Response to My Employee Evaluation

well, i’m looking for some help with a response to my employee evaulation. i’m police officer on the night shift, and i got dinged (again) for not writing enough tickets and making vehicle stops. last year i got told the same thing, and i wrote a rebuttal, challenging this and explaining why i thought it was stupid. (note: i readily admit to having a low number of tickets, and understand the positive effect they can have on a city’s finances.)

a little background on me: as far as my performance, i lead the shift, and have since i’ve been a police officer, with the number of calls for service i’ve repsonded to, as well as the amount of cases. what this means, when everyone else is arresting OWI’s or writing tickets or hanging around the bars staring at chicks, i’m the guy that’s driving around your neighborhood trying to catch the jerk that broke into your car.

that brings me to my second point-i lead the shift in “in progress calls,” i.e. i’m driving by a buisness and i catch somone in the act breaking in. in fact, few people on shift have never actually caught anyone doing it.

thirdly, my copnviction rate is nearly, if not at, 100% in the 7 years i’ve been a cop. this means that everyone has been convicted that i’ve arrested, or plead to a lesser charge. what that means is i’m not making BS arrests.

i could go on and on, but as citizens, what do you expect fo yuor police officers?

what would you suggest that i write?

thanks for your help…i have about a week (i think) to write my rebuttal, and i intend to makes some waves this year…

Here’s what I expect:

I wish there were more of you in my area.
It would be nice to see more than a few cops in the city care about the community.

It seems a delicate matter, or could be depending on the person reading the rebuttal.

Obviously you have extremely sound points regarding areas where your performance has been not only outstanding but is the best of anyone in your shift.

On the other hand, if an asshole is the person reading the rebuttal and has any input towards your record, or towards any decisions affecting you, or certainly any decision making power, anything perceived as “defensive” or “you’re wrong” or argumentative could have adverse result.

Do you have a superior who agrees that you should not be taking more time of these patrol activities you are doing towards spending time writing traffic tickets and it can go on the record that you are doing as per his instructions?

Do you have a superior that can be quoted regarding your overall performance?

It could even be the case that the best thing is to acknowledge the complaint about traffic tickets and have some crap about how you are going to consult with your superior officer on how these multiple needs in serving the department can best be met and you are dedicated to improvement.

It is important to note that I am not in the remotest sense knowledgeable in police matters. I am going only from the standpoint of human psychology and similar situations in other fields.

Best of luck, for sure!

I honor your integrity.

Just want to say , thank God there is now at least one cop I know of who doesn’t just sit around writing tickets all fucking day. Don’t know how to help you on your response, but thanks for actually spending your time doing things that matter.

[quote]waylanderxx wrote:
Just want to say , thank God there is now at least one cop I know of who doesn’t just sit around writing tickets all fucking day. Don’t know how to help you on your response, but thanks for actually spending your time doing things that matter.[/quote]

It’s no real surprise he is here at T-Nation.

OP, Are your reviews part of public record? I would assume they were. If they are, perhaps you could point a few concerned citizens to the right place so they can confront your local government with exactly why an officer which serves the community so well is being graded negatively on a performance review. Generally, your most superior commanding officer is an elected official, the only way you can get things changed is with public pressure to do so. I would try to avoid making it known that you leaked your review though, see if you can get someone to spearhead it. Have them come in and ask for ALL police officer annual reviews, then have them take you review to the papers in disgust. Might work.

V

Maybe you can find some people on this site that live around where you work, and get some of them to look into it like Vegita said.

Scan your review with your name and important numbers blocked out and offer it to a local paper/news with the response of “Police say there is no such thing as ticket quota’s then why am I getting dinged for failing to meet it”.

IMO 95% of the cops are criminals with badges, I have seen some of the most corrupt shit go down “in the name of the law” and watched cops walk away from blatant murder and theft without so much as a warning. It is good to see that a few of you are actually good people and not just revanators for the town/county/state.

I hate to be the spoilsport here but let’s face it: What most of the community thinks is a cop’s main role isn’t necessarily what it really is. This is proven in your review. Sort of like the TSA here in the U.S. I’m not so sure how many true, determined terrorists they’re preventing from flying, but they sure indeed give the ILLUSION of prevention–which is important to keeping our economy functioning, to preserving public order.

