Recently a Police Officer from the City of Portsmouth was involved in a DUI Accident (Click WVEC Segment on the Portsmouth Police Officers DUI April 2008 to view the WVEC segment on the incident) . As a former police officer I have worked a number of DUI’s and currently I still have two pending Felony DUI’s before the court. I find someone that drives under the influence is foolish and reckless, they disregarding their own safety and those of the motoring public. Their really is no excuse for this behavior and as I have said in previous posts Police Officers must set the example and be above reproach.

On to the tragedy, I know the officer that was involved, seemed like a nice guy and appeared to be a competent officer. What I was told this past week from a reliable source was that this officer apparently had a drinking problem. People thought he might have been an alcoholic. I have no first hand knowledge but was told that the Field Training Officer (FTO) that trained this officer had documented incidents of him coming to work in a less then stellar form. As has been the case in the past the management of the Portsmouth Police Department ignored what appeared to be warning signs or take action early on to prevent this tragedy.

The City of Portsmouth has a program called EAP (Employee Assistance Program). This program is available to employee’s who have mental or emotional issues and need some help in trying to overcome those problems. It can be voluntary or mandatory. From the second hand information I have been given it would appear that mandatory EAP might have helped this officer with his problem and perhaps prevented this tragedy.

The only people that really know are the ones that had direct dealings with the officer and have read the documentation that was written about the officer by his FTO.

Again the Portsmouth Police management has failed in their duties to protect and serve. In the past officers have been pushed through field training after the police academy even when training officers have raised red flags that some of these trainee’s have a major deficiency that might put them, their fellow officers or the public at risk.

Officers in Portsmouth are afraid to disagree with their superiors for fear of ending up like me. I have said “NO” to my superiors when I was asked to do things that go against the law or my moral or ethical standards.

Perhaps it’s time for an outside entity to come into the City of Portsmouth and take a look at how the Police Department is run. Mismanagement appears to be the norm and had proper steps been taken perhaps this tragedy could have been avoided.

Powershift is reassigned, specialized units are now task with handling calls for service and Portsmouth says they are spending to much on overtime to handle their required day-to-day law enforcement functions. Check out the various document links in the paragraphs below that outlines these major changes that impact the safety of the public and of the police officers working the streets in Portsmouth.

As everyone knows the economy has been in a downward spiral for a little while. When the economy is not so good then tax bases can take hits as part of the fallout. Portsmouth is no different then most other cities, it has revenue issues. Revenue issues impact city services, cutbacks are the norm, doing more with less, hiring freezes etc etc. These cutbacks have to be prioritized and the last place to cut needs to be public safety. Now I am the first to say I don’t know what has happened in other departments but I will show clearly what happened to the police department. They have cut off ALL overtime with the exception of Court over time. Because police respond to essentially random events it is difficult to predict required manning levels in advance. Portsmouth has had a sworn officer authorized strength of 250 officers for sometime, before I was employed and I had been their over 4 years. The way the department dealt with not having enough officers to deal with the day-to-day calls for service was to authorize overtime. Their are times when a whole shift would be held over because of a major incident such as a homicide or robbery. A perfect example of this occurred about a month ago at the American Legion Hall on Peach St. The American Legion had rented the hall out for a “birthday” party. When police were finally called their were HUNDREDs of people inside and outside of the facility. Several Police Officers were hurt trying to regain control of the disorderly group of young adults and juveniles. The incident occurred at shift change and it required BOTH shifts to deal with the magnitude of the incident. In fact I was told by one supervisor that the event would have overwhelmed the midnight shift and that they would have had few if any officers to deal with anything that might have happened during that incident. The evening shift was held over for almost two hours to assist midnight with the incident. Later on during the pay period (within two weeks) the public would be short a full shift of officers for two hours to make up for the two hours of overtime they used that night.

Portsmouth is a small city with a big city crime problem. They have needed more officers on the street for a long period of time but they have dealt with it by using overtime. Now with the current economic situation they say they don’t have the money. To that I will paraphrase what a City Counsel member said at a recent counsel meeting “when we have a project we really want to do we can usually find the money”. To that I say that cutbacks to public safety organizations are fraught with risk to the officers and to the citizens.

