Put to the litmus test of responsible, effective, efficient and accountable organizations, Maricopa is failing. “Who’s in charge?” is the all too frequent query of our dedicated police and firefighters, as well as those of us in the community with visions for the future of our city but no one place to direct our voices.
No organization can function effectively, efficiently, responsibly or profitably without several critical components in place to ensure laser focus on mission and guarantee accountability at every level. Successful organizations are accountable to themselves and to those they serve. They have in place well-defined organizational structures with clearly defined duties and responsibilities at each level. Leaders, managers and staff know their jobs and to whom they report. Each member has one manager—supervisor or leader—who ultimately resolves issues, supports, mentors, coaches and trains subordinates and brokers communication up, down and across the organization’s structure. No one has more than one immediate or “first line” supervisor or manager. The parts work harmoniously to achieve the mission only when leaders at all levels understand they can always delegate authority to subordinates but never their responsibility.
Our Department of Public Safety is top heavy, tilting and ready to fall. Despite having a police chief characterized by most officers as “a cops’ cop” quite capable of running his department and ensuring his subordinates have ample and vitally important advanced training, it seems he is only nominally in charge. He is unable to make autonomous, critically important command decisions without first consulting with others layers of command, arguably unnecessary layers: the public safety director and city manager. The same bulky and outdated process plagues our fire chief. Our city manager and a public safety director run both our police and fire departments. This is a recipe for disaster, not to mention fiscally irresponsible.
In the highly specialized arenas of law enforcement and first response informed, knowledgeable yet rapid decisions can be, and often are, the slender threads between life and death. Less dramatic but just as costly are those decisions delayed by layers of bureaucracy. Bureaucratic delays inevitably result in justifiable allegations of misconduct, complaints that languish or go uninvestigated, lawsuits, chaos and ultimately overall anarchy within agencies that cannot afford anything but strict discipline and adherence to well-defined codes of conduct, policy and procedure.
The chiefs and officers of our police and fire departments just don’t know to whom they should turn for answers and resolutions. This delays critical decisions as they wind their way up, across, then back down the quagmire of our current system. Our trifurcated chain-of-command is dysfunctional and quite uncommon in successful rapid response and first responder organizations. It is also counterproductive to efficient organizational management.
Clearly, any public records request would telegraph the chaos reigning in our most critical departments: police and fire. One can evidence these facts by probing the current civil lawsuit in which the city is currently embroiled. Our city council and manager are defendants in the suit brought by the City of Maricopa Police Association.
The recent, well-publicized controversy over the seizure by police of a burglary suspect’s vehicle should have been a matter of well-defined RICO laws and practices well known to the officers involved. The decision and all consequent actions became victim of the trifurcated system of our police command structure. This situation languishes in the courts. Controversy and allegations of misconduct unnecessarily hang like thudding storm clouds over the department and officers involved.
Are you aware of the frivolous ongoing internal affairs investigations slaying morale within our police department? Do you know we have citizen complaints languishing without documentation or follow up? Do you realize our officers lodge complaints and no one listens? Why? Because no one understands who is truly in charge. The buck stops nowhere. It keeps meandering until lost in confusion and frustration.
This must change, or we all will eventually pay higher consequences than we are already paying.
Functional city systems typically place citizens at the pinnacle of the organizational infrastructures followed, in descending order, by mayor, city council and manager. Communities—citizens, both collectively and individually—guide city councils, who in turn advise and work closely with city managers to ensure and safeguard the community best interest.
Without clearly defined, responsible and accountable organizational structures with clearly defined paths of authority and responsibility, chaos rules. Morale within those organizations suffers, and the entities themselves fail miserably. Sadly, when they fail at any level it is too often those they serve who pay the price. We’re paying that price now, and it gets more expensive the longer we take no action. The city council appointed our police and fire chiefs. Vested with the sacred duty of public safety, they’ve sworn oaths to faithfully uphold and execute the duties of their office. Leave them to do just that. We don’t need a city manager dictating to a director, who then dictates to two individuals deemed competent by not only our city council and mayor but by the very subordinates they manage—the highest of endorsements. Let them do their jobs or let them fail. We don’t need unnecessary layers of bureaucracy as barricades between our chiefs and the citizens whose interests the city council represents.
Who’s in charge? It should be the respective chiefs of our departments. The city would be better served spending the public safety director’s six-figure salary to hire more officers or firefighters, or modernize their equipment, or provide the advanced training both our firefighters and police officers want and badly need. Let’s leave the administrative management of the “office” to the city manager and public safety decisions to the chiefs and their subordinates.
G. Bridger Kimball
G. Bridger Kimball is a candidate for Maricopa City Council, a former U.S. Marine and a graduate of the Maricopa Citizen Leadership Academy.
Submitted photo
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