Tag Archives: staffing problems

Feb 17 2014
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ASUPD’s current staffing…by the numbers!

Just how bad is ASUPD’s current staffing situation? Pretty bad.

Out of the 14 days of the schedule we posted, 7 of those days were below minimum staffing (with Saturday, 02/15/14 having only FOUR officers working. That’s only one officer PER campus!)

The green outlined boxes illustrate either days when officers are moved from their primary campus to cover another campus, or a shift filled by an overtime position.

The yellow outlined boxes illustrate days where staffing is below the minimum requirements.

It is also worth pointing out there are a significant amount of officers taking sick/comp/vacation time…perhaps due to burnout? How much longer will the Chief attempt to “fix” the staffing problem at the expensive of his employees?

All the meetings that have been transpiring on the third floor have yet to bring about any actual change to the current staffing problems. ASUPD is currently operating on a “best case scenario”; if something very serious were to happen, ASUPD wouldn’t be able to function.

Chief Pickens, you owe it to your officers and the community you “serve” to fix this problem; running your employees into the ground will only cause MORE of a staffing crisis as more people seek to leave ASUPD.

schedule

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Feb 14 2014
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ASUPD continues to piggyback off Tempe PD’s hardwork!

From azcentral.com:

Tempe police are targeting bicycle thieves who have been stealing bikes, mostly from students, and selling them on Craigslist or eBay to support their drug habit, according to investigators.

Police launched the operation in downtown Tempe in mid-January and it has so far resulted in the recovery of more than 30 bicycles, bike parts valued at nearly $25,000 and three arrests, said Sgt. Mike Pooley, a Tempe police spokesman.

The Tempe police operation recognizes the importance of bicycles in a college town.

Authorities say that, rather than considering bicycle theft to be a typical misdemeanor crime, officers from Tempe and Arizona State University police are investigating theft rings, serving search warrants to recover stolen bikes and seeking felony trafficking in stolen property charges against suspects.

The Tempe crackdown comes as ASU police continue to target the chronic bike-theft problem with a combination of education, enforcement and providing safer places for owners to secure their bikes, Assistant Chief Jim Hardina said.

ASU features a “bike valet” near the student union where bicycles are watched for their owners. ASU also has been encouraging bicycle registration and is adding bicycle cages, where owners can store their bicycles safely.

Bicycle theft is a classic crime of opportunity, Hardina said.

“Less than two percent of the bikes stolen are locked properly,” he said. “We tell people, park your car, ride your bike, but that doesn’t work if your bike is stolen.”

Tempe police identified the three people arrested during “Operation Bike Peddler” as Loren Henderson, 46, Jeffrey Barthold, 51 and Brian Meier, 50.

“They are stealing $1,000 bikes and selling them for $150-$200,” Pooley said. “They are using the money to buy drugs and feed their addiction.”

In addition to finding bicycles and bicycle parts, police found electronics, drug paraphernalia, prescription drugs, heroin and methamphetamine when they served search warrants, he said.

Pooley urged bicycle owners, many of whom depend upon their bicycles as their primary means of transportation, to register them on the city’s website so that it would be easier for police to match stolen bicycles with their owners.

Pooley said police realize some of the bikes that investigators have recovered are stolen, but police have not been able to return them to their rightful owners because the serial numbers are not registered.

The most expensive bicycle stolen was valued at $11,000, Pooley said. He said many of the victims have been Arizona State University students who need their bicycles to get to class or to off-campus jobs.

“It creates a hardship for them” when bicycles are stolen, Pooley said.

Firstly,  TEMPE PD was the one who cracked this bike theft ring; why is ASUPD even mentioned (other than to tout their “bike valet program”)?

Secondly, ASUPD is NOT “investigating theft rings, serving search warrants to recover stolen bikes and seeking felony trafficking in stolen property charges against suspects”. There is ONE competent Detective left in Investigations (since the only other competent Detective left for another agency) who doesn’t have the resources to do all these things himself. The other “Detective”, Jennifer Bryner spends her workday day taking long lunches/BSing with other employees, not actually doing any sort of investigative work.

This entire article is a prime example of how ASUPD attempts to piggyback off the legitimate police work done by Tempe PD.

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Jan 30 2014
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Dissecting ASUPD’s recruiting video

ASUPD recently put out a recruiting video (you can watch it here) that was very well produced, but it was full of inaccurate  or misleading statements. Here’s our dissection of ASUPD’s recruiting video.

