Saturday, December 05, 2009

Where is the oversight?

I posed a question recently, what if this comment that was
left on the back side of the Eye on Albuquerque, link, was genuine?

I love being a cop but I find it harder and harder to work for a police department where the so called leadership has no Honesty or Integrity. When the chain of command constantly lies and the department is run by Intimidation and Retaliation I think it’s time to look for another job. I have witnessed first hand the lies and the deception that goes on. A police officer that is not honest or has no integrity is no better then the people we arrest. Please don’t get me wrong, I think there are a lot of good honest cops out there but the double standards and the favoritism that goes on within this department is crazy. How do they sleep at night? I will be making a very difficult decision on whether I should look for another job or not because my integrity defines me as a man, father, a husband, neighbor and of course a cop. (emphasis added)
So I emailed Nadine Hamby, APD's PIO.

Here seen, piloting her
scooter in front of a
political motorcade.

I asked her if she could
point to anything that the
Department
does, that
would make this accusation
impossible to believe.

Are there subordinate evaluations, morale surveys, ethics surveys, votes of confidence, any (anonymous) data gathering that would document these issues as a first step in dealing with them?

I told her right up front that I was not interested in reading a denial from anyone whose job it was to deal with this issues, and therefore has a self interest in denying them.

She said no, there is nothing in place.

Now Peter St Cyr has broken a story on allegations of nepotism in the New Mexico Health Department, link.

Previously, Kate Nash reported on a one of a kind ethics survey in state government, the PRC ethics survey, link.

Every time that the rank and file are given an opportunity to
point to problems, without fear of retribution or retaliation,
they do.

They point to more problems than you can shake a stick at.

Which is why no one does them. No one who is actually
responsible for the existence of a problem, is going to do
anything to document the actual existence of a problem.

This morning, Nash reports on the formation of yet another
committee, this one in search of "waste in government", link.

Instead of appointing another commission to do a superficial scan of another agency, why not commission a survey of every state employee, link?

Allow the rank and file, the opportunity to point to corruption and incompetence without fear of retaliation.

Then the corruption and incompetence will be out in the
daylight; the fundamental first step in actually ending them
altogether.




photo Mark Bralley

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