THE REAL ISSUE ON COP CRIMES ARE COP UNIONS. THEY PROTECT THEIR CRIMINAL COPS AND ALWAYS HAVE!
"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."
“But maybe there is an opportunity here to strike a blow against the impunity that has permitted this pervasive culture of police racism and abuse.”
Ten
thousand people have been arrested across the US as protests against police
violence continue to expand
5 June 2020
More than 10,000 people have been arrested in the US during the
protests against police violence as of Thursday, the tenth day of
demonstrations in a row since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police
on Memorial Day.
In a tally taken of recorded arrests across the country, the
Associated Press reported that the number of protesters arrested has grown by
the hundreds each day. The news agency reported that one quarter of the arrests
have been made in Los Angeles followed by New York City, which has 2,000
arrests, Dallas, and Philadelphia.
The AP analysis also showed that the majority of the arrests are
for “low-level offenses such as curfew violations and failure to disperse.”
Exposing as false the claims by President Donald Trump and Democratic
politicians such as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz that the majority of the
protesters are outside agitators, AP reported that, during a 24-hour period
over the weekend in Minneapolis, “41 of the 52 people cited with
protest-related arrests had Minnesota driver’s licenses.”
Additionally, in the US capital, AP reported, “86 percent of the
more than 400 people arrested as of Wednesday afternoon were from Washington,
D.C., Maryland and Virginia.”
The actual number of those detained by law enforcement is
unknown. “The protesters are often placed in zip-ties and hauled away from the
scene in buses,” the report said, “at a time when many of the nation’s jails
are dealing with coronavirus outbreaks.”
New York County Supreme Court Justice James Burke ruled on
Thursday against a writ filed by New York’s Legal Aid Society and refused to
release anyone held longer than 24 hours between arrest and arraignment. While
New York courts stipulate that those in custody over 24 hours are entitled to
release, Judge Burke ruled that the pandemic and mass protests were a “crisis
within a crisis” and the New York City Police Department had thereby provided
justification for the delays.
The historically unprecedented protests—in the face of arrests
and ongoing police assaults with tear gas, rubber bullets, flash grenades and
other “non-lethal crowd control munitions”—continued to expand across the
country on Thursday. According to a summary published by USA Today, protests have been
reported by local news media in 584 cities and towns across all 50 states, and
as well as the territories of Puerto Rico and Guam.
In New York City, thousands of protesters marched from a memorial service for
George Floyd in Brooklyn—which featured the first public appearance of George’s
brother Terrance Floyd—across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. The assembled
crowed expressed hostility by turning their back on Democratic Mayor Bill de
Blasio, drowning him out and forcing him to cut his remarks to 90 seconds at
the memorial, as they chanted, “I can’t breathe,” “resign” and “defund the
police.”
Protesters were particularly angry about the baton assault by
police on Wednesday night against those who remained on the street past the
8:00 p.m. curfew. On Thursday morning, both de Blasio and Democratic Governor
Andrew Cuomo defended the violent actions of the police, which had been
captured on video and seen widely across social media. Amid the melee, two
police officers were shot and one was stabbed in the neck in Brooklyn.
Unlike the night before at the Manhattan Bridge, New York City
police did not attempt to block demonstrators from entering the bridge, as the
crowd swarmed both the northern land side and the pedestrian walkway. According
to a report in the New York Times, “Drivers in the opposite lane honked horns and raised fists in
shows of support.”
Protests in Washington, DC continued on Thursday near Lafayette Square and the Martin
Luther King, Jr. Memorial, while many rallied near the DC/Maryland border.
Earlier in the day, Washington, DC’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser lifted the
11:00 p.m. curfew, citing the fact that there had been no arrests the previous
day. Bowser has adapted herself to the stationing of federal troops in the
city, merely demanding that non-DC troops leave.
Meanwhile, military vehicles and police expanded the perimeter
around the White House on Thursday, erecting tall metal fencing and putting in
concrete barricades in preparation for what is expected to be a mass protest on
Saturday.
According to a statement by the US Secret Service, “The areas,
including the entire Ellipse and its side panels, roadways and sidewalks, E
Street and its sidewalks between 15th and 17th streets, First Division Monument
and State Place, Sherman Park and Hamilton Place, Pennsylvania Avenue between
15th and 17th streets, and all of Lafayette Park, will remain closed until June
10.”
Demonstrations took place in multiple locations in the Chicago area on Thursday,
including several hundred protesters who marched from Lincoln Park High School
to Whitney Young High School three miles away on the north side of the city.
Other protests took place in the northern suburbs of Evanston, Grayslake and
Zurich Lake.
