Lou Kilzer, Rocky Mountain News
Copyright 2006 Denver Publishing Company
Denver police believe by a huge margin that neither the command staff nor City Hall supports their work, according to a survey released Tuesday.
Results of a study issued by the Officer of the Independent Monitor shows only 5 percent of officers said they believe that the administration of Mayor John Hickenlooper “supports police officers.”
Asked the same for the police brass, the number came in at 14.7 percent.
The rest either voted neutral on the two questions, or disagreed.
Officers also gave a discouraging picture of department morale, which 60.3 percent said was bad. However, 13.8 percent said morale was high. The rest were neutral.
The media also took a drubbing. Ninety-three percent of the officers surveyed said the media were biased against police.
The results were in a report by an Ohio University professor that Independent Monitor Richard Rosen-thal released Tuesday.
Surveys were handed out to all officers. The emphasis was on attitudes toward police disciplinary practices. About 43 percent of the force, 648 officers, responded.
Since the study sample was self-selected - meaning only opinions of those who chose to return the survey could be measured - margin of error and other typical scientific confidence levels used in a random sample do not apply, said Joseph De Angelis, sociology professor who oversaw the survey for Ohio University.
However, he said that the demographics of the respondents closely parallel those of the department, which makes him believe the numbers are close to what a random sample would produce.
He also said that the numbers were “profound in one direction,” making him believe that if the entire department answered the survey, the percentages might “change somewhat, but not dramatically.”
Rosenthal wrote in a cover letter that “this survey was not intended to be a referendum on . . . officer satisfaction with the department’s command staff nor the city administration.”
Police Chief Gerry Whitman did not respond to requests for response Tuesday.
The mayor attributed the numbers to communication.
“Police officers have some of the most challenging jobs in the entire city. We recognize this, and during the last three years - when other city agency budgets were being reduced - we increased police resources by $22 million to make their jobs safer and more effective. We obviously have not done a great job in communicating that to the police force and will work to improve that communication.”
Data released Tuesday were not the first troubling figures for the department. Last August, the Rocky Mountain News reported that the police arrest rate had declined steadily for seven years, dropping 35 percent.
Some of the police rank and file at the time blamed the drop on a number of factors, including officer disenchantment with the chief’s disciplinary policies.
To get a handle on the situation, Hickenlooper hired a group headed by criminologist George Kelling to analyze the department.
In perhaps a presage to Tuesday’s report, an unscientific poll last year of 57 officers found the major complaint was “officer support from the administration.”
“How many times are you going to dismiss these surveys?” asked police union president Mike Mosco. He said the results point to an administration “divorced” from what is happening in the department.
The arrest situation for Whitman somewhat eased when figures were released this year showing arrests had inched up 2.5 percent during 2005.
April 19, 2006