Funny, I followed the writer in the excerpt a lot closer than the blog poster, who I also respect. His argument seemed like a lot of “it’s not perfect, so we shouldn’t try it.”
We can hold two thoughts in our head at once (I hope.) Police unions are part of the problem; they’ve had a lot of chances to become part of the solution, and haven’t. I think it will be telling, whether police unions embrace the reform that will come from these protests, or resist them. If the latter, then fuck’em.
Isn’t that what the cops usually say when they killed somebody?
Lots of people in society do not bargain collectively.
Supervisors who have power over other workers do not bargain collectively.
Every cop is a supervisor, every one of them supervises the rest of us, ordinary members of the public.
Standing in solidarity with literal murderers will not save the labor movement. If we’re worried about it being destroyed, this is exactly the wrong hill to die on.
You need bonus points for the postmodern irony here! 
Police unions do serve useful purposes. Could you imagine how much more tense they would be if they weren’t earning a decent salary or didn’t have decent healthcare?
But it is obvious they have too much power to protect their members from the consequences of their actions. Since unions are a legislative construct their powers can be reigned in by the legislature. Without throwing the baby with the bath water.
All it takes is politicians realizing that they can’t have law and order without law and order. 
The “decent salary”:
The US median wage is just over $30k.
Cops aren’t proles, they’re petty bourgeois.
Not sure which thread to put this in, but a perfect example of the systemic problem of racism in policing.
Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty was just on a press conference with Governor Kate Brown. She pointed out that the racist cop from one of the suburbs, who was fired for his part of a police conspiracy to arrest an African American employee of a towing company so that his boss could fire him and quash a discrimination lawsuit, was just recently hired to train police officers for the whole state (since he’s been banned from testifying in court by metro area DAs, he can no longer be a patrol cop).
Oh, I see. I thought MAGA stood for “Make America Gaunt Again” and referred to the tens of thousands of Americans now going hungry. /s
It’s sad to see fascism being prompted as an ideal in the US.
Let’s just say with the LA case, more than a couple of movie people thought it looked an awful lot like a prop. Not saying that they’re right, or who put it there, but when Hollywood thinks it’s a set-up…
Vox sums it up nicely. The cops are not acting a peace officers, but as counterprotesters. That is absolutely not ok.
Can confirm, was there. Exactly what happened.
Can anyone find any reliable documentation of these recent heel turns? Trying to convince someone who wants a credible news source, but I figure video from anywhere will do, or fuck em.
Thanks
I’m a bit drunk and it’s a bit late but it should be sufficient to just find documentation of cops assaulting protesters at any point after the “peaceful” meeting right? I believe Portland, maybe LA are two examples of this? I looked real quick and I couldn’t see them turning in Flint but the media could just not be reporting on it.
By the editorializing nature of mass media they’re probably unlikely to challenge the cops’ narrative so you might be stuck with 1st hand reports like wait_really’s.
Yeah, I was working on something like that for NYC, then just as I was finishing I realized that every violent incident I’d documented was definitely before or potentially before the cops’ moment of “solidarity” with the protestors. So, dismissible on a technicality. Too busy to start again tonight, so I hoped someone else had done something similar.
Thanks
You already know no matter how much legit evidence you produce, it will never be enough to convince someone who is determined to disbelieve.
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