#1 “Great New Facility” This is a misleading statement because the building is going on 8 years old. While this building is a huge improvement over the old one, it remains mostly empty except for the top heavy management third floor and one quarter of the second floor.

#2 “Specialty Assignments” This video gives you the impression that if you work hard you will get a specialty assignment, which is inaccurate. Specialty assignments, with the exception of investigations, are one person details that took half a law enforcement career to get into. All of these assignments are currently filled, and the people in them aren’t leaving anytime soon.

#3 “Bike Squad” There is no designated ASU bike squad, and there never has been. The phrase “Bike Squad” implies you are out patrolling on a bike alongside fellow officers as part of a team. The only ASU officer on a bike squad is the one loaned to Tempe to be a part of their bike squad. The only place you will see more than one ASU officer on a bike is at an ASU football game working overtime. It’s not a squad, it’s a once in a while overtime detail lasting a few hours. ASUPD policy requires more than one officer on duty in order for one to be allowed to ride bikes. The numbers of officers has been so low that no officers have been riding bikes for years unless it’s at a football game.

#4 “Narcotics Unit” There is no ASU Narcotics Unit whatsoever! The phrase “Narcotics Unit” implies you are part of a group of people going after drug dealers, suppliers. There should be one considering the amount of illegal drug use on campus (and the recent DPS bust of an ecstasy pill factory in Vista). We don’t even have a drug dog on campus!.  The only ASU officer on a narcotics unit is the one we loaned to Tempe to be a part of their narcotics unit.

#5 “Investigations” Investigations consists of a Sergeant and two officers currently. There is currently one competent detective left, as the other competent one left the department for another agency that appreciates his experience and work ethic. The footage shows the other remaining “detective”  dusting for prints inside the department. This “detective”  spent under a year on patrol after the academy before she moved into investigations.

#6 Joint Terrorism Taskforce Our only link with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Taskforce is the corporal we sent them to work full time in their office. His time in the JTTF has really no benefit for ASU, as he spends most of his time doing work unrelated to ASUPD. The footage here shows us at “the qualification range” which is a patch of desert on the Salt River Indian Reservation which is usually 110+ degrees in the summer time.

 Urban Environment: Not sure what benefit this is supposed to represent. Urban compared to Phoenix AZ? No. Urban compared to Gilbert  AZ Yes. Was this selling point supposed to represent all four of the campus’s we staff? Polytechnic campus is urban? No. The last officer in this slide quit the department for another department prior to the release of this video!

 Unique Modes of transportation: You get to be ridiculed for driving around in an electric powered hybrid Ford Escape mocked up to represent a police patrol vehicle.  If there’s more than one officer (and there never is unless you are at Tempe) you get a Segway like Paul Blart Mall Cop, or a mountain bike, or a small cc scooter…if you wait a year or many more for the training to come around. Remember, you can’t pedal a bicycle unless you’re trained.

 Special Events: Probably a third of the ASUPD staff work overtime for the university. The ASUPD earns half of what the vendors pay for your overtime and you get the other half. Too few ASUPD staff work overtime details that the events coordinator is required to offer outside agencies overtime details to get them filled.  After a group departure of dispatchers from three years ago we are still offering department overtime for outside agencies to work our dispatch.

Promote from within: Some internal promotions have been merit-based (we do have some Sergeants that genuinely care about their employees), but primarily promotion processes at ASUPD are riddled with politics. Factors such as who you know, how much brown nosing you accomplished, how you made yourself look competent by putting down others become standard. Promoting people with these character traits reinforces the idea that in this organization it’s not about what you can do in police work.

Tuition Waivers: Assuming you are looking to utilize this benefit, the department’s short staffing make it impossible to take advantage of this perk; after all, how can you plan your class schedule if your work schedule changing REGULARLY due to “poor staffing”

Join us in partnership: The most watered down, over used generic phrase imaginable. The department is a house divided against itself when it should be one team, so if the public doesn’t join us we have nothing.

In conclusion this video packed with half-truths  in order for the department to attract prospective employees. ASUPD has a lot of internal work to do before it will be able to respect and retain its employees, and thus eleminate the need for a video filled with fluff.  This gimmick video is the latest of a series of gimmicks enlisted to retain or attract employees without any effort or cost to the department.

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Jan 29 2014
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According to an FBI report, the number of active shooters has INCREASED.

From Campus Safety Magazine:

According to a study recently released by the FBI, from 2000 to 2012, the rate of active shooter incidents in the United States increased, particularly after 2008.

