QUESTIONS FOR POLICE DEPARTMENT EVALUATION
The Crime Task Force appointed by Mayor Perkins and City Council members has made its recommendations to the City Council. It is past time for the City Council to take some action on these recommendations. The Crime Task Force made 4 recommendations: (1) Adoption of a Curfew Ordinance (2) Neighborhood Watch Program in all areas of the city (3) Enforcement of the Noise Ordinance and (4) An evaluation of the Selma Police Department. We make the assumption that the Crime Task Force meant a professional analysis by an impartial firm specializing in evaluating Police Departments.
The woes of the Selma Police Department in the last two-three years are common knowledge. Experienced officers have quit, retired early, or taken other jobs leaving Selma to be protected by mostly younger officers with little or no experience. The Department is under staffed with around 45 certified officers, or less, depending on how many have quit in the last two weeks. The leadership of the Police Department needs to be evaluated to find out what is going on in the Department that keeps morale near zero.
This website believes that the Evaluation should talk privately and confidentially to every person employed by the Police Department and those who have quit the Department within the last 18 months to find out why they left the SPD. Each person should be assured that their comments will be kept confidential and that there will be no retaliation by Chief Martin or Mayor Perkins for information and honest answers given to the Evaluation Team.
Although we at this site have no way of questioning Chief Martin, we would like for the Evaluators to ask him some of the following questions:
- Did police department employees using city equipment on city time ever type his sermons?
- Does he really have his homestead exemption in Bibb County- is that his legal residence?
- Did police department personnel using city equipment on city time ever type his homework for classes at Selma U?
- Why did he let Mayor and City Council take $50,000 from the police department budget for a summer youth employment program while the Public Safety Building was contaminated with mold and in need of repairs?
- Did Chief Martin in writing order one of his officers to give, free of charge, police uniforms to the security service at Wallace College? Does that written order still exist?
- What has happened to the two 27 inch Plasma TVs which were on the third floor of the Police Department, and who paid for them in the first place?
- Why did Chief Martin recently hire an officer who had been arrested for DOMESTIC VIOLENCE? It can not be because the Chief did not know about the arrest because it was reported to us that he was the Night Supervisor on duty when the arrest was made.
- Why does Chief Martin let the "Marion Gang" of officers he has hired continue to wreck and tear up police vehicles with little or no discipline ever meted out to them.
- Why are State and Federal officials so reluctant to share any sensitive information with the Selma Police Department? The Department has more leaks than a used sieve.
- How many people have left the Selma Police Department since the present leadership took charge? This website can name at least 24 individuals who have left the SPD in recent months...and more contemplating leaving.
- Why have there been at least 3 EEOC complaints and at least 1 civil suit against the Department in the last year or so NOT FROM THE PUBLIC, BUT FROM DEPARTMENT PERSONNEL.
- Why was one officer who was caught sleeping on the Night Shift transferred to the Day Shift and given a better job..SOLELY BECAUSE HE IS ONE OF CHIEF MARTINS FAVORITES?
- Why has the chief let the elevator in the Public Safety Building remain out of commission for months?
- Why has he let the mold in the Public Safety Building become so pervasive that personnel are sick from the mold?
- Why is there a lack of adequate manpower in the Patrol Division?
- Why does the Department lack a trained Recruiter and Internal Affairs Investigator?
- Why the lack of an experienced Drug and Narcotics Officer? Is this the reason the Federal and State government had to send 150 people into Selma to arrest 11 drug dealers last week?
- WHY DID CHIEF MARTIN SAY IN THE PAPER THAT THE DRUG OPERATION ON ST. PHILLIPS STREET WAS TOO BIG FOR THE SPD TO HANDLE? REMEMBER, ONLY 11 PEOPLE WERE ARRESTED!!
- Why is there a lack of a Strategic Plan for the SPD?
- IT IS REPORTED TO US that Police Officers are taping the conversations of other department personnel. If the personnel are talking about Chief Martin, they get called on the carpet as his "snitches" report on their fellow employees!
This list could continue about what is wrong with the SPD, BUT MOST OF ALL OF THE PROBLEMS CAN BE TRACED TO THE LEADERSHIP OR LACK THEREOF OF THE SELMA POLICE DEPARTMENT. Is it any wonder that CRIME IS OUT OF CONTROL IN SELMA?!
This website urges the Selma City Council to move forward immediately with hiring an outside firm to evaluate the Selma Police Department, especially its leadership and command problems.
