By Missy Schrott | mschrott@alextimes.com

For years, there have been grumblings of conflict at the Alexandria Police Department.

Some current and former employees allege that the department has a culture of favoritism and retaliation that fuels a hostile work environment and is damaging to health and morale. Few dispute that there have been problems at the department. However, opinions vary when it comes to who’s at fault.

There are employees, including some who resigned after allegedly being subjected to retribution, who blame Chief Michael L. Brown for establishing an environment without discipline or accountability, where misconduct is swept under the rug. They say that under Chief Brown’s leadership, problems have gotten worse, which has fueled retirements and resignations from the department.

Others, including the president of the police union, see Brown as a breath of fresh air. They allege that APD’s problems began long before Brown was in the picture and that he is bringing about much needed change in the department’s operations and organization.

In light of George Floyd’s murder, the leaders of police departments, their practices and the officers they hire are more important than ever.

Anonymous email hints at conflict

On Feb. 25, all Alexandria Police Department staff received an email with the subject, “Open Letter to the Chief.” The letter – sent from a pseudonym account and signed “Your Employees” – criticized Brown’s leadership.

The writers identify themselves as employees of the Criminal Investigation Division. As such, they accuse Brown of placing “incompetent, unskilled, vindictive and inexperienced” command staff in charge of criminal investigations, causing a lack of discipline and accountability in the division. The writers apply this sentiment to the department as a whole, expressing a lack of confidence in those Brown chooses to promote and place in leadership roles.

The writers go on to say they feel devalued and unappreciated. They write that the current climate of the department has “detrimental effects on morale, motivation and performance.”

Several current and former employees said the sentiments expressed in the anonymous letter are felt throughout the department.

“It’s a horrible place to work under this chief,” a current APD employee who spoke with the Times on the condition of anonymity said. “… In a police department, there’s always going to be dissatisfaction with the chief. That’s normal. There’s going to be some dissatisfaction, but the level that we’re seeing right now, I feel is very abnormal. It wasn’t anywhere like this.”

The anonymous employee will be called the pseudonym “Jane” in subsequent references in this article.

Brown’s defenders refute the accusations in the letter and the way it was handled.

“I think it’s inappropriate for somebody to be that negative but hide behind a screen,” Diana Barrett, a crime scene investigator, said. “I’ve been here for 15 years, and we’ve never had a chief that’s had such an open-door policy. You can literally just walk right into his office, no matter what he’s doing [and] sit down, talk to him.”

Regardless of who wrote the letter and how many APD employees agree with its contents, it hints at a culture of discontentment within the department.

The old vs. the new regime

Some argue that problems with the culture of the department began long before Chief Brown was appointed in January 2017.

Prior to joining APD, Brown spent the majority of his career with the California Highway Patrol, including a stint as state commissioner from 2004 to 2008. After briefly serving as deputy secretary for public safety for the State of California from 2008 to 2009, he spent seven years as director of the Office of Impaired Driving and Occupant Protection at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration before joining APD.

Brown’s predecessor, Earl Cook, served as chief of APD from 2009 to 2016. While current and former employees differ in their opinion on whose leadership was preferable, they largely agree that Cook had stricter disciplinary practices than Brown.

“The previous culture … everyone was on eggshells,” Michael Rodriguez, president of the Alexandria chapter of the International Union of Police Associations, which represents nearly 200 officers, said. “It was very heavy-handed with punishment and internal investigation, and the punishment, it was egregious.”

Brown said that he has changed APD’s disciplinary practices, but not the department’s policies.

“It was common knowledge that we used to be a little heavy-handed in our discipline for minor offenses, and so in looking at the policy, we did what we call the concept of progressive discipline,” Brown said. “I’m not going to give somebody a significant penalty because they dented the fender of a car for the first time.”

Rodriguez said the union largely supports the changes Brown has made. Critics argue that they have led to a lack of accountability.

