For fewer than four months, the Plainsboro Police Department has had a new chief, and his administration already is dealing with the same situation every one of his predecessors has had to face — anonymous letters to the press alleging administrative misconduct.
Most of the time, the letters allege that practices by Plainsboro police officials conflict with state laws regarding instituting ticket quotas. This time, it is no different.
A letter sent to the West Windsor-Plainsboro News this month alleges that a new evaluation process for police officers is on the verge of becoming a policy that forces them to make a certain number of traffic stops and issue a certain number of tickets. However, Chief Richard Furda says it is a new evaluation process he designed simply to help ensure his officers are up to par with performing all of the functions included in their job description.
The new evaluation process is being created, Furda says, to find an updated way to conduct personnel evaluations. The former process was long, cumbersome and to do an evaluation for one police officer usually took a supervisor two to three days to complete.
Furda says the new system is simply being created to give officers a benchmark in seeing where most of their colleagues are measuring up. “We’re trying to identify training deficiencies,” Furda says. “I am in no way trying to circumvent the quota law.”
Furda maintains that the new evaluation policy has not even gone into effect because it is still being drafted.
The letter includes a patrol performance sheet from the department for the fourth quarter of 2008, or October 1 through December 31. The performance sheet shows the officer’s name, then shows the number of hours, the number of summons written, the amount of summons per hour the officer is issuing, the number of motor vehicle stops, and the number of those stops made per hour, and more information.
“Police officers are now being assessed per hour based on the mean or median number of summonses per hour,” the anonymous letter states. “This is the most convoluted formula one has ever seen. The officers themselves create the average, and then those same officers have to be within 20 percent of the very average that they are creating. The department has created a system which forces you to chase yourself. Officers are being told this is not a quota, yet you have to be within a numerical minimum number of summonses per hour. How is that not a quota?”
The letter also includes a copy of Furda’s E-mail to everyone on the department to explain his position further. In that letter, Furda says the evaluation will measure those “functions that I believe are key components of general patrol duties,” he said. “You will now know what I want you to focus on, and you are getting back to police work.”
“My intent was to have an evaluation that measures what you do, not who you are, hence the Performance Based Evaluation,” Furda wrote in the letter, which stated that he was aware that there was considerable confusion in the department regarding the new evaluation process, and more importantly, concern from officers that the process would be a tool for preferring discipline or terminating personnel.
In the letter, Furda also said that supervisors and command staff would be able to identify individuals who are having trouble with aspects of the job sooner rather than later. For example, if a new officer makes a lot of stops but can’t find the probable cause to make the arrest, then training could be offered.
Furda also explains that the new system looks at the same statistics which have always been tracked, just in a different way. “Instead of comparing all the members against each other, despite job function, we are now comparing members against each other in the same job function,” he wrote in the letter.
He said that assuming 60 percent of an officer’s workday is consumed by calls for service and reports, the department will only be counting 40 percent of the workday as “down time.” Not counted are time off the road, like vacation time, illness, or training. Then, “we are averaging everyone’s production and obtaining both the mean and median averages, then selecting the one that is the lowest. Finally, we are allowing for members to be within 20 percent of those averages, above or below, on each discreet category,” the letter states.
In essence, an officer will be evaluated on 40 percent of his or her work time on the road, at the lowest possible comparative average, “with a 20 percent ‘gift,’” Furda wrote. “This seems pretty fair to me, and, if you look at the proposal, you will see the output requested, being within 20 percent of the average of your co-workers, is not difficult to attain.”
Still, the author of the anonymous letter called Furda’s E-mail “an attempt at damage control.” The letter states that supervisors were in a meeting with the chief when he put the policy together, and that they heard him clearly state that the policy would be followed, or the consequence would result in the “personal improvement plans,” discipline, and possible termination.
Furda, however, says that his words were taken out of context. If a police officer flat-out refuses to make stops and issue summonses to law-breakers entirely, it is a problem because those responsibilities are part of the job title, for which he or she is paid, he said. He said the policy is not meant to look for ways to terminate an officer’s employment. But this new system still has to be approved by the local police union and still falls subject to attorney review.
The letter alleges that the new assessment is the result of a class in Montville that will supposedly be attended by some of Plainsboro’s administrative officials. The letter writer included a copy of the advertisement for the training class to be held in May at the Montville Township Police Department.
