by Dave Robbins, retired Metro Officer
Along with these obvious producers of stress on the job, there were also the added issues of leadership. The motor division had its share of bureau commanders, so good, some not-so-good.
When we had the “good” ones, the morale was good and productivity was fine.
When we had the bad, well, you know.
When morale and productivity was low, all management saw was the productivity side of the equation. It never occurred to them that the policies and leadership quality could be at fault. The only way the bureau commanders could "fix" the problem was to lower the morale even farther by incorporating an autocratic dictatorship and “performance standard”. A fancy term for quotas. This is usually what inept leaders do; instead of looking at each officer individually, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and letting them know where they were excelling, meeting performance standards, or deficient, they make a "one size fits all" method of deciding who is or is not proficient.
When the standards were met, even more stringent standards were implemented, because now that they were invested in this idiotic system of determining achievement, there needed to be some arbitrary way of separating the officers' performance. Tickets were then scanned for “quality”, not “quantity”. Violations were categorized by type. Certain violations were deemed “goal oriented” and officers were required to write X amount of “goal oriented” citations.
So if you stopped a driver with an unrestrained child, no license, no insurance, unregistered vehicle, fictitious license plates, not wearing seat belts, open container, equipment violations, etc., you were supposed to arrest the driver. That required waiting for a transport officer, one for the trip to jail and one for the child to be booked into Child Haven.
LVMPD policy also states that before you tow the vehicle, you should call someone to come and get the vehicle since everyone is in dire straits due to the economy.
So, if the vehicle is unregistered and uninsured, you were still supposed to release the vehicle. On several occasions, the “someone” would respond with the entire (usually irate) family. And on many occasions, the “someone” didn’t have a valid license. In any case, each situation was a waste of the officer’s time (at taxpayer’s expense).
For many years, the traffic division was stationed in the “basement” of city hall. Brand new area substations were being built to accommodate patrol officers but no plans had been made for a new Traffic Substation. The old Southeast substation was then “refurbished” and traffic moved into that building, at the intersection of St. Louis and Atlantic. The building was built in 1972 and still retained the 70’s features. The showers were located on one side of a main hallway and the locker room (with 70’s style lockers) was positioned on the opposite side of the hallway, requiring a walk across the hallway to your locker. Oh yeah, not everyone had a locker. No workout facilities. The substation wasn’t even listed in the LVMPD website as a substation. The administration had no qualms about expressing their disdain for the traffic officers, often lauding traffic for their efforts to the public but then internally claiming traffic officers were a pain to deal with. The majority of officers assigned to traffic were senior on the department and had a lot of very reasonable opinions about how to properly do the job. The bosses wanted no part of that. It was their way or the highway. They often alluded to who lost the rock-paper-scissor game to address the traffic briefings.
During my tenure in the motor division, I was involved in many more accidents than any other traffic officer(9 total, I believe). Each time I was hit, I was traveling less than 30 mph. Once I wasn't moving at all; a vehicle hit me while I was standing on the opposite side of the road dealing with another traffic accident. Sometimes I even had my emergency lights and siren on, and STILL got hit. Some of those accidents required a trip to the hospital and some surgeries. I became a familiar face in UMC Trauma. Each time I was wheeled in on a gurney, I heard the familiar word “Again?” Each recovery required doctors, more surgeries, therapy and the dreaded “light duty”. My personal accident scenes were a favorite for the evening news. “Metro motor cop gets hit…again…and again…and again”. It was pretty bad when I would go to my favorite restaurant and the owner had a front page picture of my wreck, even in the foreign language newspapers.
After each time, I got back on the bike.
Hard headed? Some say so. Dumb? Heard that too. I was resolved not to let anything to keep me down and away from what I considered the best job on the department (okay, second best. Gotta give cred to the Air Unit) Some believed I had a “S#&t” magnet on my bike.
I couldn’t find it. Neither could our mechanics.
Was it on my bike?
To be continued…
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