FOP asks for Police Officer’s Bill of Rights

A group of police officers claims it has proof of low morale in Nashville’s police department, but the police chief says the results of the survey are out of context.

At a news conference Monday evening, the Fraternal Order of Police Andrew Jackson Lodge #5 was expected to release details of a survey mailed out to 1,113 of its members currently working in the police department, asking 25 questions about issues of department morale and levels of stress.

Of the 1,113 FOP members who were mailed the survey, 348 officers, or 31.3 percent, responded to the mailing, and according to the FOP, nearly 85 percent of the respondents labeled department morale as low.

As a result, the FOP has asked Metro Council to establish a Police Officer’s Bill of Rights for the city’s police department, something the fraternity said would provide certain basic protections for officers, something the group said it has asked for, for years but has been turned down by Metro.

According to the survey, job-related stress at the department is a significant problem and it originates from within the agency for 97 percent of those who responded to the survey.

In a written response, Police Chief Ronal Serpas noted that excluding trainees his department has 1,279 police officers, “So 27 percent of our presently active officers responded to the survey” and just over 15 percent of the respondents gave a department morale rating of medium or good.

Serpas also said the survey, taken last December, came at a time when “this generation” of officers did without longevity pay and salary increases for the first time. They were also training on a new computer system that altered the department’s procedures.

Regarding disciplinary actions, Serpas said more than 80 percent of officers are not involved in disciplinary actions in any given year.

The FOP proposal suggests the department can either accept that a “significantly large sampling” of the department views morale as low or very low, deny the validity of the study and marginalize the fraternity, or conduct its own study to “confirm our view.”

“While money issues are clearly important to our members,” Sgt. Robert Weaver, local FOP chapter president, wrote in a statement, “this survey shows that the primary issue is a problem with the disciplinary system’s application and or the communication within the department.”

Weaver continued, “If the officers can deliver under this stress, then imagine what we can do if the officers feel supported by the department and not intimidated by it.”

Other findings according to the survey include:

• 97 percent agreed or strongly agreed stress increasingly influences job performance

• 97 percent indicated their stress originates from within the department rather than from external sources including job hazards

• 63 percent report that they experience stress in the workplace three or more times per week

• 84 percent rate morale within MNPD as low and only 1 percent rate morale as high among department members.