Yeah, that’s a problem. I fear this situation is too nuanced for lower orders of life (politicians) to understand.
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IANAL, but I don’t think any contract, governmental or not, has the power to grant amnesty from criminal prosecution. Even if a municipality were to specifically exempt their police officers from having to comply with certain local laws, the wrongs that we’re talking about here are crimes at the state level, not the local level.
I think that the problem instead is a police culture that treats these wrongs as employment matters, not criminal ones. A police union has no legal power to shield its members from criminal prosecution, but when wrongdoing is handled only as an employment matter, then the union has great power to protect its members.
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Denying police unions because they are an armed force further militarizes them. If we want to demilitarize the police, we must let them have the same employee rights other government workers have. The union is not for the department, the union is for the workers. In this case sworn police officers. Police unions represent their members against police departments and local government.
The problem is not the unions. The problem is that we have a culture that venerates, elevates and excuses police. We have a culture that says that it’s a sign of guilt to remain silent and demand your lawyer. We have a culture that refers to Constitutional protections as “laws for the bad guys”, and opines that it’d be so much better if the cops could just do what they want to criminals. Hell, we have an entire genre of pop culture regarding the police and related activities. “Cop movies” and “Police Procedurals” are all over television and books.
The United States laws about police need massive, total reform. The culture in the US regarding police needs to be rewritten from the ground up. But police officers, even the bad ones, are people too. And removing their rights is a bad precedent to set.
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My worry too. I’m all for regular workers union which, yes, can also result in some problems, but they’re lesser problems than those commonly inflicted on workers who aren’t unionized. I’m also for worker-owned companies, which render unions moot. (But I’m not for cop-owned policing, whatever that would mean…)
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A[quote=“Papasan, post:4, topic:84704, full:true”]
The American Citizens say [also] it’s time for legislators to rip up these agreements and force the rule of law on those who represent it.
[/quote]
Not necessarily. There are many Americans who believe you are either pro-cop or pro-crime.
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I’m normally a pro-union guy.
I make an exception for police unions. I’m all for breaking those “unions”. Historically, they’ve been used as tools of big business to break other unions.
Today, as the article mentions, they’re used to protect police brutality. Another part of Blue Omerta…
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The core issue is police accountability. As history has shown us again and again, power + no accountability = corruption/abuse. The problem with police union contracts are the specific provisions that erode police accountability.
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This. There is a strange form of disassociation regarding some exceptional government agencies/institutions e.g. police and military. Checks and balances is a well known and applied concept in the US but exactly those organizations who are allowed to curtail the rights of citizens get exemptions? Dunno what causes this - hero worship? glorification of violence?
In the US, a nations that prides itself for it’s civil rights or “freedoms”, it is surprisingly easy to lose those rights. Convicted or just suspected of a crime? Traffic stop? Sorry, but with a snip of a finger your rights go right out of the window - suddenly you can get tortured and even killed and no-one bats an eye. Inalienable rights eh?
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But could it be Lupus?
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I was going to post the same thing. Public sector employees need unions even more than private sector unions, as their bosses - the public - are more capricious than corporate execs.
In the Chicago cases cited, the department evidently did have the power to bring charges against officers, they just haven’t in the past for reasons of their own. That doesn’t have anything to do with the existence of unions. Likewise, if there are contract agreements which prevent successful investigations of abuse, then as those are negotiable it is likely that management permitted them in order to get concessions on something else, like health benefits. These are all bad management problems, not reasons to decertify unions.
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I’d go along with reforming the Police Unions as long as we reform the Teachers Unions at the same time. Much of the criticism listed here is also true of teachers unions. There is a lack of accountability and the Union always backs up members even when they clearly f-up. Public sector unions in general have a real problem in that they put large sums of money into elections, then turn around and negotiate contracts with the very same people who they help elect.
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Unions and the left in general should probably get ahead of things, and stop the FOP from killing the entire union movement.
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They aren’t part of the labor movement, though. That’s why they’ve stayed around: they look vaguely labor-movement-y, but without being any threat to state or upper-class power or advocating for anything beyond mild reform of the status quo at best.
Plus police are the willing enforcers of a fundamentally broken system the labor movement is traditionally about changing, you know?
Show me modern police unions striking in solidarity with others in the actual labor moment regularly as opposed to quietly standing by during, or outright taking the opposing side and fighting strikers, and I’ll show you a flying pig.
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Or at least that’s the story that some people who hate public education and/or teachers tell each other often enough that it starts to seem true.
And that’s why public school teachers earn more money with less work than workers in any other sector.
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You’re assuming that they otherwise don’t operate as, and come from the same basis as, other labor unions. Aside from all the problems they are generally involved in the sort of basic labor work that any union does. “Threatening” state and upper class power is not the purpose of unions. Enforcing, protecting, and expanding the rights of working people is. And fundamentally police officers are working class, usually middle class workers who deserve labor rights and the protection of unions. While police unions today don’t always group politically with other unions, that doesn’t mean its never been the case. Or holds on every issue. And corruption and other problems in police unions are hardly unique. Just look at the long standing association between organized crime (especially the mafia) and the teamsters and construction unions. Many construction unions still operate on a bribe for work basis. You pay a kickback to a union rep if you want to work on a union gig. And have to hand out bribes if you’d like to join. I’ve known a fair few people in the construction business who were turned off the major construction unions down to that.
