In an academic setting, tenure is something to be celebrated and something to aspire to as it means job security, status, the right to be controversial and not risk losing your job.
At the Calgary Police Service, however, tenure for many senior constables is a noun spit out like a four-letter word. For them, tenure spells forced demotion, a lack of job security and one of the leading issues behind a police commission survey showing record low morale among the service’s 2,100 members.
Chief Roger Chaffin reintroduced tenure about two-and-a-half years ago in an effort to get more senior constables back on patrol to increase seniority on the front lines.
The policy mandates how long constables are permitted to work in specialty units like the tactical unit, gang suppression, narcotics, forensics, accident reconstruction and technical crimes. Most specialty units, such as human resources, recruiting, STRIKE (surveillance) and child abuse have five-year tenure limits. Digital forensics and collision reconstruction have seven-year limits, while TAC, forensic crime scenes and canine all have 10-year tenures.
For Les Gramantik, tenure was the reason he left the Calgary Police Service (CPS), where he spent his last nine years working in the highly specialized tactical unit or TAC team. It’s estimated the special training he — and all Calgary TAC members receive — costs in excess of $300,000 per officer.
“I sacrificed a lot and competed really hard to get there and to stay there,” says Gramantik, who applied six times over many years before he was finally accepted into TAC. “Frankly, I think it cost me my first marriage because the level of commitment is so intense.
“But, instead of being rewarded or acknowledged for the excellence of my work and my dedication, I was going to be punished and sent back to the street — right back to where I started,” adds Gramantik, who says he wanted to join the TAC team even before he joined CPS as a recruit in 1996.
Like all new recruits, Gramantik spent many years on the street — six years in District 1 in downtown Calgary, including a couple of years on mountain bike patrol.
“Bike patrolling is a different animal,” admits the 47-year-old father of three children. “If you think you feel vulnerable in a car, think about riding a bike at two in the morning downtown, where you’re hearing everything and you’ve got nothing to hide behind.”
In 2007, after Rick Hanson was made chief, Gramantik and Const. Tom McMahon were tasked with researching, procuring and then training officers with Colt C8A2 assault rifles to add to the equipment available to patrol officers. It’s an initiative he’s proud of, and one that he says has saved the lives of officers and civilians.
“I didn’t apply for promotions,” explains Gramantik of his singular focus to make it onto TAC. “I didn’t want to be a homicide detective or the chief of police. I wanted to be a TAC team member.
“When you put people where they want to be and where they are best suited, you get the very best out of people. It’s just common sense,” adds Gramantik, who left the service in 2016, seven years earlier than he had planned because of the tenure policy. He says the policy forced his hand to leave CPS and take advantage of a high-end, executive security detail that pays well and is less stressful and dangerous.
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Former Calgary TAC team officer, Les Gramantik rappels down the side of a building during training. Supplied photo
Another TAC member, who asked not to be identified, spent 10 years on street patrol when he was first hired by CPS. He, too, left as a result of looming tenure. When he was offered an opportunity to take a high-paying, high-level job as the head of security for a large, complex organization in Calgary, he took it.
“In any other workplace, being sent back to the first job you ever did is considered constructive dismissal,” he says. “In my view I was getting fired, so I took action.”
Calgary Police Association president Les Kaminski, who represents the 2,100 members of the police union, says tenure was applied to the TAC team when the unit was already four members short.
“Why force other TAC members to leave just because they’ve reached some arbitrary cut-off time, when there are already positions that need filling?” asks Kaminski, who was a TAC team member for 11 years. “It’s ridiculous.”
New members of TAC spend their first six months in training before they can even take their first call. They then specialize in either munitions, explosives or in sharp shooting. In other words, says Kaminski, “pushing people out of TAC means less boots on the ground, not more.”
“We have one blood-spatter expert in Calgary — she’s recognized internationally — and her tenure is coming up,” notes Kaminski, “and nobody is being trained to take her place. How does putting her on the streets lead to a transference of knowledge to new recruits? It doesn’t.”
