THE REAL ISSUE ON COP CRIMES ARE COP UNIONS. THEY PROTECT THEIR
CRIMINAL COPS AND ALWAYS HAVE!
Blacks not the only victims of rogue cops
The
videos below are of a 2014 incident in Independence, Missouri where former
policeman Timothy N. Runnels arrested Bryce Masters, a 17-year-old boy.
The first video is two minutes and is very disturbing, especially the
ending. The second video is 54 minutes and includes the arrival on the
scene of backup and ambulance. The second video shows a brief split
screen of what Masters shot of the incident before Runnels tased him into
cardiac arrest.
The incident was
covered in depth by The Intercept and
by the website for Britain's Daily Mail.
The incident was also covered at Officer.com. In
2018 in nearby Kansas City, the Star's Tony
Rizzo reported: "Federal prosecutors later charged Runnels criminally with
violating Masters' civil rights, and the former officer was sentenced in 2016
to four years in prison. Runnels, 35, is scheduled to be released from custody
in January 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons." Here's
the only clear photo of Runnels I
could find on the Net. If you see him, steer clear.
Blacks are by no
means the only victims of police brutality. Police departments must do a
better job of identifying and quickly getting rid of any thugs on their
payrolls, but they're being protected by the police unions. We need our
police, but not the criminal rogues.
To watch the videos at
YouTube, click on these URLs:
Photo credit: YouTube screengrab (cropped).
Rather, it is a political maneuver designed to
provide cover for Democratic governors and
mayors who have overseen brutal police
attacks on protesters, not to mention the pro-
police record of the Obama administration.
Democrats announce toothless police reform bill
9 June 2020
With a great deal of rhetoric accompanied by a political stunt, the Democratic congressional leadership on Monday released its “Justice in Policing 2020” bill.
Prior to the press conference to present the measure, more than 20 Democratic lawmakers, all wearing African kente cloths, knelt in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on the neck of George Floyd, killing the 46-year-old African American worker.
The group of Democrats included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass and senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris.
At the press conference, Bass, Pelosi, Schumer and other sponsors of the bill repeatedly cited the nationwide mass demonstrations against the murder of Floyd and touted their bill as a “transformational” and “bold” attack on police violence and systemic racism.
But their statements and the token character
of the reforms included in the bill make clear
that the measure is nothing of the kind.
Rather, it is a political maneuver designed to
provide cover for Democratic governors and
mayors who have overseen brutal police
attacks on protesters, not to mention the pro-
police record of the Obama administration.
It is also aimed at containing and dissipating social protests by workers and youth against not only racism and the fascistic Trump administration, but also the social inequality, repression and poverty that are embedded in the capitalist system and magnified by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Democrats are well aware that even their collection of mild reforms has no chance of being passed by the Republican-controlled Senate or signed into law by President Trump. Just minutes after the Democrats’ press conference, Trump, who later met behind closed doors with law enforcement officials, tweeted: “This year has seen the lowest crime numbers in our Country’s recorded history, and now the Radical Left Democrats want to Defund and Abandon our Police. Sorry, I want LAW & ORDER!”
The major provisions of the bill include:
* Changes in the wording of statutes dealing with police abuse that somewhat lower the legal threshold for obtaining a conviction. The bill alters the federal standard for criminal police behavior from “willfully” violating the constitutional rights of a victim to doing so “knowingly or with reckless disregard.”
It also changes the standard for determining whether the use of force is justified from whether it is “reasonable” to whether it is “necessary.”
* It somewhat limits, but does not eliminate, the application of “qualified immunity” to police offenders. For the past 15 years, the Supreme Court has interpreted the “qualified immunity” doctrine, which applies to public officials pursuing their official duties, to vacate civil suits and throw out criminal cases against police who break the law or use unwarranted force.
Legal researchers Amir H. Ali and Emily Clark argued in 2019 that “qualified immunity permits law enforcement and other government officials to violate people’s constitutional rights with virtual impunity.” The Obama administration repeatedly intervened in Supreme Court cases to uphold the blanket use of “qualified immunity” to shield cops from civil suits or criminal prosecution.
* The bill limits, but does not eliminate, the transfer of military equipment to the police. Obama continued the practice of militarizing police departments with billions of dollars worth of military-grade weapons, armored vehicles, attack helicopters, drones and other tactical weapons.
* The bill creates a national register of police misconduct.
* It bans chokeholds.