Now anyone putting in more time then their normal work week (ie 42.5 hours or 40 hours) are required to “RT” it (a Portsmouth scheduling code) meaning that by the end of the two week pay period they will have to leave early, or come in late or any other way to prevent them from getting paid money for the time they might have worked over during their two week pay period. As an example of how that works the people that worked two hours overtime for the American Legion incident would have to leave two hours earlier on another day prior to the end of the pay period. That day (or evening) that patrol shift is short an officer (or more then one) for that period of time. Less officers on the street to protect and serve, less officers to come to the assistance of their comrades if an officer needs help.

Click cutbacks_memo_1 to see the memo outlining the staffing changes. To make up for the shortages other specialized units now are required to answer calls for service. So that could mean that NIO’s will be out of there neighborhood, TRU-Street crimes units are answering calls for service instead of working on neighborhood drug problems, you get the idea. The “Powershift” was a small group of officer permanently assigned to work 5pm to 3am Wednesday to Saturday. This covered the shifts that statistically had high volumes of calls and provided a group of officers that allowed an organized shift transition covering the time at the end of evening shift and the beginning of midnights when their are few officers on the street to cover calls.

As I start pulling statics from various sources I think I will be able to show that Portsmouth needs an increase in authorized sworn officer strength to maintain a safe and efficient law enforcement organization. They have been using the overtime as a stop-gap measure for years and it appears that the money is no longer available for whatever reason. Again Portsmouth must learn to balance it’s economic efforts with it’s requirement to provide Public Safety services. Holiday Inn’s, Traffic Circles and River Front Crystal lights don’t make the streets safer they just make them prettier. Someone in the Portsmouth government needs to start reevaluating Portsmouth’s spending priority’s and bring Public Safety back to the top of the priority list not the bottom. Portsmouth has the lowest paid Police Officers in the area with the highest crime rate. Click Area Police Pay Comparison to see a pay comparison made in July 2007 of the various local Police Departments salaries. Portsmouth ranks at the bottom on virtually all of them. Click Hampton Roads Cities Crime Statistics Comparison for 2006 to see a crime statistics comparison for the various localities showing that Portsmouth has the highest crime rate in the area when the crime statistics are converted to make the comparison by a 50,000 person population base.

The City of Portsmouth management needs to start looking at the realities of the situation and doing a better job prioritizing there spending. Safety First .. Economic development later ..

The radio system problems have far reaching consequences and puts every city employee that relies on a city radio at risk if they call for help in an emergency situation. The ones with the most serious risk are the Police Officers and Fire Fighters that are called on to protect citizens on a daily basis and are frequently put in harms way during their daily duties. These problems also expose the City of Portsmouth to liability problems because numerous people (myself included) have made the management of the Portsmouth Police Department aware of the problem but they have chosen to ignore it until recently when some courageous officers have directly contacted several City Counsel members about the problem. The Police management never even made the Portsmouth’s Chief Executive Officer City Manager Kenneth Chandler aware of these issues. I would love to take credit for spilling the beans to the City Counsel but I was actually trying to meet with City Manager Kenneth Chandler shortly before he terminated me about these very issues. His Executive Assistant never contacted me back about the meeting. In fact I attended the Portsmouth City Counsel Public Work session on the issue and was surprised to hear City Manager Kenneth Chandler asked the City Counsel if it was a serious problem and why he was not made aware of it.

Their are significant coverage problems with the current system when an employee is using a handheld radio in Churchland. In December of last year an officer was out on patrol and came across a volatile situation. During the course of the incident his handheld radio was not able to be received by the police dispatchers in the 911 center to send him help. He was holding a suspect at gunpoint that had just brandished a firearm at another person while restraining a second suspect. Click on the word audio to listen to the audio and hear for yourself how bad the radio problem can be.

This is not an isolated problem, it has happened frequently for a long period of time and is especially prevalent when the city is using the backup radio site on top of the city jail. The backup site on the jail is a very poor location to provide city-wide coverage and because the antenna is 187 feet lower then the Primary site on Frederick Blvd it does not provide even close to the reception coverage that the Primary site covers. Click on the word email and you can read an email one officer sent up his chain of command to try and make sure that the problem gets addressed. Again months later they have only a partial solution using a limited number of “repeaters” they have put in a select few police and fire vehicle.