In the same vein, I’m convinced that to some public prosecutors, it’s not as important they charge the true perpetrator with the crime as it is to simply gain a conviction. (Think recent news articles where prosecutors have attempted to suppress DNA evidence post-conviction.) So, how hard is it to believe that one of a cop’s true roles is to generate community revenue through an alternative tax (i.e., the traffic ticket)?

But to complain about any of this or push-back? You’ll be swimming against an awfully strong current. Again, you’ll hear the illusion of concern, but it will ultimately fall on deaf ears. You won’t be the first person in the world to change professions because s/he was disillusioned once they saw the true nature of the beast they were serving.

You sound like a stand-up, give-back kind of guy. I wish you luck.

[quote]waylanderxx wrote:
Just want to say , thank God there is now at least one cop I know of who doesn’t just sit around writing tickets all fucking day. Don’t know how to help you on your response, but thanks for actually spending your time doing things that matter.[/quote]

x2!!!

Good luck in your endeavor to getting the evaluation resolved in your favor.

Hi, as a fellow T-Nation citizen and this being some of the only therapy time I get away from the morons of the world, let me help you with your response. This is my opinion of what you should do based upon many of my bitter experiences. I normally don’t share responses like this due to numerous reasons but there are so many people on the TNation boards that I do respect and admire. I am an executive director at a large corporation and see this everyday.
The first 1/3 of this response is my opinion, the rest you don’t have to read.

Ideal Response - Don’t Make Waves.

When it comes to any type of employment review done by a board, they don’t care about the quality of work you do, the pride you take, or the man you are.

There is no overall because the majority of “professionals” that will be reviewing you are not
qualified nor care. Their only ability is to nit pick. They will not go into anything they don’t know or understand, they will only judge you on areas that they are comfortable in. This is why you are being nagged about filling quotas not about the spirit or upholding the ideals of your profession. The sycophants that kiss their posteriors get the glowing reviews by doing everything in their careers based on the expectations set out by these dangerously under-qualified people and not about doing the right thing.

Don’t make a scene.

Man is a social animal and cannot live without man. As a law enforcement officer you obviously know that if you throw someone into the hole, they go nuts without other people. The same is so with your review board, if you make a scene about doing the right thing, they will view it as an attack against all of them NOT you trying to enlighten them about you. These people work on the majority rules and will make your life difficult and do everything in their power to hurt you. (I will get into the reasons why later if you want to know.) They will always remember you. Every review board will be the same and they share information on who to watch out for because they all gossip like old women. There is no mythical champion of your cause, that is only in the movies. Boards like these always push out the “troublesome, argumentative” guy because it jeopardizes their jobs.

That is my opinion on what you should think about before you write a real man’s response that will deep six your career. The world hates real men and this is one of the only places that I found that the few can congregate.

Now that I have dispensed that. I would like to give a TC style rant that will probably get me into alot of trouble. BTW TC, I have boatloads of respect for you. Every male here can learn something from 3 important articles that he wrote, 1st was on the subject of scavengers, 2nd on MuscleMedia/ESA, 3rd on his pretending to call it a day and raise emu or some other large bird (can’t remember). I am writing this because I hope that someone here can learn from my experiences and mistakes.

The world that everyone takes for granted is actually upside down. Forget the sales and marketing terms that you heard. There are only Hunters, Gathers, and Scavengers. There are actually very few Hunters left in the world. The majority of people at the top and decision making roles are actually Scavengers. This is the sad reality of every company I have been part of and deal with. They are the most useless examples of human beings. I will get into the image of all of this later.

FIRST RULE:
Don’t let anyone inside your company know that you are a hunter “a real man.”

They will be nice to your face but do everything to sabotage you because they are afraid that you will get ahead and they will not. Eventually if you pass into middle management, all the managers will try to get you. They fundamentally know the following. They know that gatherer type people will work harder for you, they know that you will judge them and call them out on their BS. They know that you don’t define yourself by your title, they know that you work harder than they do. They make group decisions to preserve what they have. They believe that if you grow, they diminish. They fear that you will change the status quo. Remember they are the majority, you are not.

Second Rule:
Beware of your own altruism.

