Police chief promises to tackle poor morale

The buck stops with him.

That’s the reaction from Calgary’s top cop in the wake of Thursday’s damning police commission report indicating record-low morale among Calgary’s finest.

Speaking to Postmedia News on Friday, police chief Roger Chaffin said he understands and accepts the frustrations of his employees, and says he isn’t blind to how it impacts the organization.

“We’ve spent quite a bit of our year trying to understand those issues,” Chaffin said.

“But you have to appreciate we’re in an environment where we’re asking so much from our officers, coupled with a heavy workload and budget constraints we went through this year that frustrated our development of projects and initiatives.”

Made available this summer to the 1,300 civilian and sworn Calgary police members, the survey paints a bleak morale picture that puts both employee engagement and work satisfaction at lows never before seen in the city.

“The sentiment in the survey is that there’s frustration about trust in leadership — and I respect that criticism,” he said.

“It’s just that when you take a principled position about what has to happen in policing in order to embolden public trust and confidence — as public trust rises, you see a lowering in morale.”

Chaffin said he and his executive have their work cut out for them in the coming year to be mindful of how that reality impacts the Calgary Police Service, and what can be done to improve.

“The issue, as I said when I started in this position, is that I would favour a more accountable and more transparent organization,” he said. “Transparency can be very difficult at times, particularly when officers are being arrested — it’s hard to look at one thing and say ‘here’s the one thing that lowered morale.’ ”

Chaffin points to council’s approval to add $14.3 million to the police budget, allowing the service to hire as many as 55 new officers.

“Those new bodies coming in this year are going to be very, very important to us — but there’s a lag time,” he said, explaining the recruitment and hiring process will likely take most of 2018.

Part of the chief’s efforts to get boots on the street includes his controversial decision to reintroduce tenure, a policy mandating limits on how long constables are permitted to work in specialty units — and one publicly criticized by Calgary Police Association president Les Kaminski.

“I appreciate the CPA president and their members who are strongly against the idea of tenure — I understand that criticism and respect their point, but as management, I have to be able to look at the talent in our organization,” he said.

“Tenure doesn’t increase the size of our organization, but it allows us to free up spots for some of our front-line people who’ve earned that opportunity and bring some talent back to the front line to help in mentoring.”

While focusing on the employees should be, and continues to be, his number 1 concern, Chaffin said the buck does indeed stop with him when it comes to low morale.

“Even with all of our concerns about bullying and harassment, the programs we’ve stood up and the reforms we’ve done — it takes time for people to feel that it’s the right approach,” he said. “You can talk all day about the back-and-forth between the association’s position and my position, but at the end of the day, it all lands on me — and I’ll have to do all I can to find improvements for everybody.”