If what the Police Officers Association’s PR firm tells us is true, nearly 90 percent of the 121 cops working in Simi Valley have no confidence in Police Chief Mike Lewis.

Ninety percent. Nine out of 10. And yet somehow the department has managed to operate without major incident in the three years since Lewis ended a 30-year career with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department to become chief of police. Crime rates have remained low and arrest rates high.

It’s hard to imagine a private business operating smoothly if 90 percent of its employees thought the boss wasn’t doing his job.

As much as we want to take the union’s press release at its word—that Chief Lewis is “incompetent, disinterested, noncommunicative, uncaring and/or ineffective,” and that officers have held these feelings for a long time, it’s hard to ignore the elephant in the room: the ongoing contract negotiations. Might the stalemate have something to do with all this?

Union president Detective Bill Daniels told the Acorn this week that membership’s overwhelming 107-1 vote of “no confidence” in Lewis was not generated by union leadership nor did it have much to do with the battle being waged between the city and the POA over the sworn officers’ next contract.

And yet the press release lists among the reasons for the officers’ disdain for Lewis is that he’s “interjected himself in the current contract negotiations, siding against his officers on most every issue,” and he’s “failed to act as a public safety advocate in balancing the fiscal concerns of City Hall with the demands of modern law enforcement and the critical protection of residents.”

If Lewis has been so bad at his job, why is the public just hearing about it now? Why didn’t officers speak up sooner, or wait until after the contract negotiations have been settled? Blowing the whistle now only plants doubt in the public’s mind as to the POA’s motivations.

Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe the mayor and the City Council are too. Maybe Lewis shouldn’t remain police chief—he has, after all, lost the support of those he’s been tasked to lead.

Or maybe some officers view Lewis, the longtime sheriff’s department employee, as an outsider, a richly paid one at that. And as soon as they felt it could help their cause, they were ready to throw him under the bus.

Either way, we’ve got a mess on our hands on Alamo Street. Something must be done to clean it up.