Chicago Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot declined to answer
questions at a press conference regarding a high-speed police chase on Wednesday
evening that resulted in the death of a female motorist as well as two other
incidents of police violence. One was at Brickyard Mall parking lot, where
officers were caught on video pulling two women out of their vehicle and
brutalizing them, with an officer kneeling on the neck of one of the two while
she was on the ground. In another video, an officer is seen chasing down and
punching a protester in Uptown on Monday night.
Tensions were high in New Orleans on
Thursday evening, following the events of the previous night in which the New
Orleans Police Department (NOPD) used tear gas to disperse a large group of
protesters who marched onto the interstate from downtown New Orleans and headed
for the Crescent City Connection bridge to cross over into the West Bank,
Jefferson Parish. The Jefferson Parish police are notorious for their brutality
and cruelty, known to be openly racist and blatantly abusive.
NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson defended the repressive
actions at a press conference on Thursday morning, showing social media videos
of the confrontation and claiming that rubber bullets were not used on the
crowd, although this was disputed by protesters. When asked about plans for
Thursday evening, Ferguson said, “We don’t know what they’re planning to do
tonight.”
Despite rain, protesters gathered in Orlando, Florida for a
fifth night in a row on Thursday. They assembled downtown near City Hall and
prepared to march to the headquarters of the Orlando Police Department, where a
dozen officers wearing helmets and carrying shields were reportedly waiting. On
Wednesday night, tear gas was used after a crowd at City Hall of approximately
2,000 people began moving through downtown and violated a previously announced
8:00pm curfew.
Protests continue to grow in size and scope throughout the San Diego area, with
many held Thursday in smaller cities and suburbs in addition to the downtown
protests, which included over 2,000 people. Cities such as Chula Vista,
Oceanside, Julian, North Park, Carlsbad, Encinitas, La Mesa and Santee held
protests in the hundreds.
In the growing downtown protests, police and national guardsmen
kettled in protesters and shot rubber bullets and tear gas indiscriminately
into crowds. Just the day before, at least 200 armed National Guardsmen arrived
in San Diego following a request from San Diego Sheriff Gore. After Wednesday’s
protests, the San Diego police chief announced a ban on chokeholds.
San Diego County is home to the largest military and naval base
in the US. Stoked up by Trump and the brutality of the state’s response, some
right-wing and white nationalist groups have been organizing in cities such as
Santee and Carlsbad to join police and engage in violence against protesters.
These small groups, however, represent a tiny fraction compared to the
thousands who continue to take to the streets throughout the county.
In an example of the spread of protests across the US, hundreds
of people demonstrated at the downtown parking garage in Grand Forks, North Dakota, 80
miles north of Fargo, and marched through the downtown area, as organizer
Kollin King shouted over a bullhorn, “What’s his name?” and the crowd yelling
back, “George Floyd.” The demonstration stopped briefly near the Red River and
then continued on past its previously agreed-on route.
Why Conservatives and Liberals Might
Join to Fight Back Against Police Unions
In 2011, Wisconsin
Republicans led by Governor Scott Walker enacted a controversial measure to
weaken the state’s public employee unions. But they exempted firefighters and
police officers, reflecting the conservative movement view that unions may be
bad, but cops are very good.
But in the wake of
the George Floyd murder, the conservative movement view is changing. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, National Review, the Washington Examiner, Heritage Foundation, and even the Federalist have all identified police unions as a primary culprit in
allowing violent and racist officers to operate with impunity. Even Walker,
normally an authoritarian apparatchik, now concedes that he was wrong to exempt police.
Curtailing police
unions may not be a sufficient response to the scale of the problem — as Eric Levitz pointed out, the handful of states without unionized police
forces have hardly banished police misconduct — but it does seem to be a
necessary step. Reporters like Noam Scheiber and Melissa Segura have detailed how police unions have thwarted even fairly
determined efforts to curtail biased and abusive policing. One study found that police agencies that unionized saw a 27 percent
increase in misconduct complaints, as officers wielded their newfound impunity.
The common theme
running through
these accounts is that unions bargain
not only for better pay and benefits,
but also job security that shields their
members from accountability. Any
effort to reform police means changing
the rules governing the conduct, but
the enforcement of those rules requires
subjecting officers to accountability
and, ultimately, the loss of their job if
they refuse to cooperate.
these accounts is that unions bargain
not only for better pay and benefits,
but also job security that shields their
members from accountability. Any
effort to reform police means changing
the rules governing the conduct, but
the enforcement of those rules requires
subjecting officers to accountability
and, ultimately, the loss of their job if
they refuse to cooperate.
Of course, making it
hard to fire people is one of the central functions of most unions. In the case
of police officers, this protection effectively insulates the most violent,
bigoted and authoritarian cops from complying with regulations. The union is
the trapdoor beneath every police reform campaign.