Between 2000 and 2008, approximately one event occurred every other month (five per year), but that rate increased to one per month between 2009 and 2012 (nearly 16 per year). The authors say the high rate continued in 2013 — there were 15 incidents last year.

The most common location of an active shooter incident between 2000 and 2012 was a business (40%), while schools were the second most common location (29%). Nearly one in five events (19%) occurred outdoors.

The median response time for law enforcement was 3 minutes, and the median response time for solo officers was 2 minutes. The median number of people shot per event was five, not including the shooter. All of the events identified by the authors involved single shooters (94% were male), and in 55% of the events, the shooter had a connection with the attack location.

View the charts from this report.

“It also is worth noting that in the five largest-casualty events (Northern Illinois University in DeKalb; Sandy Hook Elementary School; Fort Hood Army Base, Killeen, Texas; Virginia Polytechnic and State University in Blacksburg; and the Century 21 Theater) the police were on scene in about 3 minutes; yet, a substantial number of people still were shot and injured or killed,” the report claims.

Nearly half (49%) of the incidents ended before police arrived at the scene: 67% percent ended by the shooter dying by suicide or leaving the scene; 33% ended by the potential victims stopping the shooter themselves.

Of the 51% of incidents that were still going when law enforcement arrived, 40% of the attackers either died by suicide or surrendered to police.  In the other cases (60%), police officers used force to stop the attackers, most often with firearms.

Again, it is important to note that it is a matter of WHEN, not IF an active shooter scenario transpires at ASU. According to this report, schools are the second most frequent location for an active shooter!! Proper and regular training of officers would ensure an appropriate response, but instead ASUPD has given NO additional training for its officers about how to respond to an active shooter. This, coupled with dangerously low staffing numbers on campus make ASUPD vulnerable to lawsuits when an such an incident occurs, primarily because of the lack of training officers receive to handle these types of calls.

When will the Chief realize the importance of active shooter training and appropriate planning for a critical incident?

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Jan 27 2014
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Racist frat party highlights ASU’s discrepancy in addressing problems!

On Thursday, January 23, 2014, ASU’s President Michael Crow issued an official statement slamming the racist actions of an ASU fraternity on Dr. Martin Luther King day (the fraternity, TKE, held an MLK-themed party in which participants wore stereotypical hip-hop clothes, flashed gang signs, and drank out of watermelon cups).

In his statement, Crow says, “TKE was suspended on January 20, 2014 for hosting an unregistered, off-campus event on January 19, 2014 that encouraged a racially-incentive theme and created an environment conducive to underage consumption of alcohol. ASU is continuing to investigate the actions of individual fraternity members and other students who may have attended the party under the ASU Student Code of Conduct. When students gather as part of a university recognized organization, whether it is a varsity sports team, the student newspaper, an academic club or a fraternity, students are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that reflects the core values of ASU, which include respect for all people, races and cultures. The TKE party held last weekend was not held on campus and was not a sanctioned university event.”

This party managed to elicit a response and reaction from the PRESIDENT of ASU practically overnight! What distinguishes this specific party from any of the other egregious actions committed by members of ASU’s Greek community is the fact that this party made national news. CNN’s Anderson Cooper called these ASU students “morons” in a 2 1/2 minute segment on CNN.

Contrast this situation to that which is transpiring currently at ASUPD: a department chronically plagued with low morale, low staffing, and a litany of issues in regards to sexual harassment, mismanagement of public funds, and a training program rife with legal liability. Why is Michael Crow so quick to decry this specific situation, when far bigger issues go unaddressed? The simple answer is negative publicity. When something so overtly disgusting–such as a racist party–makes the national headlines, ASU’s primary concern is saving face. Notice how in Crow’s statement, he asserts TWICE that this incident was NOT university sanctioned, and was off campus (in a recent dorm room drug bust, ASU press releases also emphasized that the incident occurred “off campus”). After all, having a university which is known for partying, crime, and racism is bad for business. ASU is desperately attempting to revamp its public image so more parents feel safe sending their kids here, which equals more $$ for Crow and the rest of ASU’s administrators.

Michael Crow is acutely aware of the situation at ASUPD and is frantically trying to control the negative press and buzz generated by The Integrity Report. He has dispatched Kevin Salcido (head of ASU HR) to do a half-hearted “investigation” on assertions made on this blog. This investigation exists solely to minimize the university’s liability in the chance that ASUPD’s dirty laundry ever becomes public (ASU will assert that they had no knowledge of what was happening at the PD, and will blame Chief Pickens).