Some police. Cops aren’t a monolith. Again human beings. With varied thoughts, goals, opinions etc. Same with police departments and the unions. Police forces are often heavily restricted in their right to strike. Because they preform a critical, infrastructural role in the operation of the state. But you do see some examples (too few in my opinion) of PD unions standing with the broader labor movement. In the early days of Occupy, before it went weird and started to eat its own tail, a number of large police unions across the country expressed solidarity and outright support for the movement. With statements that their members contribution, rather than striking and marching, was to work the protests as police. Keep things safe and operating smoothly. Certainly many departments handled those protests poorly as time went on, and most unions did their usual bullshit in the aftermath. But early on there was surprising support from police unions and officers themselves. Along with other public sector unions like firemen and nurses.
Removing police unions, banning them. Doesn’t change the iniquities in our justice system. It does just about the bear minimum to even address it. It won’t put cops solidly in line with the rest of the labor movement, or strengthen the labor movement. Neither will it make cops realize that the current dispositions of their unions and departments puts them at risk. Or convince them to back reform. What it will do is deprive an awful lot of working people of fair representation, reduce their labor rights and ability to protect and expand them. And lead to far fewer union workers and members left in this country. Which hurts labor as a whole and further reduces the importance of unions as a national force.
In the mean time the issues plaguing our criminal justice system are not instituted by those people. These are top down, policy driven issues (Top ranking police are not union, beyond a certain rank you’re excluded from membership). Even the presence of shit cops comes about due to hiring, training, and recruiting policies. And internal, top down, practices that fail to adequately control or remove them. While unions are part of the issue, they’re far down the ladder. Adequately prosecuting police after shootings doesn’t mean that shooting did happen and doesn’t change the crap policing policy that drives the iniquities we’re talking about. These problems start with elected officials and their appointed department heads. Governors, Mayors, DAs, and police chiefs. And again not monoliths. Even as a seemingly record number of departments are deeply embroiled in corruption and police brutality scandals, and even doubling down on those same policies and the adversarial disposition involved. There are departments, and unions, that are actively reform minded.
The crowning irony of the Dallas shooting is that the Dallas PD was a model of reform. One of the largest departments to actively attempt to fix this shit. And one of the most successful. Some of the solutions used are even things PD unions commonly fight for, especially increased training. That’s part of why that protest was scheduled in Dallas. Before the shooting happened the PD there was using their social media accounts to report on how well the protests were going. Officers were posing for photos with protesters, giving thumbs ups to their “black lives matter” signs. That was a department that supported and welcomed the march. And while escalation to violence of the sort we saw is to some extent a natural result of the adversarial tack taken by most departments. Dallas is a city and department that seems to have out right rejected that approach.
You don’t get that sort of progress by kicking the dudes at the bottom of the power structure. You get it by replacing the people at the top. The ones who set these policies, hire those problem cops, build those corrupt political machines (including the people at the top of the Unions). Dallas put a reform minded Chief at the head of their department. They had a mayor of similar disposition. And a cooperative Union. And shit got better. You aren’t going to get more municipalities to follow in their foot steps by cutting the nuts off public sector unions. You create a legal justification for depriving cops of their right to a union, and the same justifications can (and likely will) be used against unions for other Public employees. Firemen, nurses. Shit many of the same arguments have been routinely been leveled at teachers unions for years.
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There is an open topic called “Police reform suggestions?”
Quoting myself:
It is a normal principle of labor organizing that managers are not part of the bargaining unit. If you have the power to hire and fire other workers, then you are not in the union.
Police powers go far beyond the power to hire and fire. Cops have the personal discretion to detain and release, to arrest, beat, and/or kill. Every LEO is a manager. They manage the public.
Military officers do not bargain collectively.
Bargaining collectively with law enforcement “officers” makes no more sense.
The only rationale for organizing LEO’s like janitors is if the public is to be treated like trash.
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Aye, there’s the rub.
Unions are for making the disadvantaged individual have at least some power with their employer. That doesn’t make sense when the individual workers are far more power than their individual bosses already (the public).
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See there’s a problem with that. Police forces are not military. Police officers are not soldiers. A damn large part of the problem with our police forces at the moment is in general militarization of our police, and the adversarial approach to policing that goes hand in hand with it (WAR ON DRUGS/TERROR WOOOO!). Police officers are (or should be) part of the community, civilians, our neighbors. Embedded participants in the place we live. The set of reform/policing tactics that stands in opposition to the current state of affairs with its broken windows, putative, adversarial, para-military, stop and frisk non-sense is usually labeled under the rubric of community policing for a reason.
Establishing legal frame works that equate and treat police as a military force only furthers those problems. Sets up hard legal rather than policy based line between the general public and law enforcement. And again law enforcement is technically part of the general public. Discussing reform as if or insisting that they are fundamentally military/para-military simply underlines and bolsters the same problems and overall disposition reform is intended to counter.
If these problems grow, in part or in whole, from a militarized police force. Its a much better approach to say “that’s not the military, why are they behaving like the military?” and then prevent them from operating like a military force. Then it is to legally regulate them as a military force.
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The point is they are individually commissioned officers with power over other people.
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When has that EVER once worked in the US?
“You don’t need an MRAP. That’s for the military.”
“But I was scared for my life.”
“Then call in the national guard. They’re braver than you, and apparently don’t kill hundreds of US citizens a year.”
“How about I just plant drugs on you and get you put in prison for 25 years instead? The prosecutor has never once disagreed with me or anyone else in my department, because they know if I don’t bring them cases, then they don’t have a job.”
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