You treat your company as your tribe even if you are not the chief. You try to do what is best for everyone and for the company. Scavengers don’t care that you sacrificed your personal life for their paycheck. Altruism worries them because they cannot sacrifice for others, only take. They hate how you are nice to everyone and that you are adaptable to find solutions. They never do anything nice unless there is something to gain. Real men were taught by their fathers and mothers to be man, “This what a man does, this is what a real man does not do.” Most of the shitheads at the top were taught strategy. To them, strategy is people doing things in a predicable way. They were taught, “Son, this what a good man is, this is how to identify a good man, this is how to take advantage of him because he is predictable.” Their idea of negative predictable traits are: honor, duty, not lie-ing, stealing, not taking from people who don’t have anything. So when you are expending your energy, time, youth trying to do what is best, they are enjoying their lives and planning on how to screw you so that they get a small portion of benefits and leave you broken. Remember you cannot look forwards and backwards at the same time. If you look back, your not looking forward. If you want to win for everyone, you can never look back, only forward. I constantly use Schumacher for this example. Remember when he first started F1? He would never take the lead, he would always dog whomever was the leader until near the end of the race. Why? Because he was using the guy in front to correct his speed and entry/exits out of the corners and wearing the leader out mentally & putting him out the race. Now the leader has to concentrate on what is ahead and what is behind. He see’s himself screwing up entries/exits because there is no guide and sees Schumacher doing everything perfectly and becoming a bigger and bigger monster. The leader is now spending more time thinking about Schumacher than what is ahead and that’s it, his concentration & focus are crushed. When you do what is good for everyone, you hope that everyone will appreciate it and hope for the best since you are doing everything for everyone’s best interests. They do not precieve it that way. The idea is completely FOREIGN to them, you have to understand THEY DON’T think like you.

These are only a couple of things that I have learned in my life if you guys want me to write more about these things, I will.

Next thing, why are Scavengers on top?

Simple, blame in on WW1/WW2/Korea/Vietnam. If you were fit for war, then you went. If you saw it as duty then off you go. Thanks to altruism, you sacrificed your life to save others. This left a glut of the wrong people in society. Then they changed the rules. They made it seem that the hunter was a neanderthal, chauvinistic pig and sold the world scavenger qualities as hunter qualities. Don’t believe me? Let me give you a few examples? Sorry, part of this is venting (me blowing off steam, I absolutely hate the crap our Cop brother is going through.)

What is the best way to make a consistent profit? Don’t pay people what they are worth because labor will always be your biggest cost.

What is the whole point of having a perfect V cut back and big shoulders? If it is your profession it is fine but if not it’s useless. How are you going to survive? Close shoulder to hip ratio is far superior like a sprinter or powerlifter. But strongmen & powerlifters are by mainstream considered ugly builds. The Kennel club deals with purebred dogs based on their aesthetics NOT on their function. e.g. not good hunter, not good tracker, not good guard dog, etc. Now that the majority of the population is promoting images of aesthetics over function just like the idiots at the Kennel Club. I’d rather have strong hips & back.

Why is everyone so mental these days? I have this fight with the marketing department all the time, even though I do not have direct authority over them. If media and everyone is telling you that something is beautiful eventually you will believe it is beautiful. If you have to fight your natural instincts and people telling you that everything that you like is wrong. It forces your brain to change in unnatural ways against our hardwired instincts. 50% of the marketing department is gay. No problems with that or what they do in their personal life. I have a problem when you throw it in my face. Everyone has a different idea of beauty. Telling me that we are using a specific girl because she is beautiful in a campaign…well she is not my idea of beautiful. It is their’s and since they like boys. Guess what, they chose a girl that looks like a 10 year old boy that is completely shapeless. Which just reinforces bad body image onto the population again. Then they tell me that I have bad taste and that they are “visually creative.” In English that means they can’t read. I love our beautiful T-Vixen women and the women that support us. Their builds say alot about them. Many don’t have pretty faces which they can’t change but they turn their bodies into art, have the discipline and passion to be someone either for themselves or someone else. This makes them so much more desirable to me. Everyone I show T-Girl pictures say it’s gross but then again I don’t believe that if you are a woman under 33 that you should be fat unless you have a medical condition or gave birth.