“If somebody does stray or there’s an issue, cracking down on someone and disciplining them for that harshly isn’t necessarily the wrong thing,” Jane said. “If you’re in his favorites group, … things will be brushed under the rug for you.”

Nick Ruggiero, a former employee and union vice president who resigned in April after becoming the subject of an internal investigation, said that Brown’s lax disciplinary action fueled poor leadership.

“When Brown came on, we thought he was going to be the savior. He was going to change the culture. Then also you have commanders that he inherited that were the same exact way [under the Cook administration],” Ruggiero said. “[Brown] never … corrected any of the performance deficiencies in these commanders, so they continued to create hostile work environments.”

A culture of retaliation

The lack of discipline caused an atmosphere of “lawlessness,” Ruggiero said, where employees stopped following the rules because they knew they wouldn’t be punished.

Several former employees, including Gwen Diggs, a 20-year APD employee who left in August 2019, said that when they tried to report wrongdoings and “do the right thing,” they were subjected to retaliation.

“[APD] let people do whatever they want to. Run amuck,” Diggs said. “People come in when they wanted to, leave when they wanted to, not answer the radio. … I would call out injustices. I would try to report other people, and instead of rectifying the issue, it got turned on me. I kind of jokingly called myself the Norma Rae of the police department. As soon as you whistle blow, they target you.”

Diggs said she was chastised by her supervisors for not getting along with the people whom she had reported. She began to receive negative evaluations and write ups that she felt were undeserved. Eventually, the targeting and retaliation led Diggs to retire early from APD, she said. She now works for the Prince William County Sheriff’s Department.

“That just went on for too long, and I had had enough,” Diggs said. “I’m much happier at Prince William. I’m not happy I left when I did because technically, I should not have left for another four years when I did, because technically I’m losing 17 percent [of my pension] because I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was in counseling. I was in therapy. I have never felt at a loss as I felt working in Alexandria.”

Another former employee, Leah Tolliver, who served as administrative support to Chief Brown, said she experienced similar retaliation when she filed a formal complaint in APD’s internal investigations after being subjected to what she considered verbal harassment and racial insensitivities at work.

After filing the complaint with APD’s internal investigations officers on Dec. 11, 2019, Tolliver said she was subjected to retaliation from the employee she complained about, another sergeant and Chief Brown. She cited an instance where Brown revoked her regular keycard access to his office.

Tolliver said the hostile work environment led to her resignation on Feb. 7, 2020. Her complaint is still unresolved, she said.

“I started to have anxiety, I started to have some health-related issues, I was getting depressed and those are just not characteristics of my personality,” Tolliver said. “There’s no way that I would ever want to start over in looking for another job at my age. I planned on being there until I retired, but I could not stay in that hostile and harassing work environment.”

Brown denied ever retaliating against an employee.

“It’s fundamentally against my management philosophy to retaliate,” Brown said. “I have never, to my knowledge, thought about retaliating. I know I have made some decisions that have upset people, and I explained them to them in every case.”

Like Diggs and Tolliver, there are stories of other employees who have allegedly resigned or retired from APD because of the culture.

“They have lost so many tenured employees since [Brown has] been in charge because they’re just fed up,” Tolliver said. “They’ve got 15 or 16 years in, but they’re just so tired of the politics that they said, ‘I’ll cut my losses’ and left. Everybody is miserable.”

Decision-making

One recurring theme in the testimonies of those unhappy with Brown’s leadership is his decision-making process. Multiple current and former employees of the department have accused Brown of entrusting responsibilities to incompetent staff.

“He definitely plays favorites among everyone,” Jane said. “There is a small group of people that he trusts. Those people oftentimes aren’t in a position where they should be making decisions for the department, and he doesn’t care, and that’s how he runs his operations.”

Brown adamantly denied “playing favorites.” He explained that when making decisions, he intentionally seeks input from his patrol officers and those who are regularly interacting with the community.