* It establishes a grant program allowing—but not requiring—state attorneys general to create an independent process to investigate misconduct or excessive force.
* It requires body cameras for federal uniformed police officers and dashboard cameras for marked federal police vehicles. These federal forces comprise only a small fraction of the 687,000 full-time law enforcement officers in the US. The bill also mandates that state and local agencies use federal funds to “ensure” the use of body and dashboard cameras.
* The bill bans racial profiling.
* It grants subpoena powers to the civil rights division of the Justice Department for “pattern and practice” investigations of police departments.
* It makes lynching a federal hate crime.
At the press conference, Bass, who represents parts of South Los Angeles, went out of her way to profess her support for the police. “I am certain that police officers, professionals who risk their lives every day, are deeply concerned about their profession and do not want to work in an environment that requires their silence when they know a fellow officer is abusing the public,” she said.
She went on to present police officers as the unwitting victims of poor training and policing practices and a lack of “transparency.”
Pelosi called the bill a “transformational” and “structural change,” ran through its main provisions, and concluded by saying, “Police brutality is a heartbreaking reflection of an entrenched system of racial injustice in America.” She called the bill a “first step,” promising “more to come.”
New York Senator Schumer, known as the senator from Wall Street, referred nervously to the massive demonstrations that have continued in New York City and in cities and towns across the US for nearly two weeks, noting in particular their multi-racial and multi-ethnic diversity.
He then proceeded to define the issue of police violence exclusively in racial terms, saying, “The poison of racism affects more than just our criminal justice system. It runs much deeper than that. There are racial disparities in housing and health care, education, the economy, jobs, income and wealth and COVID has only placed a magnifying glass on them.”
This is a continuation of the narrative that has been employed by the ruling class, and particularly that faction represented by the Democratic Party, for more than 50 years, ever since the massive urban rebellions of the 1960s. Beginning with the Kerner Commission Report of 1968, there has been a concerted effort to portray the essential social category in America as race, rather than class.
BLOG EDITOR: THE DEMOCRAT PARTY RELIED ON THE BLACK SLAVE CLASS UNTIL IT BECAME APPARENT THAT THE INVADING ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS WOULD MAKE A BETTER CLASS OF SLAVES.
ASK YOURSELF WHAT BARACK OBAMA EVER DID FOR BLACK AMERICA AS HE SABOTAGED HOMELAND SECURITY TO FLOOD AMERICAN WITH DEM VOTING 'CHEAP' LABOR MEXICANS.
This was designed from the outset to divert attention from the class exploitation upon which capitalism is based and within which racism serves as a weapon to divide the working class. All of the African-American lawmakers at the Democrats’ press conference are wealthy beneficiaries of policies that have elevated a thin layer of blacks into the upper-middle class and the bourgeoisie, while leaving black workers, and the working class as a whole, in far worse circumstances than in the 1960s.
A reporter asked if the sponsors of the “Justice in Policing Act” supported calls for “defunding” the police that have been embraced by some local Democratic officials, who have generally defined it as diverting a small portion of the police budget to social services. Bass had previously made clear she did not support such calls and the campaign of Joe Biden released a statement Monday disavowing the demand.
Responding to the question, Pelosi said, “We want to work with our police departments. There are many who take pride in their work, and we want to be able to make sure the focus is on them.” She went on to warn against getting “into these questions that may come by the small minds of some.”
Government-employee
unions—including those for police—put the power and interests of their workers
above the public interest.
June
8, 2020
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, and the
ensuing protests and urban riots, have brought police departments under
enormous scrutiny and widespread hostility. Liberals and conservatives alike have identified police unions
as a barrier to salutary reform. They aren’t wrong—and union contracts are one
reason why reforming police departments is so hard. But while Left and Right
may agree about police unions, those on the left would not make a broader
connection: that the problems posed by police unions in particular are similar
to those with public-sector unions in general.
Liberal sympathy for organized labor doesn’t extend to police
unions because cops are seen as the “bad proletariat.” Liberals try to paint
the problems of police unions as unique to law enforcement, rather than endemic
to unionized government. In the wake of the Floyd killing, some have called for
the abolition of police forces—and, in Minneapolis, the city council has announced that it will “begin the process” of
disbanding the city’s police department. On the other side, conservative
aversion to government unions often stops short of police unions because
conservatives worry that criticism of cop unions will be mistaken for criticism
of the police. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, for example, excluded police
unions from Act 10, which dramatically weakened public-sector unions in his
state.
