'In this particular case, when you have police officers coming to work every day and they're just there to get a paycheck-because that's what it turns into-that's dangerous. Low morale, then, becomes detrimental in more ways than one. Velazquez says management sets the tone in a department-and good or bad, it filters down quickly to the boots on the ground-the officers who are dealing with the public. In April, two officers used a coin-flip app to decide whether to arrest a speeding driver. In March, an off-duty officer who admitted to speeding and drinking before driving was let go with a warning. The audit was commissioned after several 2018 incidents involving Roswell police officers had come to light: In one case, a police sergeant trying to get a 13-year-old boy driving a golf cart to talk put the boy-whose sleeves were wet and frozen-in a patrol car, turned off the engine, and let the January air come in through its lowered windows. (Roswell Police Department / Atlanta Journal-Constitution) chilly’: Video shows police in Roswell, Georgia, leave teen in freezing car Newly released police footage shows police in Roswell, Georgia, leave a 13-year-old boy in a squad car on a cold January day and taunt him. 'Lack of morale breeds contempt, it breeds sloppiness, it breeds corruption.'

'If you have police officers who are interacting with the public and, in essence, have the public's safety and lives in their hands, it's important that you have police officers that are working every day that want to do the job, that want to follow orders, and want to do a good job. 'What that is is the pulse of the police department,' says Velazquez. Vince Velazquez, a retired Atlanta Police homicide detective with 22 years on the job, tells WSB that morale is extremely important to a police department.

Trust is apparently in rare supply.' CPSM also found a department without enough minority or women police officers and said that residents have a perception that officers are rude and heavy-handed, though there was no data found to support a feeling from some residents of color that their communities have been racially profiled. The audit says, 'Fear is viewed as a common means of control of officers. Its low morale is blamed in part on officers being afraid that they might get in trouble. WSB Radio has reached out to Interim Chief Dunkin for comment.Īmong the notable findings: Roswell PD has a lack of leadership. The draft report was released in late June, with the department under the leadership of interim police chief Helen Dunkin. The 182-page audit, however, focuses most of its 86 recommendations on management and organization-not police work. Since then, that chief, Rusty Grant, has stepped down and Center for Public Safety Management LLC has found a department that is suffering from low morale. Nearly a year after the previous Roswell Police Department chief promised a 'top-down' review of the department, an external audit has been completed.

Roswell police coin flip