“When I got here, … the chief made all the decisions,” Brown said. “One of the cultural changes that I’m doing – and I’ve been doing for three and a half years – is to push that down for other people to make decisions besides me, because that’s how they’re going to develop and grow.”

Rodriguez said the union supported the change.

“What he has implemented is a lot of coaching, to build people, to build their career and try to reinitiate that culture and build morale back up to be in a positive position,” Rodriguez said.

What Brown and his supporters consider an effective decision-making tactic, others have found dismissive.

“He sought input from patrol officers or those that didn’t have the knowledge or expertise in certain areas,” a former employee, who recently retired after nearly 30 years with APD and agreed to interview on the condition of anonymity, said. “Very dismissive. He could be dismissive at times to those that you just knew he really didn’t care for.”

Recently, Brown has come under fire in the media for his decision to allow APD employees to telework for about a month from April 6 to May 2 because of the coronavirus pandemic. Brown defended the decision, saying it was to protect his officers and did not cause any missed calls for service or increase in response time.

“I will protect the officers,” Brown said. “If you look at some of the military folks, they never commit all their resources to an unknown enemy, and we had an unknown enemy. If I commit them all there, and they all get sick in that non-sterile environment out there and I’ve got everyone in quarantine, then when the city really needs it, what do I have? I can’t afford it. I won’t afford that risk.”

Before coming to Alexandria, Brown was criticized for his decision-making during his time as commissioner of the California Highway Patrol.

State lawmakers called for Brown’s resignation after criticizing Brown’s oversight of the Highway Patrol and called him an “ineffective leader,” according to a Feb. 13, 2008 article in the East Bay Times. In addition, there were reports of alleged misconduct by command officers while Brown was overseeing the CHP, according to the article.

Brown announced his resignation less than a year later after CHP was criticized in a state audit for wasteful spending.

Demoting the deputy chiefs

One of Brown’s more controversial decisions at APD was a reorganization that took place about a year after he became chief. Brown scrapped his four deputy chiefs, giving them the option to either retire or be demoted.

“That was atrocious when he did that to the people that have been there for years and years and years,” Jane said. “To demote at the deputy chief level is outrageous. He seemed to do it under the guise of reorganization but it’s not. They’re flat out demotions.”

Brown explained that his intent was to unify the department with the reorganization. With four deputy chiefs, the department had become siloed, he said.

“[APD was] functioning basically as four different departments, and each one was a bureau, and for 10 months I tried to get them to work together,” Brown said. “Sometimes they would work together, and many other times they wouldn’t, so that became a functional obstacle for us to do our business.”

Two officers elected to retire and the other two took the demotion. Those who were demoted did not have a decrease in pay or status, Brown said.

A changing department

The reorganization, which was backed by the union, was one of Brown’s attempts to change the culture at APD, he said.

“Some of the problems I was hearing before I even applied to this job was the internal culture and the problems it presented for the people that worked in this facility,” Brown said. “It was totally something I knew had to change and there was a willingness to do it.”

Defenders of the chief say that the changes that Brown has made are for the better, despite receiving opposition from some employees. They denied the accusations against Brown and applauded the direction in which he’s leading the department.

“Cops hate change,” Officer Bennie Evans said. “We hate change, but that was a necessary change. Chief Brown, [Assistant Chief] Don Hayes, those were necessary changes, because we were headed for a bad place for a police department.”

“I’ve never seen a more transparent person in such a position of power,” Rodriguez said.

Critics caution that the change is causing more trouble than it’s worth, to the point where employees will continue to leave, and APD’s work will be compromised.

“There’s such chaos that’s going on within that department and bad leadership, it’s astounding that any work or any crime gets solved whatsoever,” Ruggiero said.

“There’s no other option for me right now other than to leave this department,” Jane said. “There’s no upward career growth, but there’s no respect. … I can’t constantly be belittled and demoted, especially for working hard and doing the right thing all the time. It’s a toxic department that this chief has created.”