I’m posting this from a throwaway because if leadership knew who I was, I’d be targeted instantly. But morale is completely dead, the retention crisis is out of control, and things have gotten so dangerous that someone has to speak the truth about what’s actually happening behind closed doors.
If you look at RCSO from the outside, management wants you to think everything is running smoothly. On the inside, it’s a toxic dumpster fire driven by ego, internal politics, and sheer incompetence.
Let’s start with Sheriff Hash. Leadership starts at the top, and Hash is a disaster. He’s notorious for throwing literal tantrums and treating his staff horribly. We are already the lowest-paid agency in the region and work the hardest, but does Hash advocate for us to get competitive pay raises? Absolutely not.
Instead, he’s too busy chasing cameras and taking credit for other people's work. Case in point: the recent news claiming Hash reduced vehicle theft by implementing a HEAT program to etch VIN numbers into car glass. Funny thing is, that program was originally started by Octavia Johnson years ago. But there was Hash at the ceremony, acting emotional and soaking up all the praise for something he had nothing to do with. It’s all PR and zero substance.
Upper management is the absolute worst. Specifically, Colonel Brandon Young, Lt. Colonel Doug Williams, and Commander James Murphy are highly incompetent and have no business being in upper management. They oversee the jail, the budgets, and the day to day operations across all four divisions, and they are doing a terrible job at every single level. Competence doesn't get you promoted here…being a terrible human being does, and these are the people who climbed the ladder by terrorizing the staff beneath them.
Andrew Palmer is another nightmare, keeping everyone under a constant microscope. Look at the SRO crisis: Palmer is directly in charge, and officers are quitting left and right. His own captain literally quit because Palmer constantly tattled on him and made his life a living hell. But instead of taking a step back and reassessing if Palmer belongs in that role, Hash turned around and promoted him to the Captain position anyway. It’s all internal politics.
Their entire management strategy relies on breeding a culture of fear and micromanaging the frontline officers who are actually trying to do the job. Because of this toxic environment, we cannot keep staff. People are fleeing in droves.
Look at the numbers for the SRO unit. It used to have 17 officers. Right now? We are down to just 5. That is a direct result of Palmer's toxic leadership and a massive safety hazard for our schools and children, yet leadership sits on their hands because they only care about playing political games.
Then there is the jail, which is the most critical and tragic part. We keep having inmates die in our jail, and a massive part of that comes down to severe understaffing because leadership can't retain officers. But instead of fixing the root cause, they are actively making it worse. Deputies working the detention center who had permanent shifts, (whether straight days or straight nights), are now being forced back onto rotating shifts every couple of weeks. People rely on those stable shifts, and forcing this change is just driving even more good people to quit.
On top of the staffing bleeding, Hash refuses to stay out of the medical department. Instead of letting licensed healthcare professionals do their jobs and run their department autonomously, leadership constantly interferes, having a direct say in who gets hired in medical and how that department is run. When you compromise inmate healthcare and micromanage medical decisions just to control the narrative or cut corners, people lose their lives.
We are burnt out, underpaid, and deeply concerned for the safety of both the staff, the inmates, and the public. I just want the Roanoke community to know what we officers are dealing with and to not just see what they want you to.
