The survey results were sent to Mayor Bill Saffo and city council members on Friday last week as part of the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association’s push for accountability and transparency over deep-seated, longstanding issues in the police department.
In a letter, NCSBA Executive Director John Midgette references a meeting with Saffo and Councilman Luke Waddell in October to discuss concerns in the police department. Midgette voiced frustration that the final report prepared as part of a $75,000 third-party investigation conducted by the U.S. ISS firm had not been released. As first reported by WHQR, the report was initiated at least in part by a formal human resources complaint by a retiring police officer. The investigation was followed by $45,000 in consulting contracts aimed at improving the department.
City Manager Tony Caudle has repeatedly declined to release the ISS report to media outlets (including WHQR). He’s also blocked the release of the report, or even an executive summary of its findings, to members of city council. (Caudle has announced he plans to retire at the end of May; it's unclear if his successor will take a similar stance on the confidentiality of the report.)
NCSBA has lobbied for the release of the ISS report, and in December commissioned a legal analysis by attorney J. Michael McGuiness, who argued that case law supports making the report public. The analysis noted the statutory exemption to the state’s personnel law that would allow Caudle and city council to release the report if it is deemed “essential to maintaining the public confidence or to maintaining the level and quality of city services.” According to Midgette, the evaluation emailed to the city was never opened. Midgette noted NCPBA was “exploring legal action to release the U.S. ISS report.”
Midgette wrote that NCPBA “authorized development of a membership survey using many of the questions and topics we believe were presented in the ISS report,” as well as “questions concerning the city’s recently announced financial shortfall.” He noted that the local PBA chapter membership represented 89% of the WPD’s officers. The survey was sent out on March 21, according to Midgette, and finalized on April 4.
In addition to asking the mayor and council to consider the survey results Midgette also asked for input on the selection of the chief. Williams is set to retire by the end of the fiscal year on June 30. (The city is currently soliciting applications through May 5, with help from the Police Executive Research Forum)
Note: You can find NCPBA's correspondence to the city and the results of its survey at the end of this article.
Survey results
The survey posed 36 questions to 115 sworn officers (the department currently has just over 260 sworn officers and over 60 professional staff). Most of the respondents, around 72%, were officers below the rank of sergeant, with a smaller number of sergeants and only a handful of lieutenants. The survey was broadly representative of the police force, but it did appear to underrepresent Black officers (just over 4% of respondents were Black, while Black officers have made up between 10-11% of the force in recent years).
The results were not all negative: a majority of respondents said their job responsibilities and expectations were clear, their skills were well utilized, and there was a satisfactory variety of tasks and challenges at work. Responses to questions about professional development and feedback were mixed.
But when it came to WPD as a workplace, the results were decidedly grim. Roughly 73% said the environment was poor. Nearly 80% said WPD’s leadership failed to support them or stay connected with them, and over 75% said they felt uncomfortable communicating and collaborating with agency leaders. Roughly two-thirds of officers said they felt WPD didn’t value their contributions — and over three-quarters said WPD didn’t value their input. Nearly 90% said they feared some level of retaliation from leadership when filing grievances.
Survey responses reflected negatively on Chief Donny Williams, as well. Over 80% said he had not made the agency better. Over 85% agreed Williams had created a racial divide in the department — an allegation other top officers have made. Williams has, in turn, accused his critics of being racist or racially motivated. Over 90% of officers agreed that “unessential social police units” have forced patrol and other divisions to work short-staffed (in both cases, the majority of respondents agreed “strongly”).
Related: Donny Williams in Black and White
Over 80% said the current promotion process is unfair. Over 90% said the process failed to put the right people in leadership; a similar percentage said the assignment of specialized positions wasn’t based on merit.
The results also show deep discontent beyond the police department. Well over 90% of officers said city council had failed to give “substantial weight” to the department’s needs and that Caudle’s office had failed to address departmental issues. Over 85% were also critical of the human resources office’s handling of issues at the police department
Staffing was also a major issue. Over 90% of officers agreed that short-staffing threatened their safety and ability to service the community. Over 80% said they were unhappy with city benefits; over 90% said they were unhappy with their compensation.
In general, the vast majority of respondents — over 90% — said they were unsatisfied with the police department's internal operations and executive leadership. Only four officers were neutral or positive about morale — over 95% were unsatisfied.
Just 7% said they’d recommend WPD as a good place to work. Asked if they were actively considering leaving the department, over a third said "yes," with almost 40% saying "maybe."
Limited response
WHQR sent a list of questions about the ISS report and the NCPBA survey to Saffo and council members. No one directly answered those questions, but Waddell did share an email he’d sent to a retired WPD lieutenant.
Waddell noted that he’d requested an executive summary of the report, “at minimum,” but was denied. He called the “ongoing lack of transparency” both “disappointing and frustrating.”
Waddell called the survey results “deeply concerning,” saying he felt poor morale impacted the department's “operational readiness” and “the safety and security of our community.”
WPD declined to comment.
Below: Correspondence from the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association to the city; results of the NCPBA survey.
