Approximately a week ago, a woman was assaulted while running in the area of Lot 59 (possibly an attempted kidnapping?). At a competent police department, a perimeter would be set up to locate the suspect, photographs of the victim’s injuries would be documented, and the victim and any possible witnesses would interviewed as soon as possible.
At ASUPD, however, you are required to do all those things with only TWO OFFICERS AVAILABLE at Tempe campus, assuming one doesn’t get shifted to another campus for coverage (as an aside, there were TWO supervisors working to supervise those TWO officers!). There were a total of FIVE sworn between the FOUR campuses!! Check out a copy of the schedule here: schedule 2.
This is UNACCEPTABLE. Not only can the lack of officers impede the search for the suspect, one major incident could tie up all the available units on campus. Had the suspect attacked another victim elsewhere on campus, ASUPD would be completely incapacitated.
This is a prime example of the staffing crisis ASUPD has been experiencing for nearly seven months now, and its solution of “throwing more bodies at the problem” hasn’t worked due to ASUPD’s FTO program (two more officers were recently washed out). How many more of these incidents need to transpire before someone realizes ASUPD cannot effectively manage its own people and resources?
Until ASUPD manages to fix itself–either freely or by force–we will continue to post schedules, memos, documents, etc which highlight how unsafe and mismanaged ASUPD is. The next step is to begin submitting FOIA requests for ASUPD’s financial records, emails, and personnel files, as well as moving up the food chain toward Morgan Olsen, Kevin Salcido, and ultimately, Michael Crow.
We will continue to air the misdeeds and inaction on the part of ASUPD’s Command Staff (Chief Pickens; Assistant Chiefs Hardina and Thompson; and Commanders Orr, Scichilon, Willams, and Rourke) until the department’s problems are resolved or members of Command Staff start to throw in the towel–whichever comes first.