Whipped Cream Difficulties

I was hoping to have something else to put here. Maybe that will be #AA, or #AB.

But I digress. Remember a few weeks ago, when I commented, “…in my experience so far with the Citizen’s Police Academy, the rank-and-file seem to love the guy.”

Here’s the flip side of that:

A total of 883 police officers — representing more than half of the department’s officers — participated in the survey released Thursday. Four hundred and eighty respondents — or 54.5 percent — described morale at the department as “poor.”

I quibble slightly with the Statesman‘s headline, “Survey: More than half of Austin police officers say morale is poor”. If memory serves, the authorized strength of the APD is just over 1,800 officers, and they told our CPA class they were about 100 officers short. They did give an exact figure: it was in the 1,700 range, but I don’t remember exactly what, and it has certainly fluctuated some since then. Point being: 883 officers is just over half of the department, and that’s just the number that responded to the survey. The actual number that described morale as “poor” – 480 – is more like 28% of the department, not half.

Continuing:

…90 percent of officers surveyed said that staffing shortages are affecting the department’s “ability to do its job effectively.” To make up for a shortage of patrol officers, the Austin police command instituted a rotation that is pulling detectives and nonpatrol officers away from their typical duties to fill vacant patrol shifts.

With all due respect to the fine men and women of the APD, and with the understanding that police work is different from technical support, this doesn’t sound too much different from my job. I’d prefer to have time to work on my existing cases instead of taking new phone calls. But if we’re shorthanded and there’s not enough people in the phone queue, guess what? My preferences don’t matter. And the city has some major issues right now, including a serial sexual assaulter and rock throwers on the interstate. I don’t blame the chief for wanting butts in the field.

Lower-ranking officers feel shut out of the decision-making process, Austin police union President Ken Casaday said, adding that there have been some recent improvements since the survey was conducted May 11-13.

See. Above. And yes, there probably are times when higher-ranking officers make stupid hasty decisions: I can’t think of ones from the APD, but The Onion Field is a classic example.

The survey also indicated that more than half of the officers surveyed believe Police Chief Art Acevedo is often politically driven in high-profile disciplinary cases, isn’t honest and relies on fear and retaliation in managing the department.

Note that it was the APD police union that ran the survey.