Police Department Study Has Some Officers Worried About a Shake-Up

An effort by police administrators to “flatten the organization” of the San Diego Police Department and cut through nine layers of bureaucracy has many officers worried about their jobs, Assistant Police Chief Norm Stamper said Thursday.

Stamper is leading a two-part study of the department that will begin with a management audit and then follow it with what is expected to be a reorganization of the agency.

Such a restructuring probably will be needed to keep police policies from getting distorted through the ranks of chief to patrol officer, he said.

“The announcement has fueled a considerable amount of speculation of what the study is going to reveal and what recommendations are going to come out,” he said. “It’s reasonable to raise questions about how you flatten the organization and how it could have an effect on your job.”

Until he finishes the study, Stamper said he will not know whether anybody will lose jobs or be transferred into new slots.

But the department, he said, “is looking at consequential change here; not just some cosmetic change that shuffles the same old deck. I’m not attempting to reassure anybody of anything.”

Stamper, the department’s second in command, began the study earlier this month after Police Chief Bob Burgreen complained that his philosophy for the department wasn’t being carried out, even after his two years in command.

Burgreen has a grand--some say vague--vision of the 1,850-person department. According to Stamper, Burgreen wants San Diego police to be the best in the business, do their jobs with “dignity and respect,” be proud of their work, show spirit, avoid racism and sexism, and be mindful of San Diego citizens and their safety.

That message doesn’t always work its way down to the bottom, Stamper said.

“We’ve gotten more and more bureaucratic because of the numbers of ranks we have,” he said. “The more levels you have, the less likely the bottom knows what the top is doing.”

The Police Department has a chief, assistant chief, four deputy chiefs, seven commanders, captains, lieutenants, sergeants, agents and police officers, including detectives, traffic officers and patrol officers.

Talk of reshuffling has members of the department, whose officers are upset over charges of corruption and incompetence, concerned about their future, he said.

San Diego police already are under attack from critics over questionable shootings--23 people have been shot this year, nine fatally. And a multi-agency task force looking into the murders of 43 women, mostly prostitutes and transients, is investigating possible police involvement with prostitutes.

Earlier this year, Burgreen asked Stamper to review the work of the task force. As a result, Stamper recommended splitting the task force into three groups: one that would deal with possible police corruption; another that would investigate all the murders; and a third that would look specifically at the murder of prostitute Donna Gentile, who had some involvement with police.

Meanwhile, the department is grappling with the largest manhunt in its history. Homicide detectives are looking for a serial killer said to be responsible for the fatal stabbings of five women in the Clairemont-University City area since January.

The city also is facing a record for homicides and other violent crime, statistics show.

Burgreen has separate internal department studies that are analyzing the department’s lethal force procedures and its ethics policy.

Burgreen’s announcement of the organizational study last week to a group of captains, commanders and deputy chiefs, ignited rumors.

One captain told Stamper that he understood the department’s six commander positions were being eliminated.

The rumor was not surprising, Stamper said. Commanders are the most recent positions added in most police departments, and the position, between a captain and deputy chief, is often seen as unnecessary, he said.

The rumors are one example of what Burgreen is trying to remedy, Stamper said.

“We want to create an organizational structure that minimizes distortions,” he said. “We’ve got information between the chief to the cop on the beat and everyone in between colors it, shades it, and subtracts from it.”

Stamper said “flattening” could occur in any number of ways, most having to do with establishing a shorter chain of command.

Stamper is familiar with such restructuring. His doctoral dissertation consisted of surveying 52 police chiefs and their assistants to find out if their policies were being carried out throughout the department. Most were not, Stamper found.

“It wasn’t because these were bad people. It was their god-awful structure,” he said. “The administration and the cop on the beat are sometimes in two different worlds. If you run in administrative circles, you can never know the fears and concerns of the cop on the beat.”