The New Detroit Police Chief Police Speaks

[daddeeo]

The guy can talk until he's blue in the face but until we see results I won't believe anything he says.Talk is cheap.

[SWMAP]

Name some bosses and let's look them up to see where they live.

Commander Serda lives at 22313 Tireman in Detroit. He has no other property in Wayne County at least.

Inspector Yost lives on Rossini in Detroit. She also has no other property listed.

[4V4DMD]

Love it. I've noticed more flashing lights in the city, more people pulled over. Love how he says he'll do it all in an ethical and legal manner.

These are just words, but its a good sign.

[corktownyuppie]

What's going to have to change is the culture of the police department. This may be about money. It may be about work rules. It may be about new equipment. It's about everything.

Top to bottom, the biggest failing in Detroit -- and nowhere is this more true than DPD -- is a lack of leadership and effective adaptation to a changing environment.

The pay is totally justified. You're asking for someone who has the talent to rewrite the entire operations of dysfunctional organization operating in one of the most challenging environments in the nation.

The pay is justified. But so is demanding results. Lastly, we're not going to be be able to hit all the curveballs, but we should be able to knock the underhand softballs into play. Rude police behavior is unprofessional and counterproductive to their aims of reducing crime. As Orr puts it, we don't need to be an 'A' student with a 6-minute response time. But if we can get from 60 minutes down to 12-minutes, we can call that a win.

Here in Corktown, we have the personal numbers for two officers assigned to our neighborhood between 10 am and 7 pm. The only experiences I've heard about dealing with them have been overwhelmingly positive. Detroit doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be functional.

- We now have a well-paid police chief
- He has authority to rewrite all the contracts without red tape
- He comes from 4 other high profile police departments with a solid background
- He's originally from Detroit

Now let's see what he can do.

[4V4DMD]

Nothing insulting about his pay. Guess what? You want someone to stem the tide of crime in the city? Pay them what success on the job is worth.

Frankly its great he's talking about morale because he sees the problem. Morale has obviously been low for years, not just because of poor conditions. I've always found that morale is based more on leadership and communal energy than pay. You can pay people 100K and have a leader that lacks charisma, lacks discipline to stay on people and lacks a cumulative vision and morale will be terrible.

[cla1945]

$225,000/year versus $27,000/yr. There is no fairness in that at all. Craig is a smart man, he knows what he wants and he knows how to administer and I'm hoping that things will change. But when people start talking about the morale of the DPD officer on the street who can't make enough money to pay his/her bills; his/her healthcare has been cut; his/her pension may be out the window; the few perks that the officers got are gone....morale has to hit bottom.
These men and women go out every day to a thankless job. They are spit at, swore at, heard more about their mothers then they ever wanted to hear; their well-being is jeopardized every day they are exposed to thugs and murderers; they are expected to work 12 hours in terrible conditions; get off at 4AM and show up in court at 9AM, and everyone complains about them.
Residency has nothing to do with how the DPD reacts to situations either. These guys don't become cops because they are well-paid...that was obvious even before the terrible cuts that have been inflicted upon them. These men and women are cops because they want to help others. It's not the officers who are to blame, believe me. Their hands are handcuffed by the administration and that's where the changes need to be made.

[Hypestyles]

i wouldn't mind seeing residency rules somehow tied to tenure.. compel more rookies to live in the city, at least at first, until they've got some years under their belt..

[corktownyuppie]

$225,000/year versus $27,000/yr. There is no fairness in that at all. Craig is a smart man, he knows what he wants and he knows how to administer and I'm hoping that things will change. But when people start talking about the morale of the DPD officer on the street who can't make enough money to pay his/her bills; his/her healthcare has been cut; his/her pension may be out the window; the few perks that the officers got are gone....morale has to hit bottom.
These men and women go out every day to a thankless job. They are spit at, swore at, heard more about their mothers then they ever wanted to hear; their well-being is jeopardized every day they are exposed to thugs and murderers; they are expected to work 12 hours in terrible conditions; get off at 4AM and show up in court at 9AM, and everyone complains about them.
Residency has nothing to do with how the DPD reacts to situations either. These guys don't become cops because they are well-paid...that was obvious even before the terrible cuts that have been inflicted upon them. These men and women are cops because they want to help others. It's not the officers who are to blame, believe me. Their hands are handcuffed by the administration and that's where the changes need to be made.

- Agree that the changes need to be made in the administration. That's precisely why Orr went outside the administration to make this hire. That's also exactly why the pay will need to be so high. Changing and restructuring administration is no easy task in any organization. At DPD it's going to be ridiculously challenging. You're not going to get an effective change agent for $150,000/yr.

[[You won't necessarily get one at $220k per year, either, but your chances are much better.)

- You mention pensions going out the window. Are you talking about current employees? Pensions are going out the window in every municipality, corporation, etc.

[cla1945]

- Agree that the changes need to be made in the administration. That's precisely why Orr went outside the administration to make this hire. That's also exactly why the pay will need to be so high. Changing and restructuring administration is no easy task in any organization. At DPD it's going to be ridiculously challenging. You're not going to get an effective change agent for $150,000/yr.

[[You won't necessarily get one at $220k per year, either, but your chances are much better.)

- You mention pensions going out the window. Are you talking about current employees? Pensions are going out the window in every municipality, corporation, etc.

With the city as broke as it claims to be I can't comprehend anyone being paid a quarter of a million dollars...no one is worth that. There have been, what, four chiefs since Bing has been in and not much has been done. No one wants to take responsibility for anything in Detroit. Morale is at it's lowest, the officers feel like "mall cops" because their spirit has been broken and most of what they have worked for is being taken away while the big brass gets the new uniforms with the gold filigree plastered on them from their caps to their chests [[and most of them can't even spell the word police let alone be one); they will more likely be driving any new cars the police department may get, donated or purchased, while the street patrol continues to drive the crap.
Pensions will be a thing of the past very soon because the City is going to end that for all employees and change the system over to a 401K. The unions will be a thing of the past as well [[Snyder will see to that).

[corktownyuppie]

With the city as broke as it claims to be I can't comprehend anyone being paid a quarter of a million dollars...no one is worth that.

We have different understandings of market value. If you want to hire an outsider [[which we both seem to think is necessary since the failure is in administration), you're not going to get it for less than $250,000. Frankly, I'm surprised we can get it for that cheap.

There have been, what, four chiefs since Bing has been in and not much has been done. No one wants to take responsibility for anything in Detroit.

I'm not defending the last 3 chiefs. Hell, I'm not even defending this one. We'll just have to see what he will do.

Morale is at it's lowest, the officers feel like "mall cops" because their spirit has been broken and most of what they have worked for is being taken away while the big brass gets the new uniforms with the gold filigree plastered on them from their caps to their chests [[and most of them can't even spell the word police let alone be one); they will more likely be driving any new cars the police department may get, donated or purchased, while the street patrol continues to drive the crap.

Well, all those things might happen. Or they might not. If/when they do happen, you'll have every right to be pissed. If they don't, then maybe things might get better.

Pensions will be a thing of the past very soon because the City is going to end that for all employees and change the system over to a 401K. The unions will be a thing of the past as well [[Snyder will see to that).

I hate to say it, but neither the City nor Snyder have anything to do with the end of pensions. Or unions, for that matter. Anyone born after 1975 isn't expecting a pension, and almost none of us have ever worked for union.

But you could do a whole other thread titled, "The death of the social contract between labor and management". That would marginally, but certainly not directly, related to the crime problem [[as well as its solution) in Detroit.