“If I’m going to risk my life for $15 an hour, when I can go to Chick-fil-A and make at least $18 and be off on Sunday and the worst thing I have to do is say ‘my pleasure’ a thousand times a day, then what’s the purpose, you know?”

That question was asked by one of five current Columbus Police Department officers who agreed to be interviewed last week by The Dispatch on condition of anonymity. Those officers voiced many complaints about the department as it currently stands, claiming CPD faced serious morale issues arising from a culture of favoritism and retaliation centering around Police Chief Fred Shelton. They also leveled criticism at the mayor, claiming he was complicit in allowing the issues to persist.

Another officer pointed squarely at Shelton as the cause of the high turnover.

“Turnover starts with the chief police, and retaliation from the chief of police,” he said. “He’s run police officers away.”

They also complained about lack of access to training and opportunities for promotion, ineffectual command staff surrounding the chief and deficiencies in equipment and, of course, pay.

The unrest at CPD came to the surface after an apparent sick-out last Friday, during which at least five officers called in sick rather than reporting for duty. An officer who spoke anonymously to The Dispatch said it was a deliberate tactic to draw public notice to issues in the department.

Officers’ complaints
A common theme among the officers was the belief that the chief played favorites, both with discipline and with who got specialized training.

“Training is selective based on whether he likes you or not this week,” one officer said. “There’s no system of merit to who gets the training. If you are in his good graces, you get (it.)”

The reasons given for denying training requests were often inconsistent, that officer said.

“We had someone put in for training and get denied,” he said. “They were told it was because they were still on probation (as a new officer.) But then they turned around and gave it to another officer who was also on probation.”

Another patrol officer said it was common to be turned down for training opportunities due to a perception that the officer wasn’t going to stay, especially if they were young or from outside the area.

The officers said colleagues who had been disciplined or suspended were denied outside training, but argued that at least half of the department had been suspended at one time or another in the past year.

They also claimed discipline was capricious and based more on Shelton’s opinion than on anything else.

“It’s selective on who he chooses to discipline,” one officer said. “You can have someone file a complaint about this officer and it’ll be fine, but if it’s that officer then they get thrown under the bus.”

Promotions are hard to come by, the officers said, with tests for rank few and far between. They alleged that corporals — the lowest-ranked of the supervisors, which also include sergeants and lieutenants — were being tasked to do lieutenants’ work but then denied the opportunity to take the exams to be promoted.

Poor equipment and issues with pay also contributed to the morale issues, the officers said. The officers pointed out that there weren’t enough vehicles to go around, even at the current staffing level — CPD is budgeted for 64 officers but has fewer than 50 now.

“If I clock in and don’t have a patrol car, how can I do my job?” a patrol officer said. “That doesn’t make sense. Imagine if we were fully staffed. We’d have to double up because we don’t have enough patrol cars.”

Officers said they feel alone, and unsupported by Shelton and his command staff.

“Even though we have (Assistant Chief Doran Johnson and Chief of Patrol Anthony Nelson) they have no say-so in anything that goes on,” an officer said. “If you need something from them right away, they can’t even make a call on it. They have to get the ok from the chief first. They were put in place just to fill a slot.”

Another laid the blame at City Hall.

“I feel like for (the mayor) to be silent when you know this stuff is going on means that you’re giving consent for that behavior,” an officer said. “If you’ve heard what’s going on in the department, what are you doing to change it?”

The chief and mayor respond
Shelton and Mayor Keith Gaskin sat down with The Dispatch Thursday afternoon to talk about the dissident officers’ complaints.

Shelton said some of those concerns were actionable, but some were “sour grapes.”

Training decisions were signed off on by the individual officer’s supervisor, then the captain, then the assistant chief before they even got to him, he said. Decisions were made so that certain officers couldn’t “stack” their resumes.

“You bring that training back to benefit the police department,” he said. “If someone wants to be a firearms instructor, I’m not going to send him to 40-hour training if he’s going to leave. That wouldn’t help us…You also don’t want to send a person who doesn’t have that much time (in service). You want to put the best people in the best positions.”

He also denied charges that over half of the current officers had been disciplined, and that discipline was uneven.

“Each shift has different supervisors with different leadership styles,” he said. “They write it up and send it to me, and I evaluate it. If it requires discipline, I move on it. Otherwise it goes in their file.”
Shelton said if officers feel they are being retaliated against or discipline is improper, there is a grievance procedure.

“If they have an issue, the city has a grievance policy,” he said. “They start at the bottom (with their supervisor) and can go all the way to the mayor and city council…None of these officers has filed a grievance about it.”

Shelton said it didn’t help when officers were “sitting there concerned about something and not bringing it forward.”

“This (grievance) procedure has been in place for years,” he said. “If it’s not being used, we don’t know if it’s effective or not.”

Shelton denied that officers were doing work above their pay grade, because corporals, sergeants and lieutenants were all supervisory by nature.

“Running a shift is in the job description,” Shelton said. “(Corporals) are not doing lieutenant’s work.”

Promotional exams were required by the Civil Service Commission, he said, and he could not just ask the council to promote someone. He said he was working to accelerate the rate at which tests were given, and that the testing had been changed to make it more about the department’s procedures and the city handbook.

“We can’t change the process, but we can give (tests) more often and tailor them to be more specific,” he said.

Shelton said the complaints did not surprise him.

“I’ve been through eight chiefs, and some of the stuff they’re complaining about is stuff I complained about,” he said.

Gaskin said he and Shelton had talked about “probably every issue that has been brought up.”

“Officers tell me it’s not so much pay but morale,” he said. “It’s a young staff and they’re having to deal with a lot of pressures, and the city doesn’t have a plan of training them or a clear path to higher salaries or promotion.”

The city was working on a fleet management system similar to the one adopted by the sheriff’s department, Gaskin said. It was using technology such as the “sky cops” to take some of the pressure off officers, but “moving the ball” was hard because of the city’s finances.

Gaskin and Shelton agreed that a recent anonymous survey of police officers would help provide a road map for bettering the department.

“(Shelton) and I have to bring morale up,” Gaskin said. “That’s the main thing. We know we can’t give pay raises right now.”

“I wish I could write a check and cover it all, but I can’t,” Shelton said. “We’ve got to be able to sustain it.”

Managing editor Zack Plair contributed to this story.