Girls get excited over titles because they associate qualities with the title. “Omigod, he’s the CEO.” They automatically assume that he is smart, strong, sophisticated, open-minded, determined, ya da, ya da, ya da. The majority of the board of directors of most companies got there on the backs of others by taking advantage of them and the social games. They have no big visions, they have no real plans, they have none of the qualities associated with them but people believe that they do. If they did have those qualities they would not be listening to overpaid consultants & business analysts and repeating everything they are told to their companies as Gospel. The majority are useless, when a problem happens they are running around, yelling at people and looking for someone to blame. They also usually don’t have the skills that people generally think they do. They just expend the majority of their time doing the social thing. Men think in terms of positioning and scenarios. I’m sure most people here think about worst case scenarios and what to do if it did happen. They don’t because someone else does all the work. 95% of all senior and executive directors I know, do not have a current prespective of their industry and have not kept their skill sets up to date or relevant. I spend most of my time dumbfounded at their insanity.

[quote]freebsd wrote:
Hi, as a fellow T-Nation citizen and this being some of the only therapy time I get away from the morons of the world, let me help you with your response. This is my opinion of what you should do based upon many of my bitter experiences. I normally don’t share responses like this due to numerous reasons but there are so many people on the TNation boards that I do respect and admire. I am an executive director at a large corporation and see this everyday.
The first 1/3 of this response is my opinion, the rest you don’t have to read.

Ideal Response - Don’t Make Waves.

When it comes to any type of employment review done by a board, they don’t care about the quality of work you do, the pride you take, or the man you are.

There is no overall because the majority of “professionals” that will be reviewing you are not
qualified nor care. Their only ability is to nit pick. They will not go into anything they don’t know or understand, they will only judge you on areas that they are comfortable in. This is why you are being nagged about filling quotas not about the spirit or upholding the ideals of your profession. The sycophants that kiss their posteriors get the glowing reviews by doing everything in their careers based on the expectations set out by these dangerously under-qualified people and not about doing the right thing.

Don’t make a scene.

Man is a social animal and cannot live without man. As a law enforcement officer you obviously know that if you throw someone into the hole, they go nuts without other people. The same is so with your review board, if you make a scene about doing the right thing, they will view it as an attack against all of them NOT you trying to enlighten them about you. These people work on the majority rules and will make your life difficult and do everything in their power to hurt you. (I will get into the reasons why later if you want to know.) They will always remember you. Every review board will be the same and they share information on who to watch out for because they all gossip like old women. There is no mythical champion of your cause, that is only in the movies. Boards like these always push out the “troublesome, argumentative” guy because it jeopardizes their jobs.

That is my opinion on what you should think about before you write a real man’s response that will deep six your career. The world hates real men and this is one of the only places that I found that the few can congregate. [/quote]

Agreed.

It is in light of the same why my above response was what it was.

Having spent the last 5 of my 21 year career as a supervisor in our Police Department, I would advise you to consider how strong of a statement you really want to make. You never know who you are going to piss off or who will one day be your supervisor. As a Sergeant, I had to complete a 10 page E.P.R. for the officers under my supervision.

As a Lieutenant, I had to complete them for my Sergeants and review and sign off on my entire shifts Employee Performance Reviews before they went up the chain of command and were signed off by the Chief. Some times it is the State that dictates how a department focuses on ticket writing, Such as a Federal Overtime Program (FOT) to look for traffic infringements and D.U.I.'s. Your local government can complain to you upper command about a problem with traffic in a specific area or even a lack of income from written citations. As we all know, shit rolls down hill and patrol officers are the unappreciated backbone of any Police Department. If you ever plan to rise in rank within your department, choose your words wisely,. The are bigger shit jobs than the one you are being ask to perform.

Even if you disagree with this policy, a true leader will find a reason to sell it to his peers and even lead by example. You seem to work with some officers that may be described as a marginal employee ( those that perform just enough work to keep management off their backs). Be better than that.

I have quit a few friends that are cops and they’re the same way. Their response is ,“We can’t make them speed sir”.

I’m sorta surprised at the number of people on this thread who advised the OP to back down. This is particularly ironic considering many of those same posters lamented how masculinity is dying. Anyone see the problem here?