The Washington Post has two related
accounts of how police routinely thwart reform. The first is an analysis of a new paper in Yale Law Journal about
fired police officers. They often get hired elsewhere, usually in smaller towns
that have fewer resources — and which are either unaware of, or indifferent to,
their offenses. They estimate that 3 percent of all police officers in Florida
have previously been fired from other jobs as police officers.
That finding is even
more harrowing when read in conjunction with a second piece in the Post,
by Daniel Oats, a former police chief. Oats describes the difficulty police
unions pose to an agency that is trying to weed out bad actors. Any cop subject
to discipline usually has the benefit of an arbitration process stacked in
their favor, enabling (among other advantages) a full review of all evidence
marshaled against them before they have to testify, so they can craft their
testimony to avoid being caught in a lie. Oats writes that during a nine-year
stint as police chief in Aurora, Colorado, he wanted to fire 16 (out of 650)
cops. He only succeeded in firing four of them — and three of those firings
were reversed by the Civil Service Commission.
The grueling,
lengthy, low-probability process of trying to remove an officer has the
predictable effect of discouraging police chiefs from even trying to fire
miscreants. The drain of time and resources is simply not worth it, he argues,
except with the worst of the worst.
When you consider
this in conjunction with the fact that many fired officers just get new police jobs elsewhere,
you have a picture of how overmatched any reformer is against the protections
most officers enjoy. Again, the precise details differ significantly from town
to town, and some police forces have humane cultures and more robust systems of
accountability.
The problem of police
unions upends the normal ideological divisions. The left loves unions and
dislikes police, and the right loves police and hates unions. At the moment,
the left has largely overlooked its affinity for labor, and the right has
overlooked its support for police, perhaps because Floyd’s grisly murder and
the scenes of brutality against protesters have put the rot in police
department cultures across the country on such vivid display.
Perhaps polarization
will swallow up the fleeting moment of consensus. (President Trump himself has
expressed no interest in taking on the police unions, whose abuses he has enabled and goaded on.) But maybe there is
an opportunity here to strike a blow
against the impunity that has permitted
this pervasive culture of police racism
and abuse.
an opportunity here to strike a blow
against the impunity that has permitted
this pervasive culture of police racism
and abuse.
Good Cops, Bad Cops, and the
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of the Police Protest Movement
NYPD officers kneel
down after answering a call for unity from protesters during a June 2
demonstration in New York City over the death of George Floyd. Photo: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via
Getty Images
Of the million or so
words written these past few weeks about the causes and effects of police
brutality, of all the earnest observers who have weighed in with suggestions on
how to reform or rebuild police departments, none highlighted the scope of the problem
more succinctly than Lieutenant Robert Cattani of the New York Police
Department. He felt compelled, on June 3, to email an anguished apology to his
colleagues for taking a knee in solidarity with protesters demonstrating in the
city over the killing of George Floyd.
“I thought maybe that
one protester/rioter who saw it would later think twice about fighting or
hurting a cop,” Cattani wrote as the protests intensified earlier this month. “I was wrong. At least that [sic] what I
told myself when we made that bad decision. I know that it was wrong and
something I will be shamed and humiliated about for the rest of my life.”
“I spent the first
part of my career thriving to build a reputation of a good cop,” he continued.
“I threw that all in the garbage on Sunday [May 31].”
In Foley Square, resounding chants of “NYPD
take a knee.” Eventually, four cops kneel to huge chants. “We just want to get
home safely, same as you,” says one protester.
That Cattani thinks
he threw his good reputation “in the garbage” by making a token gesture of
sympathy for protesters is the heart of the problem here. His email is a rare
glimpse into the ground-view toxicity of the “us-versus-them” mentality within
police departments in historic moments like this. It also flips on its head the
hoary notion, repeated even now by tribunes of the Trump administration, about
how policing in America is tarnished by a few rare “bad apples” mixed in with
all the “good” ones.
Here’s a decent cop —
a “good apple,” you might say — who did something while in uniform that harmed
no one and that earned him respect, if not appreciation, from the people he is
sworn to protect and serve. And for that he knew he would be treated as a pariah
by his fellow officers — let’s call them “bad apples.” “Culture eats policy for
breakfast,” one expert said of policing over the weekend. Indeed, how can anyone reasonably expect
genuine accountability or transparency within a police department where such
warped sensibilities prevail?
The cop who takes a
knee on a street to acknowledge the existence of police misconduct — that is to
say, the cop who takes a knee to acknowledge reality— is doing something to
help solve the problem of police brutality. The cop who plans to retaliate
against that officer — that is to say, the cop who plans to engage in unlawful
retribution — is doing something to perpetuate the problem. Answering the
questions of how and why police union officials won’t recognize that obvious
distinction is answering the question of how we got into this mess to begin
with.