Kaminski says in his 32 years of policing, he’s never seen morale worse or the number of complaints against the chief higher.
“I’ve had to buy a case of Kleenex at Costco because every member who comes through that door is crying,” he says from the conference room at the CPA headquarters on Westwinds Drive N.E., a short drive from police headquarters.
“I sometimes cry right along with them because it’s so upsetting,” admits Kaminski, adding that the tears are often more fuelled by frustration and rage than sadness.
“The chief told me he ‘isn’t here to win a popularity contest,’ and I said, ‘well, Roger, you’re hitting that out of the park,’ ” quips Kaminski.
The Calgary police commission’s annual employee engagement survey for 2017 reflects that statement. Employees’ satisfaction with their current job is at its lowest level ever recorded and one half of employees are unlikely to recommend CPS for a career. The report states that “poor leadership, poor communication from leadership and tenure policy are some of the main issues leading to plummeting morale.”
Out of the 37 constables and two former TAC team members interviewed for this article — excluding the chief and Kaminski — only five say they see some merits to the tenure policy, which has long been there, but has not been enforced.
The idea behind tenure, says Chief Roger Chaffin, is to bring seniority and experience back onto the front lines to help mentor and train new recruits and to also make positions available in specialty units for younger officers who have done their time on the front lines.
In the districts, the current average years of service for constables range from just 3.36 years to 4.43 years. That’s not enough experience to deal with the increasing complexities of policing, says Chaffin.
“It was common when I started 100 years ago that there were a lot of really senior people on the street. When you were in a district, all of your sergeants were 20- to 25-year officers,” recalls Chaffin, who joined CPS in 1986 and was appointed chief in October 2015.
Chaffin says that in 2017, 61 specialty unit constables returned to the street and the average years of service for those members were a little more than 12 years, meaning a significant increase of policing experience was thus being shared with newer recruits.
“Going back to the day-one job is not a punishment,” insists Chaffin. “That’s sort of a comment that really diminishes our front-line people.
“Any of our people who would treat our front line as a low-functioning place in the tier have forgotten why they were hired here. If you decide to quit because of that, it’s a personal decision and I will never criticize someone for doing that,” he says. “But, I will never let go of the idea that we want our people to support each other and the front line, too, and if that’s beneath you — you simply can’t do that — then make a decision.
“The vast majority of sworn members are actually quite proud to go back to the front line. They like being back. They like the work,” adds Chaffin.
Kaminski responds that “clearly, the chief is not listening to his employees.” Indeed, finding officers who are happy they were tenured out of their specialty unit to the street proved difficult until the chief’s office provided some names.
Even among those officers who say returning to street patrol has been a refreshing change for them and that they see mentoring benefits for the new recruits, some say the manner in which tenure has been rolled out has been anything from “a gong show” and “a disaster” to “not particularly well thought out.”
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Const. Darcy Williams has been tenured out of the Calgary Police Service’s canine unit. Photo by Courtesy Tobi McLeod
Others have few complaints, like Const. Darcy Williams, a 19-year-veteran with the police service who spent the last 12 years in the canine unit. He was tenured out of that “dream job” in April 2017 and is now back on patrol in District 6, the same district he started in almost two decades earlier.
Unlike other officers who have been tenured out of their job, Williams, 42, was planning on moving out of K9 in the near future to try something new anyway. He tried for a promotion and when that didn’t work he knew it was time to move on, partly because his 10-year-old German shepherd partner, Jag, and his explosion detection dog, Sarka, were aged nine and 10 respectively and needed to retire. Sarka, now 11, still lives with Williams’ family and gets along famously with his 12-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son. Jag is now living with friends on an acreage.
The next closest person in seniority to Williams at District 6 is someone with 10 years of experience and then it drops to officers with five, four, three and two years of service, along with constables who are new to the job.
“The first thing I said to them is: ‘I know I’ve got 18 years service, but I want you to look at me as a new recruit and show me if I’m doing something wrong,'” recalls Williams.
