fully functioning police department in the eyes of both university employees and the public .

In a typical university knee-jerk reaction, ASU created mandatory training for all PD employees to address these issues of “legitimacy”. This “‘training” was comprised of two 4 hour sessions for the whole department, and was done by university employees with no PD affiliation or experience.

The presenters discussed generalized issues such as being nice to the public, community policing, and the unique environment of university policing. The presenters, however, failed to explain why ASUPD has lost legitimacy with its own employees/staff/public, and also how to fix the problems at hand. Many employees sensed this obvious gap in logic and voiced their concerns to the staff conducting the training, only to be met with blank stares. Evidently, the university did not anticipate any type of backlash.

What the university fails to fully understand is that the legitimacy issue is NOT caused by ground-level employees; it stems from a lack of quality people in leadership positions within the department. If you fail to employ a command structure that has accountability, ethics, and common sense, you have nothing more than a state funded gang using and abusing employees on a whim. Normal people cannot stomach working in this type of dysfunctional environment for an extended period of time, so the employee turnover rate and new employee hiring rate continue to skyrocket in tandem.

Poor leadership is obviously one contributor to ASUPD’s legitimacy problem, but not the main cause. What are other recent factors/events that have eroded ASUPD’s legitimacy as a fully functioning police department?

  • Free Speech:
    • For years, there has been a lot of preferential treatment and problem employees within ASUPD that Command Staff simply refused to address or deal with. Several employees became frustrated at the lack of outlet they had to voice their concerns, so they created a blog for anonymous online discussion called The Integrity Report. This discussion involved the posting of emails, memorandums, and policy manuals (which are all accessible to the public via a Freedom of Information Act request, or FOIA). Airing ASU’s dirty laundry caused administrators for the department and university to panic and attempt to shut down the indeed.com postings as well as The Integrity Report, citing “safety and security issues”. (It is quite ironic that in its quest to shut down and discredit The Integrity Report, ASU has actually further damaged its legitimacy as a law enforcement/academic institution, instead of preserving it.)
  • Having a convenient scapegoat:
    • When the public was enraged at the situation involving Assistant Professor Ursula Ore and Officer Stuart Ferrin, ASU needed a someone to blame so it could distance itself from the problem and maintain its legitimacy. Both Chief Pickens and Officer Ferrin took the brunt of the public lashing, with Chief Pickens resigning shortly after the Ore debacle.
  • Media exposure:
    • It is impossible for a department to maintain its validity when the media starts investigating and contradicting all of the department’s logic with hard facts and documentation (see the September 21st, 2014 edition of The Arizona Republic for an example). Even worse, the university attempted to redact information released to The Arizona Republic under the guise of “embarrassment”. The extensive media coverage of ASUPD’s repeated missteps has caused nearly irreparable damage to the department’s credibility as a law enforcement agency.
  • Repeatedly failing to acknowledge and address problems:
    • ASUPD still refuses to acknowledge any wronging on its behalf throughout the past year and a half of its public exposure. This would include admitting to staffing problems, cliques, and refusing to deal with problem employees, among other things. Admitting fault does not make the department look weak; it shows the department had enough insight to fix the issue and move forward. On the other hand, failing to acknowledge the 1000-pound elephant in the room does not make the department appear “composed”, it makes the department look like jackasses. Furthermore, when the department fails to acknowledge and address ANY problems, it makes the department appear out of touch and calls into question the legitimacy of its actions.

The “legitimacy” training did not even come close to discussing the above mention issues as possible reasons why the public does not view ASUPD as a “legitimate” law enforcement agency. The training was given by people working in civilian positions with no police department experience in any capacity, and who offered no actual plan on how to create legitimacy for the ASU Police Department. They should  have titled the training, “Please believe in the future! The university is in explosive growth, and we don’t know what we are doing!”

ASU, since you are unable or unwilling to fix ASUPD’s  problems internally, we will do it for you with continued exposure and public pressure. It won’t be pretty.

As always, stand by folks.

 

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Editorial: What do we stand for? Integrity, accountability, and competency at ASUPD.

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Fresh off the heels of the Arizona Republic‘s investigation into ASUPD’s staffing levels, it was apparent that Chief Thompson was fretting over the negative media exposure. Thompson sent out several long winded and bizarrely worded emails to the entire department…at 2330 hours….on a Sunday evening:

Acting Chief Clown Thompson email

Here’s our response to Chief Thompson’s email:

Your highly emotional and generic email response to the solid facts presented by the Arizona Republic article is proof that you are not a leader; you more than likely wrote this to appease your bosses who are probably starting to figure out you’re not the man for the job. The troops know you’re just another reactionary Pickens-styled politician who is scared and doesn’t know what to do.

The lengthy analogy of washing your hands in comparison to the ASU Police department works…but not in a positive way for you. We’ve been standing under the scalding water for years getting burned, waiting for a competent leader to turn the department around. New officers can sense it too; most want to get in and leave the agency before they get burned. It doesn’t take them long to figure this out. (Look at the record of employee turnover, it proves this theory, yet it is one more fact you don’t want to acknowledge)

New officers have heard and seen many so examples of officers who have been burned by the department’s management for any number of reasons, with the main reason as not being a member of “the clique”. No matter how bad you screw up, no matter how bad you treat others, you have someone to support you. Yet, you refuse to address the clique’s existence or their inability to be held accountable for anything, instead throwing out a broad statement about how we need to treat everyone with “dignity and respect”. Most all of us treat each other with respect, but there are a handful of people who can’t seem to understand that concept, which in turn destroys the morale of the department.