The reaction by the
NYPD cops who received Cattani’s email also helps explain the state of play as
nationwide, popular demonstrations roll into their fourth week. “Police sources
expressed relief that Cattani had apologized — but questioned what he was
thinking,” the New York Post tells us. “I’m glad he took it back, because your officers are out here
battling with these guys and that’s what you do to show appreciation? Never
show your weakness,” one insider said. “You did it to appease these people who
didn’t appreciate you anyway.”
That’s nonsense. The
cop who takes a knee in solidarity with protesters isn’t doing it for the
looter or the rioter or the criminal who is taking advantage of the protests.
That cop is doing it instead for the majority of protesters, and millions of
others who aren’t protesting publicly but who want to see sweeping police
reform — and who don’t necessarily see the police as enemies of peace and
justice. If police departments are trying to win the hearts and minds of the
public, police union attacks on decent rank-and-file cops is a terrible
strategy.
This is not a New
York City problem, either. It’s a national problem and it warrants nationwide
attention among justice reformers. Late last week in Chicago, for example, the
city’s police union leader threatened to kick out of the union any cop who takes a knee during a
protest. “If you kneel, you’ll be risking being brought up on charges and
thrown out of the lodge,’” warned John Catanazana. “Specifically this weekend,”
he argued, “this was about defunding and abolishing the police officers. And
you’re going to take a knee for that? It’s ridiculous.”
Nowhere in these
missives against conscientious objectors among police officers is there any
acknowledgement by police union officials that the growing talk of “defunding”
police departments is a direct result of the brutality with which some cops
have attacked peaceful protesters. It’s not just a vicious cycle. It’s a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Protests against police misconduct over the past
three weeks have engendered countless proven examples of more police
misconduct. The police themselves, on our streets, are making the case for
their own abolition.
This past weekend,
for example, Michael DeBonis, an ex-NYPD detective and former police
spokesman, posted withering criticism of the police work in the Eric Garner case. Garner, whose
last words also included the now iconic phrase, “I can’t breathe,” was killed by NYPD cops after he was put into a chokehold during a dubious arrest on
Staten Island in 2014. “We killed Eric Garner,’ DeBonis wrote, but then
felt compelled to add that “In writing this post I’m fully aware that some of
my cop friends may call me a traitor, a hypocrite or even un follow me.”
Police officers who
tell the truth about police brutality are not “traitors,” they are heroes. They
are also indispensable to the police reform movement. If police officers
continue to be afraid to speak out about the misconduct they see, if police
whistleblowers are punished instead of protected, the reform movement will
continue to morph into a “defund” movement. By refusing to embrace reasonable reforms — or in other words,
by drawing lines like the ones they’ve drawn around protesters — unions will
continue to undermine their own political and moral support.
The kicker? On
Sunday, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the
Senate, said that changes to “qualified immunity” rules that would make the
police more often liable for misconduct — a reform with broad support from
conservatives and progressives alike — should be considered as a “poison pill”
in pending federal legislation because of opposition from police unions. There
can be no meaningful federal police reform legislation that does not take on
the unions directly. Ask Lieutenant Cattani. He understands.
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.
A police car drives by as protesters clash with police while
demonstrating against the death of George Floyd outside the 3rd Precinct Police
Precinct in Minneapolis, Minn., on May 26, 2020. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Bad Cops—Bad Unions
June 17, 2020 Updated: June 17, 2020
It’s not just Derek Chauvin kneeling
on George
Floyd’s neck for
almost nine minutes—it’s
the other cops who just watch.
It’s
the Buffalo cops who floored a protester and simply walked by as he lay
unconscious, bleeding out of his ear. It’s a cop in Philadelphia, swinging his
baton into protestors, the Atlanta police needlessly tasing two college
students, the NYC cops beating a bicyclist and dozens of cases where police
lied about what they’d done until bodycams or cellphone cameras revealed the
truth.
None
of this justifies looting, arson and violence against other cops.
But
I understand the rage.
Policing
is the rare profession given where employees are given a legal right to use
deadly force. Most officers use that power responsibly.
But
America has 800,000 cops. If just a fraction is racist or sadistic, that’s a
lot of racist and sadistic bullies.
What
can be done about that?
“The
problem is repeat offenders. The system doesn’t fire those cops,” says
Washington Post columnist Radley Balko. “The job of a union is to protect the
interest of its members, really at any cost.” So, bad cops keep policing.
The
officer who killed George Floyd had 18 complaints filed against him.
A
San Antonio cop was caught challenging prisoners to “take off your cuffs and
fight for your freedom!” Then he did it again. Technicalities in his union’s
contract forced police to reinstate him, twice.
