THE REAL ISSUE ON COP CRIMES ARE COP UNIONS. THEY PROTECT THEIR
CRIMINAL COPS AND ALWAYS HAVE!
“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.”
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.
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.
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:
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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