The deeper problem is that unionization and collective bargaining
have made it almost impossible to bring about meaningful reform of state and
local government, policing included. The consequences are huge, because the
inability to reform government means that performance suffers and public trust
in key institutions declines.
Collective bargaining is not fundamentally about products or
services—whether public safety, education, automobiles, or anything else—but
about the power and interests of workers and management. Public-sector unions
are in the business of winning better salaries and benefits, protecting job
security, and advancing their members’ occupational interests. Organizational
incentives, and state law, ensure that union leaders prioritize these
amenities.
Police and public schools are the institutions of government with
which Americans most frequently engage. Police protect our most vulnerable
citizens and allow communities to thrive. Schools offer opportunities for
social mobility. There are thousands of heroic and devoted police officers and
school teachers. But unionization and collective bargaining have enmeshed these
two crucial government functions in red tape that too often protects the inept
and abusive.
Collective bargaining in the public-safety and educational sectors
strips government executives of the tools they need to supervise and manage
their workforces effectively. Police chiefs and school principals struggle to
weed out poor performers. A few bad actors can undermine an entire
organizational culture.
Upholding the law presents unique challenges, and police can have
adversarial relationships with the communities whom they serve. Consequently,
police-union contracts contain myriad formal rules and procedures designed to
protect police officers from the inevitable complaints—some justified, others
not—that arise in the course of duty. Many big-city union contracts limit officer interrogation
procedures after alleged wrongdoing, mandate the deletion of disciplinary
records, and require cumbersome grievance proceedings.
Language spelling out these procedures often makes up the largest part of any contract—it’s roughly 20 percent of
the New York City police officers’ contract, for example. These provisions allow
both police unions and individual officers to challenge personnel actions by
their superiors. If the matter can’t be settled by appealing up the chain of
command, it is sent to binding arbitration. Arbitrators often split the difference
and avoid dismissing officers. For instance, in 2018, a Seattle arbitrator
reinstated—with back pay—an officer fired for punching a handcuffed,
intoxicated woman. The nuisance involved in dealing with grievances, and the
prospect that an appeal will reverse the outcome anyway, can dissuade
supervisors from initiating discipline procedures against poor performers.
Police officers accused of misconduct are, consequently, rarely
disciplined or punished insofar as investigations are long, highly regulated,
and allow for frequent appeals. One
study found that the worst 5 percent of officers in the Chicago
Police Department accounted for a third of all civilian complaints. But few
were ever disciplined or removed. Jason Van Dyke, the officer who killed an
unarmed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014, was among the officers with the
most civilian complaints. But he remained on active duty.
Teachers also enjoy extensive job protections that make them
nearly impossible to fire. State laws and union contracts create a labyrinth of
paperwork and processes. In most school districts, over 95 percent of teachers
receive satisfactory ratings and get tenure (which means more job protections)
after three years on the job. Many principals don’t even bother trying to
dismiss bad teachers because of the costs involved. One study found that dismissing a veteran teacher
for poor performance takes a minimum of two years; in Los Angeles and San
Francisco, it takes at least five years.
Even teachers accused of sexual misconduct rarely lose their jobs. Under
many state laws or union contracts, an independent investigator—usually an
independent law firm or the school superintendent—first vets any accusation.
Then the case goes before an arbitrator chosen by the teachers’ union and
school district. Usually arbitrators’ decisions split the difference and result
in suspensions or fines rather than dismissal.
As a result of such protections, New York City infamously put
hundreds of teachers in “rubber rooms,” where they were paid full salaries and
accrued benefits but could not interact with kids. This “program” cost the city
some $800 million a year. Unable to end it fully, the city converted it into
the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), which continued to pay teachers not to teach
to the tune of $105 million a year. In 2019, 930 teachers held spots in the ATR—perhaps 25 of whom
were there because of charges of misconduct—costing the city nearly $100
million in salaries and benefits.
Within the confines of collective bargaining, public executives
need to push for a recovery of management rights. Only then might school
principals and police chiefs have a fighting chance of improving their
organizations. Going further, states may want to revisit the extent to which
work rules that establish disciplinary procedures should even be the subject of
collective bargaining. Greater accountability in state and local government
would be better for everyone, good teachers and cops included. Weeding out poor
performers will improve public services, protect communities, boost
organizational morale, and spur upward mobility. It’s time to put the mission
of public agencies ahead of job protections for public workers.
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