“There’s
a strong argument to be made that we need to get rid of police unions
entirely,” says Balko.
What’s
the union’s side of the story?
Cops
have a hard job. They must make split-second decisions and act as peacekeepers,
baby sitters, marriage counselors and more. They deal with people at the worst
time of those people’s lives. It may be why officers have a high suicide rate.
“Unions
are there for a reason,” says Larry Cosme, president of the Federal Law
Enforcement Officers Association. “You have to protect these men and women.”
After
two New York City cops drove into a crowd of protesters, I asked Cosme to
justify that.
“Crowds
are throwing bricks at them! You get to a state of panic. You can’t go forward.
Can’t go backwards. So you try to get out of the situation!”
He
added, “The police should police themselves.”
“But
you don’t,” I said. “They’re not held accountable. Especially union officers.
They do it again and again. It gets erased from their records.”
Cosme
disagrees. “They are disciplined. … If you don’t have these protections, then
no one’s going to want to be a police officer.”
But
only about half of America’s police belong to a union. Where cops are not
unionized, says Balko, “there’s no shortage of police officers.”
Police
unions also make police departments harder to manage.
In
crime-ridden Camden, New Jersey, union cops took so much sick time and family
leave that, most days, nearly 30 percent of the force just didn’t show up. So,
Camden fired all of them.
Camden
rehired some, but only those willing to go along with new rules that made it
easier to fire and discipline.
The
result: Murder went down, and Camden saved money.
Per-officer
costs dropped from $182,168 to $99,605. That allowed Camden to double the size
of its force from “bare bones” to “near the highest police presence of any
city.”
Extra
police allow for community policing—more people walk the beat, talking to
residents.
Unfortunately,
today’s protesters rarely mention police unions. Instead, they say: “Defund the
police! Fund community programs, like job training.”
But
that won’t stop crime. America has already spent trillions on job training and
other government social engineering that rarely works. Initially, the programs
are staffed by well-intended people who want to help. But over time, they
become wasteful, ossified bureaucracies, like most government programs.
We
need cops. Police presence does reduce crime.
But
we need cops who can be held responsible for their actions.
John Stossel is an Award-winning news
correspondent and best-selling author. His latest book is “No, They Can’t: Why
Government Fails—But Individuals Succeed.”
Ten
thousand people have been arrested across the US as protests against police
violence continue to expand
5 June 2020
More than 10,000 people have been arrested in the US during the
protests against police violence as of Thursday, the tenth day of
demonstrations in a row since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police
on Memorial Day.
In a tally taken of recorded arrests across the country, the
Associated Press reported that the number of protesters arrested has grown by
the hundreds each day. The news agency reported that one quarter of the arrests
have been made in Los Angeles followed by New York City, which has 2,000
arrests, Dallas, and Philadelphia.
The AP analysis also showed that the majority of the arrests are
for “low-level offenses such as curfew violations and failure to disperse.”
Exposing as false the claims by President Donald Trump and Democratic
politicians such as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz that the majority of the
protesters are outside agitators, AP reported that, during a 24-hour period
over the weekend in Minneapolis, “41 of the 52 people cited with
protest-related arrests had Minnesota driver’s licenses.”
Additionally, in the US capital, AP reported, “86 percent of the
more than 400 people arrested as of Wednesday afternoon were from Washington,
D.C., Maryland and Virginia.”
The actual number of those detained by law enforcement is
unknown. “The protesters are often placed in zip-ties and hauled away from the
scene in buses,” the report said, “at a time when many of the nation’s jails
are dealing with coronavirus outbreaks.”
New York County Supreme Court Justice James Burke ruled on
Thursday against a writ filed by New York’s Legal Aid Society and refused to
release anyone held longer than 24 hours between arrest and arraignment. While
New York courts stipulate that those in custody over 24 hours are entitled to
release, Judge Burke ruled that the pandemic and mass protests were a “crisis
within a crisis” and the New York City Police Department had thereby provided
justification for the delays.
The historically unprecedented protests—in the face of arrests
and ongoing police assaults with tear gas, rubber bullets, flash grenades and
other “non-lethal crowd control munitions”—continued to expand across the
country on Thursday. According to a summary published by USA Today, protests have been
reported by local news media in 584 cities and towns across all 50 states, and
as well as the territories of Puerto Rico and Guam.
In New York City, thousands of protesters marched from a memorial service for
George Floyd in Brooklyn—which featured the first public appearance of George’s
brother Terrance Floyd—across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. The assembled
crowed expressed hostility by turning their back on Democratic Mayor Bill de
Blasio, drowning him out and forcing him to cut his remarks to 90 seconds at
the memorial, as they chanted, “I can’t breathe,” “resign” and “defund the police.”