That seemed to set the right tone. Other than getting accustomed to having a human partner rather than a dog, Williams says he has had a big learning curve dealing with the new procedures and paper work, which is markedly different from the paper flow in the canine unit.
So, the mentoring goes both ways. Besides doing presentations to different teams within the district about how to behave around a canine member and when to call in a canine team, his seniority has been helpful during daily parades as well.
“In K9 we did a lot of high-risk calls. I got to know names and faces of a lot of serious offenders. When we’re sitting in a parade to start a shift and a name pops up that I know, I can tell them (other officers) all about how dangerous that person is,” he says.
Williams admits, however, that many of his skills are going untapped and are not transferable to the street. All of the service’s drug, explosive and human-remain detection dogs were trained by Williams, as well as all the provincial drug detection dogs for local jails. He also oversaw the yearly re-certification of police dogs. He was moved out of K9 before he was able to fully train his successor.
“I can’t pass that on to anybody in the district. Nevertheless, looking back now I know leaving was the right thing for me because there are other things I’d like to do within the service,” says Williams. “It would have been better if they had used me more to train those left behind, but they’ll figure it out.”
Const. Dean MacPhee, 46, was in the STRIKE unit from 2007 to mid-2017 as an undercover plain-clothes officer involved in surveillance of the underbelly of society. As a result, he used to have a beard down to his belly and hair to match. Now he’s clean-shaven and his 10-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter think he’s “pretty cool in his uniform and marked cruiser.
“I’m really enjoying being back on the street,” he says. “I had to relearn a lot of stuff but it’s been a great change for me, though I understand all sides of this issue.”
Nevertheless, MacPhee admits the tenure policy hasn’t been perfect.
“It wasn’t rolled out well, but they’re working toward changing that as far as the focus groups I’ve been in. The problems can be solved with something as simple as a check sheet. Before you leave your unit, do you have this up-to-date or that up-to-date? If you don’t, then here’s who to contact. Or, here’s how we can help you. But, that was never done. That is the biggest complaint.”
Kaminski gives the example of a female officer who was being tenured out of technical crimes “where she was a whiz” and she needed to get retrained on doing choke holds and using a Taser.
“Her entry date onto the street was before she could get the training. I took it to exec and said, ‘You don’t even have the infrastructure set up here to re-integrate these people safely.’ Finally they relented and got her the training before she was due back on the street.”
Kaminski also wonders how many police officers have the expertise in technology to fill her role. How will her specialized skills transfer to the street? “They won’t at all,” he says. Apparently, her position has not been filled. Neither has MacPhee’s in STRIKE and it’s been 10 months since he left. In other words, tenure is not providing specialty unit jobs for new recruits, as many of the jobs remain empty for months and in some cases more than a year.
Another officer in a dangerous specialty unit, who will be tenured out within the year, says he doesn’t see how his knowledge — which is so specialized and specific — can be returned to the street.
“All your life you’re told hard work pays off. Go the extra mile, do more, work harder. You bust your butt, you compete for the job, you win and then you get moved out because of some arbitrary date while the guy next to you who punches the clock gets to stay? It’s ridiculous,” says the officer whose identity and unit — like all the other current officers critical of tenure — cannot be revealed as they could be cited for discreditable conduct.
Another officer, also in a dangerous area, says he has told his wife what to do should he be killed on duty.
“If something ever happens to me, (Chaffin’s) not speaking at my service. I don’t want him anywhere in the building. I want nothing to do with that guy. And that’s a very, very different outlook than I had, say, towards (former Chief Rick) Hanson,” he says.
None of the officers interviewed for this piece disparaged patrol work. They all acknowledged that patrol work is vital, difficult and not beneath them. It’s just that they’ve been there and done that, they say.
“This is like saying to the heart surgeon, ‘We’re going to make you a general practitioner; we want more doctors on the front lines,'” says Kaminski. “Neither position is more important than the other. They’re both essential to the effective working of the health care system. You can actually argue that a GP is the most important component of the health care system — but one has specialized and all of that expertise would be lost by doing that.”
