Bloody hell. He should be in prison.
I am sure that some of those officers were terminated for petty reasons that they should not have. A supervisor has a personal disagreement with someone, and takes it out on their employment. It happens across the board in every industry, it happening in police departments too.
The union is there to protect officers from stuff like that. From being summarily dismissed due to a personal conflict, or pulling over a city councilor, or busting the mayor’s daughter with weed. That is the purpose of unions, and in that regard, they do a good job.
I don’t even have a problem with the unions representing and advocating for the bad cops, that’s their job. If you are going to fire people, they should have a representative to ensure that the firing is fair.
The problem isn’t even that the union has too much power in that regard, the problem is that the cops give them that much power when they vote on the leadership and objectives of the union, then hold the municipality hostage by threatening to strike. This is one of the many times when bad cops are being protected by people who consider themselves to be good cops.
I’m in a federal employees union, AFGE. In the Fed, you have representation and negotiation rights. You can file grievances. But you can’t strike.
Let’s take away the strike option.
You can always strike, just not always legally.
I looked around, and I cannot tell for sure whether a police strike is legal or not, though, there have not been all that many of them.
Legal or not though, the threat of the police walking out on their jobs or striking is holding a city hostage. Much as I feel that the actions of individual officers are certainly to be condemned, and the actions of the police community to cover for these act is a gross misconduct of justice, police are necessary for the smooth and peaceful functioning of society. If the police refuse to work, a city can descend into chaos very quickly.
One of the pillars of civilization as we know it is the ability to call 911, and have someone show up to help you.
Ideally, we would make sure that working conditions and compensation for the police are high enough that they would have no desire to strike, but when they put conditions in to avoid a work stoppage that includes being able to reinstate officers who have been convicted of abusing their power, then the unions are definitely part of the problem.
I suspect that most if not all of the bad cops consider themselves to be good cops.
Even if the strike isn’t official, there is always the threat of the “blue flu”.
Fired cop who killed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards indicted on murder charge
Just have to wait and see how this one turns out.
A good first step.
The NYTimes has an article on Michael Bell and his attempt to create an NTSB for policing and other efforts across the country to think systematically about procedures to minimize police violence.
The article sheds light on how there’s a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of making both police and civilians safer but, in order to start making progress on the issue, police need to come around and be open to honestly looking at what happens rather than reflexively ass covering regardless of circumstance.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/massachusetts-cop-charlottesville-crash
Just another bad apple.
From the comments:
Exactly.
Of course he has the right to make stupid, racist comments. He also has the right to suffer the outcomes of his stupid, racist comments.
I don’t think that’s right. In fact, “the constitutional right to be a policeman” was the right specifically argued in debates over how far free speech protections apply to government employees. In Pickering vs Board of Education, it was held that “public employment cannot be conditioned on a surrender of constitutional rights.”
In Rankin vs McPherson, a deputy constable made a remark “If they go for him again, I hope they get him” with regards to John Hinckley’s attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan and it was held that his firing was improper and forced his reinstatement back onto the force. It’s hard to see a substantial difference in the remarks made here that would change the scope overly much.
So, while detestable, it does seem like constitutional precedent does say that this man has the constitutional right to remain a policeman despite saying this stupid, racist remark because he’s a public employee and public employees have special protections under the first amendment.
Wait for it … the “that’s just one guy …” defense. In reality, he is one more guy who should NEVER have been allowed on the force.
Upon further research, this is a much better link and goes through the three tests that are generally considered when deciding whether the government may limit an employee’s speech:
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the speech is on a matter of public concern, and
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the speech is not said by the employee as part of the employee’s job duties, Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006), and
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the damage caused by the speech to the efficiency of the government agency’s operation does not outweigh the value of the speech to the employee and the public (the so-called Pickering balance). Connick v. Myers (1983) (p. 567).
It goes on to note that criteria 1 & 3 are quite opaque and hard to decide upon. Arguably, this case is of a public concern and it most definitely didn’t happen as a part of the employee’s job duties but the government could press the case on #3 and argue that the speech had little value and would significantly hamper this man’s ability to do his job due to how widely publicized it is.
It’s a rather moot point however because the only way for this to get tested in court would be to bring about an expensive lawsuit and the increasing encroachment of state power means that the chance of success is so low nobody reasonable would attempt to push it.
Another one decided to show how “qualified” he is to be an impartial and fair upholder of the law…
New Mexico police union “chief”, Sergeant Troy Baker.
Baker says personal views expressed on his Facebook post do not affect his on-duty behavior. “I’m not bringing it to work,”
Yeah, I call bullshit.
[Moderating]
I’ve edited SteveG1’s quote to make it clear he’s referring to an offboard personality, and not SDMB poster Baker.
[/Moderating]
Thank you, and that is correct. This police sergeant is an entirely different person.
As far as we know.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.