If you weren’t addressing the department clique with your warm and fuzzy  statements, then this is your attempt to explain away what has taken place under both your and Pickens’ watch.  Your words are meaningless to us all without any sort of follow up action.

The current command staff pride themselves on a negative management style of inbred cronyism. This cronyism may work at a backwoods sheriff department in a town with a population of 10, but it doesn’t work in a large, ever-expanding city like Tempe. Values such as integrity, accountability, and competency in management are required in a department like ASUPD in order for officers to stay engaged here. How many of the dozens of officers hired under Pickens still remain at ASUPD? Maybe a handful?

Thompson, you are getting paid a lot of money to sit at a desk, have meetings, and do a lot of excuse making for the state of affairs at ASUPD. We had 14 years of that. For years we have been waiting for someone that gets results. For years we have been waiting for staffing,  adequate training, and more equipment; but more importantly, our leadership deficit has been the most critical issue of this department.

Thompson, you ended the email with, “each of us serve a noble purpose and I ask you to never forget that and always remain worthy of wearing the uniform or serving within the police department.” As our leader, we the troops are waiting for you to serve a noble purpose, and to remain worthy of wearing the uniform or serving within the police department.

So far we haven’t seen it.

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ASU gets called out for redacting “embarrassing” information from its FOIA requests

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Yet another publicized misstep for Arizona State University’s administrators! This article is in direct response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by The Arizona Republic which pertain to the low staffing numbers at ASUPD.

From azcentral.com:

When I was a kid back in a more innocent time, the pre-Beatles 1960s, my friends and I occasionally hung out in the magazine section of the local drugstore and flipped through publications that our parents didn’t want us to see.

But it seemed that every time we got to the good stuff, a black bar blocked our view of an offending part. Magazines are less discreet these days, but those black bars still get plenty of use by your government officials. The federal Freedom of Information Act and the Arizona Public Records Law are among statutes that require governments to make their documents available to the people who pay for their bills.

That doesn’t mean they must let you read everything. In certain situations, they are allowed, and sometimes required by law, to redact information in those documents.

That’s when the little black bars get a workout. There are even computer programs like Adobe Acrobat Professional that make it easy to cover up the sensitive parts with solid inkjet lines. But sometimes we in the media believe the government goes too far in obstructing our view of information that is rightfully yours.

On June 2, we requested a copy of any and all minutes of recent meetings of the advisory board to the chief of the campus police at Arizona State University, citing the Arizona Public Records Law.

Reporters Anne Ryman and Rob O’Dell were working on a story, published last Sunday, about the staffing shortages at the university’s Police Department, which was a topic taken up by the advisory board.

The university complied, but with six pages missing from the minutes of the Oct. 17, 2013, meeting. Ryman, as is her right, appealed and asked for the full document. This time, the university provided all the pages, which included comments from officers about the morale problems in the department.

Among their gripes: “… no unity exists in the department.” “The Department is short-staffed by 50-80 officers.”

Still, not everything was there. Eight lines were redacted under the heading Officer Safety Issues. These were concerns expressed by the university’s police officers. We thought the public had a right to know what they were.

The Public Records Law requires that the government state its reason for blacking out information. ASU information officer Julie New­berg said the section was “redacted according to the Best Interest of the State.”

The law does say that “a public officer or public body may refuse to disclose documents that contain information protected by a common law privilege where release of the documents would be harmful to the best interests of the State.”

Our only course of action at that point would have been to take the university to court to obtain the unredacted document.

Except …

Two sources with legitimate access to the full text of the minutes provided us with copies.

So, what was the university hiding?

They didn’t want you to know that the university’s main campus was sometimes staffed by only two officers on a shift. (The department’s own policy requires four.) They also didn’t want you to know that their officers are sometimes unfamiliar with the areas they police during “party patrols” and that they have difficulty communicating with Tempe police officers because they use different equipment.

Harmful information? I don’t think so; the specific understaffed shifts weren’t revealed. More likely, school officials were embarrassed by the short staffing and lack of training.

And under the law, “the cloak of confidentiality may not be used … to save an officer or public body from inconvenience or embarrassment.”

As I recall it, some of those folks in the magazines way back when would have looked better covered by some kind of cloak as well.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Stuart Warner is a senior content manager and Pulitzer Prize-winning editor. He supervises coverage of the border, immigration, higher education, the environment, Maricopa County government and justice enterprise.

The writer, Stuart Warner, hit the nail on the head.

ASU has used this “cloak of confidentiality” for years to conceal the totalitarian leadership which exists both at ASUPD, and also the university at large. Beyond the censoring of public documents, ASUPD has gone even further to prevent exposure and potential embarrassment. ASUPD’s policy manual seeks to broadly sensor the 1st Amendment rights of its employees outside of work by stating, “when reasonable suspicion exists that the police department is being discredited by an employee through electronic media, the employee may be required to allow access to personal accounts or hardware/equipment for inspection.” (PSM-26-102). Therefore, if an employee (even anonymously) brings forth documentation that the department has discredited itself, he/she is the one who falls under scrutiny, NOT the department or the university.

It is becoming more apparent to the public that the ideology found in Michael Crow’s “New American University” has more in common with communism than it does with the democratic principles found in the United States Constitution.

 

 

 

 

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