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Calgary Police Association president Les Kaminski.
Virtually every police officer interviewed has a different metaphor to explain the issue. Gramantik says it’s like reassigning the pilot of a Boeing 767 to fly a small prop plane. Both require skill, knowledge and diligence; one is simply more specialized. Also, sending the 767 pilot to fly a small prop plane does not immediately mean that the prop plane pilot has an opportunity to fly the 767. It just means that position remains unfilled until someone else gets trained.
One police woman back on patrol says: “I’m trying to make the best of this … policy and being back on the street, but I’m no spring chicken and I have to admit it’s been very demoralizing. The shift work has been very hard on my family — my kids. I turned down going for a promotion a while back to stay in (that specialty unit) because I was asked to by my sergeant, who convinced me that my expertise was really needed. I know they are missing me there and files aren’t proceeding because they can’t fill my position with someone who knows what they’re doing. I fail to understand how this is helping the citizens of Calgary.”
Kaminski says the tenure policy has jeopardized important files. Homicide detectives went to STRIKE to have a suspect followed, but the surveillance unit is so short-staffed, it couldn’t help in the murder investigation.
Another member said the tenure times in many of the specialty units are simply not long enough. “Just as I really became excellent at my job, that’s when I got moved out,” said the member.
“Tenure is basically firing someone once they’ve reached their time limit,” says another member. “People of Calgary, who do you want doing these types of calls? Who do you want rescuing your daughter from a hostage situation? Not just anybody can do it. Tenure is endangering Calgarians.”
Kaminski adds tenure isn’t needed because most units have natural attrition anyway. For example, in TAC, officers get pretty beat up or team members let them know that it’s time for colleagues to move on. “It would be better if the chief had implemented guaranteed openings rather than tenure,” he adds.
Says another officer, “If you have chosen to not try for promotions into the higher ranks because you want to remain a constable in a specialty area that you are passionate about, then tenure causes you to lose all control of your career.”
Some officers in their 50s with creaky knees or bad hips are being sent back on patrol doing shift work, and that can entail tackling fit, young criminals on the streets.
Another STRIKE member notes the tenure policy doesn’t recognize police officers are as diverse and unique in their interests as DNA. Some officers love investigations, others hate them. One TAC member said he would find fraud investigations sleep inducing. But those who do fraud investigations love solving the puzzle and might hate to rappel down the side of a building and blast out the side of a wall with explosives.
“This tenure policy does not recognize the individuality of people,” says the officer. “Not everyone has an aptitude for everything.”
Even some relatively new recruits say they are not in favour of tenure. “Supposedly, this policy is designed to help us newer recruits,” says a constable with about four years of service on patrol. “But I know what I want to do and where I want to serve because I know what I excel at. I don’t want to get trained up and then get moved back to the street after five years. I don’t think that’s the wisest use of resources or value for the taxpayer.”
Chaffin says one of the main reasons to be rather unbending in the implementation of tenure is because if you start making exceptions, then exceptions will increase and the people who are tenured out will have a “grievable” issue.
“As you create more exceptions … eventually it becomes so chaotic, you create grievable issues with the association. You want one policy for all people,” says the chief.
Kaminski believes the opposite is true. He was the interim president for the police union back when Hanson was chief. “I never filed one grievance, or a lawsuit, or a complaint against the chief in one year. We certainly had some great debates, but in the past year I have had to file 17 grievances, six complaints against the chief and four lawsuits. This has been way more stressful than being on TAC or gang suppression.”
As for Gramantik, he says he loved every minute of his job in TAC and he is not angry. “I’m not bitter about what happened to me but I believe that this tenure policy is not just damaging CPS and its members … . It’s jeopardizing important investigations and therefore potentially endangering Calgarians. Something has to be done. Tenure has to be stopped.”
Licia Corbella is a Postmedia columnist. She can be reached at 403-235-7519 or lcorbella@postmedia.com