I am not a cop, nor am I a psychologist. I’m an attorney. I think there could have been a happy medium between essentially bending over and grabbing ones ankles, and writing a response that is likely to irritate the higher ups. My advice would have been to write a letter that would have presented the situation as your best efforts to resolve the tension between two of the department interests which are often mutually exclusive. Something akin to:

As a police officer, I strive to maintain the highest priorities of this department by aggressively detecting, interrupting, and investigating crimes involving ___________, ____________, and ____________. My record supports this: Of the officers on my shift, I consistently have the highest number of ________________, ___________, _____________, and ______________.

At the same time, I respect the importance of prosecuting our traffic laws, both in terms of the enhanced safety it provides to our residents but also in terms of revenue to the local government. As you are no doubt well aware, however, it is often difficult to focus aggressively on both law enforcement interests at the same time. In approaching my role as a patrol officer, I have clearly prioritized the first law enforcement interests I mentioned over prosecuting traffic offenses. Ultimately, however, the final decision regarding the allocation of police resources is yours to make. Therefore, if the department finds my current approach unsatisfactory, I genuinely welcome any guidance on how I might strike a more favorable balance between these often competing interests.

Sincerely,
Off. _______

I’m not saying it has to be that letter exactly, but something like it would have allowed the OP to express his view of things on the record, but in a way that is not likely to rankle anyone but the most ridiculous and unreasonable people. A larger thing you guys may not be considering is that this shit could build and build until one day this officer is fired. At that point he’ll probably try to say that he prioritized other (more important) areas to justify his work record. But by that time it will seem like sour grapes. Better to establish a consistent and lucid record now so that everything is in place if that time comes.

Not to mention that as someone else alluded to, the response I suggested (and a reply advising the officer to focus more on traffic duty) would lead to the termination/resignation of every single management-level officer in the department if it was ever printed in a local paper.

[quote]freebsd wrote:
A lot of quality stuff.
[/quote]

That was good. The only thing I disagree with is your description of the cause of our country’s loss of integrity. I think a bigger factor than combat deaths in the wars of the last century is the shift from rural to urban life. Urban life is not natural, and the annonimity it offers undermines honesty, and decency. It’s like the internet, it usually brings out the worst in people, because there is no punishment.

In rural life, you spend your entire life surrounded by the same small group of people. The reward for honesty and integrity is a good name which you will carry until you die. In the urban life, you move frequently, change jobs frequently, never know your nieghbor’s names. There is no honor for having a good name, because by the time you have made one for yourself it is time to move on and start over. At the same time there is no punishment for dishonesty, because when the people in your social circle catch on to you, you can simply move on to a new circle. So the scavengers as you call them get ahead because they profit from their misdeeds, and the honest, productive people never gain traction because the ground is always shifting beneath their feet.

The only thing I can add is to make sure you are measuring all of your results. Surely there are metrics you can highlight outside of traffic citations to show the value you bring to the force. Do you have access to other officer’s numbers (i.e. number of arrests for violent crimes, theft, vandalism)?

As a manager I would certainly appreciate my employees making the effort to highlight all that they contribute with hard numbers. If your numbers of arrests/convictions for more serious offenses far outnumber the others on your force, then that is certainly worth presenting in response to a sub-standard review. And you can do this in a factual way without looking like you are making waves or complaining.

I’ve always been taught that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. If all they are focused on is traffic citations, it’s worth highlighting the value you do bring to the community with hard data. Perhaps that can even be matched up against crime statistics of your community and how that ranks with national statistics (e.g. you have a higher percentage of violent offenses in your city so you focus on arresting perpetrators of those crimes; if your community has numbers below the averages, you highlight that you are a major contributor to that achievement).

We need more officers like you. We really do.

I’m not quite sure what you can do about this situation…I have a few officer friends and I’ve long since learned that dealing with bureaucracy is a big headache.

Most of the higher ups don’t seem to care about proactive policing like you. All they really mention is “you’re not writing enough tickets” blah blah.

I’m currently working as a representative of a professional association that represents managerial employees at a government, and deal with situations like this on a daily basis.

My only advice to you is this:

  1. Consider your words very carefully, as what you write will stay in your file and may taint your entire career.
  2. Call your union rep prior to doing anything and consult with them. That’s what they get paid to perform. If you choose to act against your union rep’s advice, at least inform them what you intend to do such that they’ll be ready for your call if the shit hits the fan.

Good luck.