“Agencies that have tried to develop fair and defensible productivity standards are repeatedly challenged as running a ‘quota’ system by the very employees who are the least productive,” the description for the class — the “Quota Free Police Productivity System” — reads. “This program teaches how management can establish and enforce (without establishing a quota-systems, or violating state anti-quota laws) objective and fair productivity standards to ensure that every employee contributes his/her fair share of work productivity.”
The letter writer says the company running the class “has declared themselves an expert in getting around the law.”
“Would anyone stand for a class which teaches an officer to get around probable cause for a search warrant?” the letter questions.
The letter writer says this effort is part of a larger issue — that Plainsboro Township needs revenue. “The town is so poorly managed that they are turning to the town’s justice system to cover for their misdeeds,” the letter alleges. “The township, in the last four years alone, has spent close to half a million dollars in labor attorney fees — over $100,”000 per year just to the labor attorney,” the letter alleges. “The town recently agreed to a severance payment with its former chief financial officer. This severance payment was six months salary — over $50,”000. What did they do with that? Because they fired her for ‘parking money’ in the budget, and when they went to fire her, she explained how Township Administrator Robert Sheehan was aware of this parking. Suddenly, the firing became a resignation with a $50,”000 going away present.”
Further, the letter writer states that Sheehan was heard asking the chief why more tickets were not being written. “In these tough economic times, they want the police to write that extra taillight ticket to the person who just lost their job,” the letter states. “The community should be outraged that the township not only wastes so much of their money, but they want the police to take more of it.”
When asked to respond, Sheehan declined to comment on an anonymous letter. However, he said, “We respect and do not violate the quota laws. We expect our officers to be actively patrolling our community in a variety of ways, including motor vehicle matters.”
“Believe me, if we were in violation of this quota law, someone other than an anonymous letter writer would be clued in and focusing attention on it long ago,” he added.
Furda also said he was not able to go into comment on any of the specifics of the anonymous letter, but said that “the bottom line is they’re complaining about something that does not even exist yet. I don’t know who sent it or why. I can’t offer comment on it.”
History of Anonymous Letters. This is the third time in less than a year that an anonymous letter has suggested unrest in the Plainsboro Police Department.
In June, 2008, allegations were made in a letter that a Plainsboro police officer was questioned about his sexual preference during his appeal of a sergeant’s exam and. In a separate incident, but mentioned in the same letter, allegations were made that a performance improvement plan put into place to improve another officer’s performance violates the state quota law.
In that incident, the letter stated, a plan was put into place during the prior year to increase the officer’s monthly selective enforcements and motor vehicle stops. The plan asked him to target 8-10 operations per month for the remainder of 2007.”
Further, the memo stated, “the employee was informed that failure to improve any noted performance deficiencies will be reflected in the next performance evaluation and may subject him to future disciplinary action.”
The anonymous letter alleged then, too, that the plan violated the state quota law, which states that state, county, and municipal police departments “shall not establish any policy, either formal or informal, requiring or suggesting that any law enforcement officer meet a quota for arrests or citations.” The law also states that “the department or force shall not use the number of arrests or citations issued by a law enforcement officer as the sole or primary criterion for promotion, demotion, dismissal, or the earning of any benefit provided by the department or force.”
Elizabeth Bondurant, who was the police chief at the time, said that the department did not violate the law at all, saying that traffic enforcement is a basic function of a police officer’s job, and that police officials, at no time, told officers to write a specific number of tickets.
Further, she explained then that selective enforcement means “going to particular locations at particular times to focus on specific violations.” For example, selective enforcement would be sending officers to areas of town where residents have complained about problems of a high number of accidents. Selective enforcement also includes campaigns like “Click-It or Ticket” and the drunk driving campaigns for which the department receives grants.
Following that anonymous letter, another soon followed, targeting Bondurant’s decision to retire, which she did in October, when Furda took over. That letter questioned Bondurant’s motives for retirement, implying she was leaving to avoid dealing with the fallout from the unrest.
Prior to these letters, every chief in Plainsboro Police Department’s 30-year history has had to deal with occasional anonymous letters alleging official misconduct there.