Protesters were particularly angry about the baton assault by
police on Wednesday night against those who remained on the street past the
8:00 p.m. curfew. On Thursday morning, both de Blasio and Democratic Governor
Andrew Cuomo defended the violent actions of the police, which had been
captured on video and seen widely across social media. Amid the melee, two
police officers were shot and one was stabbed in the neck in Brooklyn.
Unlike the night before at the Manhattan Bridge, New York City
police did not attempt to block demonstrators from entering the bridge, as the
crowd swarmed both the northern land side and the pedestrian walkway. According
to a report in the New York Times, “Drivers in the opposite lane honked horns and raised fists in
shows of support.”
Protests in Washington, DC continued on Thursday near Lafayette Square and the Martin
Luther King, Jr. Memorial, while many rallied near the DC/Maryland border.
Earlier in the day, Washington, DC’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser lifted the
11:00 p.m. curfew, citing the fact that there had been no arrests the previous
day. Bowser has adapted herself to the stationing of federal troops in the
city, merely demanding that non-DC troops leave.
Meanwhile, military vehicles and police expanded the perimeter
around the White House on Thursday, erecting tall metal fencing and putting in
concrete barricades in preparation for what is expected to be a mass protest on
Saturday.
According to a statement by the US Secret Service, “The areas,
including the entire Ellipse and its side panels, roadways and sidewalks, E
Street and its sidewalks between 15th and 17th streets, First Division Monument
and State Place, Sherman Park and Hamilton Place, Pennsylvania Avenue between
15th and 17th streets, and all of Lafayette Park, will remain closed until June
10.”
Demonstrations took place in multiple locations in the Chicago area on Thursday,
including several hundred protesters who marched from Lincoln Park High School
to Whitney Young High School three miles away on the north side of the city.
Other protests took place in the northern suburbs of Evanston, Grayslake and
Zurich Lake.
Chicago Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot declined to answer
questions at a press conference regarding a high-speed police chase on
Wednesday evening that resulted in the death of a female motorist as well as
two other incidents of police violence. One was at Brickyard Mall parking lot,
where officers were caught on video pulling two women out of their vehicle and
brutalizing them, with an officer kneeling on the neck of one of the two while
she was on the ground. In another video, an officer is seen chasing down and
punching a protester in Uptown on Monday night.
Tensions were high in New Orleans on
Thursday evening, following the events of the previous night in which the New
Orleans Police Department (NOPD) used tear gas to disperse a large group of
protesters who marched onto the interstate from downtown New Orleans and headed
for the Crescent City Connection bridge to cross over into the West Bank,
Jefferson Parish. The Jefferson Parish police are notorious for their brutality
and cruelty, known to be openly racist and blatantly abusive.
NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson defended the repressive
actions at a press conference on Thursday morning, showing social media videos
of the confrontation and claiming that rubber bullets were not used on the
crowd, although this was disputed by protesters. When asked about plans for
Thursday evening, Ferguson said, “We don’t know what they’re planning to do tonight.”
Despite rain, protesters gathered in Orlando, Florida for a
fifth night in a row on Thursday. They assembled downtown near City Hall and
prepared to march to the headquarters of the Orlando Police Department, where a
dozen officers wearing helmets and carrying shields were reportedly waiting. On
Wednesday night, tear gas was used after a crowd at City Hall of approximately
2,000 people began moving through downtown and violated a previously announced
8:00pm curfew.
Protests continue to grow in size and scope throughout the San Diego area, with
many held Thursday in smaller cities and suburbs in addition to the downtown
protests, which included over 2,000 people. Cities such as Chula Vista,
Oceanside, Julian, North Park, Carlsbad, Encinitas, La Mesa and Santee held
protests in the hundreds.
In the growing downtown protests, police and national guardsmen
kettled in protesters and shot rubber bullets and tear gas indiscriminately
into crowds. Just the day before, at least 200 armed National Guardsmen arrived
in San Diego following a request from San Diego Sheriff Gore. After Wednesday’s
protests, the San Diego police chief announced a ban on chokeholds.
San Diego County is home to the largest military and naval base
in the US. Stoked up by Trump and the brutality of the state’s response, some
right-wing and white nationalist groups have been organizing in cities such as
Santee and Carlsbad to join police and engage in violence against protesters.
These small groups, however, represent a tiny fraction compared to the
thousands who continue to take to the streets throughout the county.
In an example of the spread of protests across the US, hundreds
of people demonstrated at the downtown parking garage in Grand Forks, North Dakota, 80
miles north of Fargo, and marched through the downtown area, as organizer
Kollin King shouted over a bullhorn, “What’s his name?” and the crowd yelling
back, “George Floyd.” The demonstration stopped briefly near the Red River and
then continued on past its previously agreed-on route.
