Mailbag: Police issues are serious

We Burbank Police Officers Assn. Board of Directors have read Mr. Gunn’s opinion letter to the Leader and find his comments very disturbing. Quite frankly, we would expect a more professional, articulated response from someone who is a retired law enforcement commander and a former police commissioner.

The recent survey completed by 118 of our members was shared with Chief Scott LaChasse with the hope he would recognize the issues his personnel are facing. We hope that sharing the results of the survey with Chief LaChasse will help bring forward positive and constructive changes to the Burbank Police Department.

Suggesting (without merit) that the survey is “phony” only seeks to dismiss valid issues that are of genuine concern since great efforts were made to ensure the survey was conducted objectively, accurately and professionally. Suggesting that our officers should “resign” will certainly not help to allay the concerns of such a large segment of our membership. We will give Mr. Gunn the benefit of the doubt since he was not able to review the survey in its entirety before making his comments.

As we are working with the chief, we did not intend for the survey to be released to the public at this time. We understand that Mr. Gunn may have some questions, so we would be open (when appropriate) to sit down with him to explain the survey and the concerns of our members in greater detail.

While Mr. Gunn wants to portray your police force as bringing forward “phony” issues, we want to assure you that we (the BPOA) bring forward only real issues that significantly detract from our ability to provide effective and essential police services to our community. We believe these issues are of significant public concern, and we hope our community will support our membership as we move forward.

Burbank Police Officers’ Assn.
Board of Directors