The true irony in Crow’s statement is that while ASU students are expected to adhere to a code of conduct, employees are rarely held accountable to their own code of conduct. This becomes obvious when a handful of employees (none of which have been reprimanded or fired) are the common denominator in virtually every problem at ASUPD. The larger issue then becomes a question of how much more negative press linked to ASUPD is Michael Crow willing to tolerate? Issues which were once only known within the confines of the department have now spread like wildfire throughout the law enforcement AND civilian community in Arizona–it is a matter of time before ASUPD’s problems also make national news.

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Jan 22 2014
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DoJ’s analysis of university PDs, and how ASUPD falls short in comparison!

The US Department of Justice has published statistics which analyze a myriad of variables that are applicable to university/college police departments.

This include demographics of sworn officer to student ratio for a several population sizes of universities/colleges.  According to page 3 of the report:

  • Campuses using sworn officers employed on average 2.3 full-time officers per 1,000 students. Private campuses averaged 3 sworn officers per 1,000 students compared to 2.1 sworn officers per 1,000 students on public campuses.  

ASU currently has approximately 73,000 students enrolled on all four of its campuses. If ASU followed the national average of employing 2.1 sworn officers per 1,000 students, the department should employ 153 sworn employees. To put this number into perspective, ASUPD currently has 72 sworn employees (which includes the Chief, Assistant Chiefs, and several Commanders, none of which work patrol. This number also incorporates employees who are in the academy/being hired who should NOT be counted in the “sworn employee” total).

Which universities had the LARGEST amount of sworn employees? According to page 2 of the report:

  • Campus served/Full-time sworn officers:

    Howard University: 166

    Temple University: 119

    University of Pennsylvania: 100

    University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey: 97

    George Washington University: 95

    University of Florida: 86

    Georgia State University: 79

    Yale University: 78

    University of Maryland – College Park: 76

    Vanderbilt University: 76

Of these universities, the only one that has a comparable amount of enrolled students is the University of Florida, at approximately 49,000 students. Interesting to note that the then University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (which has since been incorporated into Rutgers University) had a student population of approximately 7,000, yet had MORE SWORN POLICE OFFICERS THAN ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY!

The DoJ also analyzed the demographics of its sworn employees, both by sex and race. According to page 5 of the report:

  • During the 2004-05 school year, 31% of sworn campus officers were a racial or ethnic minority. A sixth (17%) were women.

In it’s 2011 Final Report, CALEA noted that 88% of ASUPD’s officers were male (26% percent being a racial or ethnic minority), and 12% of its officers were female. The numbers of minority and female officers has also dropped considerably since 2011. CALEA also noted, in its report, that ASUPD “failed to reflect its available workforce (48.3% female) as it relates to female officers”.

The type of work the majority of sworn university/college police departments were engaged in was also analyzed. On page 6 of the report:

  • 90% or more of sworn police officers were responsible for routine patrol, special event security, violent crime investigation, property crime investigation, traffic enforcement
  • 90% or more of non-sworn security were responsible for routine patrol, building lockup/unlock, special event security, parking enforcement .

The latter sounds like the majority of work ASUPD’s officers are required to do by Command staff.

Perhaps after reading this post, Chief Pickens and his illustrious Command staff should read another publication by the Department of Justice, entitled Establishing Appropriate Staffing Levels for Campus Public Safety Departments.

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Jan 18 2014
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New officer resigns after being sworn in at ASUPD

On January 16, 2014, Chief John Pickens was due to swear in the three new officers who had successfully passed their AZPOST test. These new officers were very desperately needed in the department to alleviate ongoing staffing concerns. After the swearing in ceremony, one of the three officers presented chief with something he should be well acquainted with–a letter of resignation. The chief was enraged. Shortly afterwards the issued equipment–the new clunky and garish badge, uniform with new patches–were all being turned back into the property room to await their new owner (who probably wouldn’t be hanging around long either).  

As esteemed members of the ASU Police Department, we would like to extend a special thanks to this officer for embodying the department’s toxic state into one singular action. It serves to illustrate the disturbing reality we live with daily which is putting more bodies into a lousy workplace won’t fix any of the problems at the department, it will only perpetuate them.

This latest lateral officer isn’t the first officer to do this by any stretch; there have been plenty who have quit in short order once they were exposed to our workplace. Chief Pickens is too proud to acknowledge the problems, too inept to understand and fix them. How many more employees must we tear through before Pickens realizes poor morale is the cause of the staffing problem??

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