What Has
Happened to Police Filmed Hurting Protesters? So Far, Very Little.
https://www.propublica.org/article/what-has-happened-to-police-filmed-hurting-protesters-so-far-very-little?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter&utm_content=river
We asked police departments
about viral videos showing cops escalating violence against protesters. Most
refused to name the officers or provide updates on their investigations.
It has been almost two months since a Los Angeles Police
Department patrol car accelerated into Brooke Fortson during a protest over
police violence. She still doesn’t know the name of the officer who hit her or
whether that person is still policing the city’s streets. The officer did not
stop after hitting Fortson and instead turned around, nearly hitting other
demonstrators in the process, and sped off.
The LAPD almost surely knows who the officer is. The squad car’s
number is clearly visible in one of the multiple videos that captured the
incident. But the department hasn’t released any information: not the officer’s
name, or whether that person has been disciplined. The police say the incident
is still under investigation.
We set out to see whether the incidents caught on camera were
investigated, whether officers were named and what information we could get
about any investigations or discipline. We found a widespread lack of
transparency that made it difficult to find out even the most basic details
about whether and what sort of investigations were taking place.
ProPublica looked through
hundreds of viral videos and focused on those that most clearly show an officer
using apparently disproportionate force. We ended up with 68 videos
involving more than 40 law enforcement agencies across the country,
in both large cities and small towns.
We Are Tracking What Happens to Police After They Use Force on
Protesters
These 68 videos show clear apparent instances of police officers
escalating violence during protests. Most departments refused to share details
about investigations and discipline or even officers’ names. Here’s what we
learned about each case.
We asked each police department a few simple questions:
Who were the officers in the video, were they under investigation and have they
been disciplined?
The departments mostly declined to give any specific
information.
We learned that officers from eight videos have been disciplined
so far. Officers from eight others will not be disciplined. And for two videos,
police departments still insist they’re unsure of whether the officers involved
are their own.
While officers have the right to use force if their own or
others’ lives are in danger, the widespread violence against protesters has
been unwarranted, said Chris Burbank, the former chief of the Salt Lake City
Police Department.
“When you have a peaceful
protest, people sitting on the ground, does that justify the use of tear gas or
pepper spray on them? It absolutely does not,” said Burbank, who is now the vice president of law enforcement strategy at the
Center for Policing Equity. “I see that as a violation of policy, violation of
state and city ordinance and as a violation of common decency and what is good
about policing.”
The LAPD told us it has moved 10 unnamed officers to non-field
duties while it investigates incidents related to the recent protests. The
department declined to say whether the officer who struck Fortson is on that
list. Fortson has filed a claim for damages with the city and has retained a
lawyer instead of filing a complaint with the Police Department.
Here’s what we learned while looking into these videos:
Officers Remain
Anonymous — Even When They’re Caught on Camera
Departments have only named officers in 17 of the cases we
examined as of publication. A name can allow the public to learn more about the
disciplinary history of an officer and to see any patterns in prior
allegations. It also could allow us to see if officers appear in multiple
videos involving use of force.
Minneapolis has a public database of officers’ complaint histories.
Still, the police department declined to identify the officers in videos we
compiled, making it impossible to check their records in the database.
As protests have continued across the country, many states are
struggling with how far to go in revealing officers’ disciplinary records.
In June, New Jersey’s attorney general directed the state’s law
enforcement agencies to name officers who have been cited for serious
disciplinary violations. In his directive, he noted that prematurely naming
those accused of misconduct can be unfair if allegations are not ultimately
proven. But, he argued, the likelihood of officers misbehaving increases when
they “believe they can act with impunity; it decreases when officers know that
their misconduct will be subject to public scrutiny and not protected.”
In some states, there are union contracts and laws preventing
the disclosure of officer names, said Phil Stinson, a former officer and now a
professor at Bowling Green State University. In other instances, though,
Stinson said, departments may just be “stonewalling” or trying to get rid of
problem officers before things become public.
“They just try to ride it out and hope it quiets down,” Stinson
said.
In Florida, Miami-Dade Police Department spokeswoman Sgt. Erin
Alfonso at first declined to provide the names of officers from a May 31
incident we examined. The video shows police abruptly arresting a man who was
talking to them but not doing anything aggressive before an officer appears to
grab him by his shirt. An internal report obtained by ProPublica through a
public records request identified the officers as Roberto De la Nuez and Jorge
Encinosa. Encinosa declined to comment on the arrest to ProPublica and De la
Nuez did not respond to a request for comment. The department’s Professional
Compliance Bureau is investigating the case, Alfonso said.
The incident, which took place May 29 and was reviewed by
ProPublica, remains under investigation by the San Jose Police Department.
