Memo to Local Police Recruiters: When Your Reputation Stinks, People Don’t Want to Work for You
The Great Resignation sweeping the nation is affecting staff levels at San Diego’s two largest police agencies, according to a front page article in the Sunday Union-Tribune.
Except that they don’t actually use that phrase.
Perhaps the Great Befuddlement would work for purposes of describing the stated reasons behind why the Sheriffs and Police Department can’t hire people faster than they’re quitting.
Every story I’ve seen about police staffing manages to work in the protests following the death of George Floyd and vaccination mandates on top of the same reasons being given across all professions.
Those are bullshit excuses, since there have been far fewer police practices centered protests in the past year (Floyd died in 2020), virtually no jurisdictions have “defunded” police, and the vaccination mandate controversy had its basis in enough unprovable science to make it seem as though it was an expression of extremist ideology.
The biggest cause of police deaths in 2021 was COVID-19 (397 out of a total for all causes of 567.)
I thought law enforcement was supposed to be about evidence and reason rather than rumors and conspiracies. If that’s not the case, what are people supposed to believe and why are paying people who ignore reality?
Getting down to the nitty gritty, not making enough money, schedules that suck, and not being respected for the work are the same reasons that 50% of the workforce also wants to make a change in jobs.
How those reasons manifest themselves is, of course, different in various professions, but the bottom line of work not contributing to self esteem is a factor for cops and trash collectors– whose work is 244% more dangerous than carrying a badge.
Leonhardi, with the sheriff’s deputies union, said many officers and deputies no longer feel supported by their communities, an experience fueled in part by critical news stories, he said.
“Unfortunately, there’s good reason to believe these challenges are getting worse, not better,” Leonhardi said. “We’re struggling to hire qualified candidates. This is resulting in overworked, stressed out deputies, a vast decline in morale, and significantly more retirements than normal.”
There has been a qualitative change in how the press covers and how (some of) the public perceives policing. After decades of a made-for-tv aura surrounding the people in the profession and reporters who often functioned as stenographers, the tables have been turned in part by technological advances (including body cams).
Companies and organizations that get bad press (as opposed to a few bad reviews) generally get that rep because they do bad things. Now it’s just easier to document them.
The San Diego Sheriff's Office has tackled their bad press head on, with misinformation and misdirection. I guess they feel obligated to do something in the face of repeated accounts of jail deaths.
America’s Finest City is famous on account of how poorly we treat people –many of whom have not been convicted of anything– in our jails. This is a choice, given the concentration of world-class health facilities and universities in the region.
Last summer, a video purporting to show a San Diego Sheriff overdosing after having come into contact with fentanyl during a drug bust went viral. Then all kinds of medical experts said, “whoa, that’s not possible.”
Although a department official acknowledged the error and apologized, the video is still available on the department’s YouTube channel and has more than 5.5 million views since August.
More recently, the SD Sheriff circulated flyers in wealthy neighborhoods and received tv coverage about purported South American gangs burglarizing homes. This echoes stories appearing in the Bay Area and other regions of the country.
What’s missing from these stories are actual arrests providing the basis for claims about tourist visas, training, and coordination. It’s not that the burglaries occurred (hey, if you’re going to burglarize a home, picking a wealthy neighborhood is a good choice), it’s the rest of the packaged story that should include some hint of an actual source based on an investigation or arrest.
The San Diego coverage included a later-retracted claim about million dollar paydays involving celebrities. The problem with this information was that the crimes in question occurred in Los Angeles.
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A Washington Post investigation published this week tracked settled lawsuits against police officers at 25 of the nation’s law enforcement agencies (San Diego wasn’t included). They documented $3.2 billion over the past decade paid out to individuals who sued the police for wrongdoing.
The Post found that more than 1,200 officers in the departments surveyed had been the subject of at least five payments. More than 200 had 10 or more.
The repetition is the hidden cost of alleged misconduct: Officers whose conduct was at issue in more than one payment accounted for more than $1.5 billion, or nearly half of the money spent by the departments to resolve allegations, The Post found. In some cities, officers repeatedly named in misconduct claims accounted for an even larger share. For example, in Chicago, officers who were subject to more than one paid claim accounted for more than $380 million of the nearly $528 million in payments.
And here’s the deal: police departments can’t or won’t penalize officers who get sued repeatedly. In fact many cities don’t keep records associating individual officers with settlements.
Why? In part because such information could be used by defense attorneys in trials. But given the frequency of repeat offenders in the Wapo study, it’s also because breaking up somebody’s house due to a bad address on a search warrant isn’t considered to be a bad thing.
How much good coverage will it take to negate the damage done by 25+ year veteran San Diego sheriff just caught cruising for underage sex? He was caught by a non-enforcement agency, no, this isn’t an outlier.
How is it that the Mayor and SDPD can hold a press conference decrying the murder rate, when their were more than ten times more rapes (522) than murders (48) in 2021?
Search “San Diego Police Department Lawsuit” on Google and settle in for page after page of items concerning law suits about excessive force, wrongful deaths, discrimination and more. I know that police can be a tempting target for ambitious litigators, but the patterns remain none-the-less.
The us versus them mentality surrounding humans who are constantly reminded that their lives are in danger means that there are powerful incentives for wannabe good cops to keep their mouths shut.
In 2021, 62 police officers were killed by gunfire, as opposed to 1055 civilians killed by police.
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The “we can’t hire enough cops” story is also true for nurses and teachers, and just about any public-facing profession.
In the case of police staffing, this shortage relates to politicized narratives contributing to public anxiety about crime. Stories about increasing crime rarely mention that actual rates remain lower than they have in decades.
Even the so-called good guys are playing this game–with a dash of implied racism thrown in for good measure. You can see it in Gov. Gavin Newsom vowing to crack down on property theft and describing scenes of mass package theft as something from a “third-world country.”
Finally, getting back around to the now-tainted idea of re-imagining law enforcement, San Diego could look to Denver for inspiration as it takes its first tentative steps into dealing with criminalized antisocial behavior. (Yay for San Diego County!)
In 2022, their STAR team, which includes behavioral and medical health clinicians, has responded to over 2,300 calls reporting mental health crises including drug and alcohol use, assistance to those with mental issues such as schizophrenia and delusions and severe depression implying suicidal tendencies.
According to a report released last month, not once have police been called as back-up for a threat to safety. And the program is less expensive than sending officers, arresting people, etc. It’s so good, the city is expanding it again next year.
Huh. Maybe there is a different way.
From Daily Kos:
Chris Richardson, LCSW, the Mental Health Center of Denver’s Associate Director of Criminal Justice, “When STAR pulls up, people in crisis can be assured that two non-judgmental, client-centered, supportive people who are willing to listen are getting out of that van to help.”
Well, blessed be for that.
Other Colorado cities including Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, and Pueblo have started similar emergency services to send trained, unarmed health professionals instead of cops for these calls.
Aurora has already launched their Aurora Mobile Response Team in September of 2021.
Said Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen, “It’s the future of law enforcement.
We want to meet people where they are and address those needs and address those needs outside of the criminal justice system.”
Lead illustration by Matt Haney, Global Press Journal
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com