These vehicle repeaters while a step in the right direction fall far short of correcting the problem. Click here for a flow diagram showing where the radio signals travel. They require procedures that have to be followed to get them to work that will make them problematic for a Police Officer. First the Police Vehicle has to be left running for them to work because they require significant power. Second, the officer has to switch his channel selector on his portable radio to a certain channel to communicate with the repeater in his vehicle which then retransmits his audio to the dispatch center or other officers. In normal routine day-to-day calls this is not normally a problem but if an emergency situation occurs and the officer might have to jump out of his police vehicle to chase a suspect then the opportunity for disaster is there. It will be difficult for an officer to take the time, reach down to the radio on his belt switch the channel selector to the correct channel. Not easy things to do when your trying to ran after a suspect, watch where they go, watch for weapons and keep track of where your running. It’s a recipe for disaster. The real solution to the radio problems is to install a new simulcast radio site in Churchland. The Motorola equipment cost alone would be in excess of $1,000,000 and that does not take into consideration a location to install the Motorola radio equipment or a tower to mount the antenna’s on. But again, the City of Portsmouth has it’s priorities, what’s a Police or Firefighters life worth compared to a new Holiday Inn.

There are other problems with the departments current operational policies that need to be addressed. Again attempts have been made but the Management of the Portsmouth Police Department does not like change and the “we’ve always done it that way” attitude is alive and well. Click here to read an email memo about suggested changes to enhance mutual aid communications. I submitted the memo and no one even bothered to contact me back either to ask questions or ask for help in implementation. Currently if the Portsmouth Radio System fails the officers are directed to go to the nearest Fire Station to make phone contact with the 911 Dispatch Center. This method is antiquated and inefficient. Portsmouth and all the surrounding cities have “Mutual Aid” channels and agreements in place to allow for the use of those channels in an emergency. They are independent of the Portsmouth system so all an Officer has to do is switch his handheld radio or vehicle radio channel to one of the “Mutual Aid” channels and they can communicate with Portsmouth Dispatch and other Portsmouth Units or another cities 911 dispatch center. The City of Norfolk and City of Chesapeake’s radio systems offer excellent coverage in most parts of Portsmouth and this method would be far more efficient then going to a Fire Station and using the phone. It provides a significant enhancement to Officer and Fire Fighter safety as they can communicate directly with other units and the 911 center if an emergency develops where they couldn’t if they were using telephones. The city frequently rely on their employee’s personal cellphones but they sure don’t pay for there usage. Portsmouth Police units have been in multijurisdictional vehicle pursuits and could not talk to any other agency that is assisting because their is no training or policy in place to coordinate the radio communications. Portsmouth has been in vehicle pursuits on the interstate with a State Police vehicle in the next lane and no method in place to communicate with them over the radio. The technology has been in place for all these safety enhancing procedures but a lack of vision by the City of Portsmouth and the Portsmouth Police Department leave the citizens and the emergency services in jeopardy and leave in place unsafe antiquated procedures.

To any of the Portsmouth Officials that might be reading this post I would be happy to help out in implementing any of these procedures or policy changes as a volunteer consultant because these issues are too important to not fix when we have the technology in place it just needs to be implemented. Here’s a novel idea, how about all the local cites form a committee and formulate procedures for multijurisdictional incidents that require communications between different agencies. Again the technology has been here for sometime but no one wants to sit down and work out the details.

Virginia Beach at least has the right idea. They managed to get a multi-million dollar Port Security grant and installed a multichannel repeater system on the top of the Town Center. System has excellent coverage but again another resource that goes unused for the most part and no procedures in place in Portsmouth to take advantage of an available resource that might be important in a crisis when it’s to late to figure out how to use it. Portsmouth just received a $300,000 federal grant to move a communications link involving the Virginia Beach sponsored ORION communications system from one tower in Portsmouth to another yet they can’t (or won’t even try to) come up with the funds to make it safe for the city employee’s and Public Safety Personel.

To my friends and comrades in Public Service .. Be safe out there .. To the Citizens of Portsmouth contact your elected officials if your unhappy about some of these issues ..

Below is a compilation of the current pay for the Portsmouth Police Department I obtained via FOIA. The low appears to be lower then anywhere else in the area. I will be posting updated comparisons as soon as I get data from the other cities.

Pretty sad given the crime rate in the city and the number of High Crime - High Drug area’s the officers are forced to work in with increased risk to them because of the environment.

Last Modified On: Thursday, April 17, 2008 11:44:20

After much work by a friend this website is about to go live .. Many things need to be exposed. Although this website is about the Portsmouth VA Police Department it is not connected in anyway with either the Portsmouth Police Department or the City of Portsmouth .. They have set me free and I plan on returning the favor … Jim Conrad

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