Shivaun Nurre, the Independent Police Auditor for the city, confirmed that her
office has received multiple complaints related to the incident. The office
does not release the names of officers to complainants. According to a civil
rights lawsuit filed by Sanderlin on July 18, three officers fired at him, but
as of the initial filing, he had been unable to determine exactly who hit him
and he was too far away to have caught badge names. “If someone else who wasn’t
a police officer did the same thing, they would be held accountable,” Sanderlin
said.
“All allegations, complaints, or concerns of the public will be
taken seriously,” the San Jose Police Department said in a statement. The
department said all videos provided by ProPublica are “part of an extensive
Internal Affairs investigation. As such, this is a personnel investigation and
[we] cannot communicate further.”
And in another instance, ProPublica requested the incident
report related to a man’s arrest in Kansas City, Missouri. We were told that
wouldn’t be possible to obtain because the charges against him and other
protesters were dismissed and vacated by a city ordinance, meaning it was “as
though it never happened,” a Police Department spokesperson said. The actions
of the arresting officer remain under investigation, but without the report
ProPublica is unable to obtain the officer’s name or see the rationale for the
arrest. “We are not saying we don’t care and it isn’t a big deal,” the
spokesperson said.
Investigations
— if They Happen at All — Are Far From Transparent
In case after case, departments have cited ongoing
investigations for not providing details such as whether officers captured in
the videos remain on active duty; they also often can’t say how long the
investigations might take. Sometimes, police union contracts prevent police
departments from releasing such information.
In Portland, Oregon, the Bureau of Police would only say that
all incidents of force were under investigation, including the two identified
by ProPublica. Ross Caldwell, the director of the Independent Police Review, a
civilian oversight office in the Portland auditor’s office, said that while he
could confirm that both incidents were under investigation, he wasn’t “legally
allowed to talk about these investigations.”
How long departments legally
have to process complaints varies by jurisdiction. In at least 14 states,
police officers have a “bills of rights” written into state law that provides
special protections during investigations. There’s a one-year statute of limitations in California on
police discipline cases. In Florida, investigations of police misconduct must
conclude in 180 days. Both states have provisions to pause the
clock if there’s a concurrent criminal investigation and California pauses for
civil litigation, but otherwise, if a department can’t close out a case in
time, officers cannot be disciplined, suspended, demoted or dismissed.
“They have gotten these protections, especially in state laws,
through sheer political power and lobbying effort, and that’s a serious
problem,” said Samuel Walker, a retired professor of criminal justice who has
researched the bills of rights.
Even in cases where victims are able to identify officers,
they’re unlikely to see them face discipline.
Because there’s no federal
mandate for police agencies to report details about the civilian complaints
they receive, the most recent nationwide dataset about how many complaints are
fully investigated and “sustained,” meaning the allegations of wrongdoing are
confirmed, was published in 1993 by the Bureau of Justice
Statistics, according to Carol Archbold, a police accountability
expert and professor at North Dakota State University.
In New York City, where 10 of
the videos we examined took place, the Civilian Complaint Review Board
investigates allegations of excessive force against the police. The board
investigated more than 3,000 allegations of misuse of force in 2018, but only
73 of them were substantiated. Los Angeles, which handles its complaints
internally unless an officer asks for a review by a citizen Board of Rights, had 5% of complaints from the public sustained that
same year.
In California, only investigations that result in sustained
findings or those involving deadly force, discharge of a firearm or “great
bodily injury” become public.
The picture is similar at
smaller departments. Of the 206 citizen allegations against Omaha police
officers in 2018, only 17% were sustained by the department’s internal review
process. In Indianapolis, where a video from the protests captured officers
beating a woman, that number was 7%.
When asked about a video
showing officers kicking a protester who was backed up to a fence,
the Omaha Police Department said all use of force incidents are being reviewed
and that officers from other agencies were assisting. The department declined
to comment further and said it is “bound by contractual language that prevents
us from disclosing the contents of any personnel matter.”
Hundreds of
Complaints Are Overwhelming the Oversight Agencies
Departments now face a mountain of work to sift through the
events of the protests. There have been more than 750 complaints filed with New
York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board since protests began in late May,
leading to over 200 open investigations. The LAPD has assigned 40 investigators
to sift through protest complaints.
The agency’s new Demonstration Complaint Dashboard shows 28 ongoing
investigations, but the department is continuing to work its way through
complaints and plans to continue updating the tracker, said Anne Bettesworth,
the deputy director of public affairs for OPA.
It typically takes 180 days for Seattle to investigate civilian
allegations against officers, but Bettesworth said the agency is working to
complete as many protest-related investigations as possible in under 90 days.
It’s an “all hands on deck situation,” she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment