A San Juan police union survey revealed deep dissatisfaction in leadership among officers prior to the eventual removal of their police chief in November, according to a copy obtained by The Monitor.
The San Juan Police Department Management survey was conducted by the Texas Municipal Police Association, or TMPA, in September following concerns made by the San Juan Police Officers Association focusing on former police chief Ruben Morin’s administration.
The questions focused on topics like morale, leadership, staffing, salary and training.
“Some of them were direct concerns from conversations I had with the chief. Others were concerns from the officers. Meeting with groups of officers that were in the association and meeting with individual officers, it was a recurring theme of morale and staffing issues and training issues,” Jose “J.P.” Rodriguez, the South Texas field representative for TMPA, said.
The TMPA is an Austin-based law enforcement association that represents over 30,000 local, county and state law enforcement officers throughout the state.
“They got to a point where they requested from us to conduct a management survey of the San Juan Police Department,” he continued. “It’s proprietary. It doesn’t belong to the city of San Juan. The survey belongs to TMPA. It’s paid for and it’s conducted by us.”
Of the 26 police officers on staff with San Juan police, 22 participated in the 40-question survey. Rodriguez said that for the sake of accuracy and fairness, officers who recently graduated from the police academy were not included in the survey.
The questions were posed as statements and participants were given five choices: strongly agree, agree, no opinion, disagree and strongly disagree.
“(The survey) is not written in the negative. It’s actually written in the positive,” explained. “It’s a bipolar survey. You have options on the statements that are read.”
In 13 of the 40 questions, mostly focused on leadership, staffing and morale, all participants disagreed.
“In the last two years, the San Juan Police Department as a whole has been adequately staffed in order to meet the needs of the police department and community,” the survey read. All participants answered “strongly disagree.”
Another survey prompt read: “Morale at the San Juan Police Department is high.” All of the participants disagreed, and 90% of them strongly disagreed.
Other questions about adequate staffing on the patrol division and the criminal investigations division also received 100% response of “Strongly Disagree.”
Favor greatly waned for other San Juan police administrators, too.
Overall, the officers’ opinion indicated dissatisfaction in their leadership, concern with inadequate staffing, doubt in their training and saw no future with the department “as is.”
Rodriguez said that once the survey was completed, the results were shared with City Manager Benjamin Arjona and Morin.
“In this case, the first audience was the city manager and the chief of police,” Rodriguez said. “I can tell you that (Morin) was not very receptive to the results. I think he even made a comment that it was false information. I’ve known the chief on a personal level and I’ve got nothing against him, but our objective is to help find solutions to make things better, and the city manager and the chief of police know that there are some concerns here.”
After the results of the survey were shared with the city, Morin was placed on administrative leave during the Sept. 27 meeting of the San Juan City Commission at the recommendation of Arjona. At that time, Mayor Mario Garza and Commissioner Marco “Markie” Villegas said that they had yet to see the survey.
As a result, Garza and Villegas abstained from voting on the motion to suspend Morin. The rest of the commissioners unanimously approved Morin’s suspension.
Two months later, on Nov. 28, a special-called meeting of the city commission was held in which Morin’s employment was the only item on the agenda. It was then, following some contentious back-and-forth between the former police chief and the mayor, that Arjona made the recommendation to part ways with Morin.
During the discussion, which Morin requested be held in public, he questioned the validity of the TMPA survey.
“For you to validate that survey is irrational, in a sense,” he said during the meeting. “It’s unacceptable. Now you’ve made your decision. That’s right. But I want it on the record that I’ve never once been given specific examples about that survey. For you to put a lot of weight on that survey is unacceptable from you as leaders and you as the city manager.”
Multiple attempts to reach Morin for comment on the survey were unsuccessful. Garza declined to comment citing a letter the city received advising them that Morin had retained legal counsel.
Following the Nov. 28 meeting, Garza said that the commission’s decision was not based on any personal feelings against Morin.
“It’s nothing personal against Chief Morin,” Garza said after the meeting. “The gentleman always respected me and I respected him. As far as his work ethic and his leadership skills, it wasn’t to where we felt — the commission — needed to be. … We just needed to go in another direction.”
The meeting marked the end of Morin’s nearly two-year stint as San Juan’s chief of police since he initially took the reins of the department in December 2020. Sgt. Leandro Sifuentes continues to serve as interim police chief.
The full survey can be seen here.
Monitor staff writer Valerie Gonzalez contributed to this report.
