Unions exist to look out for the interests of their members as the majority of members perceive them, which is what FOP and teachers’ unions both do.
Teachers unions ‘waste’ plenty of time defending people employers have concluded are bad teachers, in the trenches every day. But the police killing people is an inherently more sensitive topic than whether so and so is a crappy (non abusive, non criminal) teacher, hard to compare apples to apples.
And you refer to a ‘group’ but the issue is who is a member of that group, and the union is there in part to make others clearly prove a particular member is part of that ‘group’. Look at the incident which so greatly raised the profile of police violence, the Michael Brown shooting. It was eventually unclear if that cop acted wrongly at all. The discussion of that incident eventually tended to deflect to ‘the larger issue’, along with new cases where a cop was more clearly in the wrong.
But there are two legitimate sides, and multiple facets, to the debate about how much the ‘larger issue’ is due to rank and file police behavior, higher level law enforcement policy (not the union’s domain) and factors outside police control.
I don’t personally believe there should be public employee unions, private sector unions are fine IMO if not allowed to collude in restraint of competition (a committee of Ford and GM management isn’t allowed to set car prices, nor a cartel of steel producer allowed to set their input steel price, so neither should a single UAW be allowed to set their price of labor). So, don’t take the above as a strong endorsement of the police unions. And as somebody noted above, pro-police voices, their unions or not, have at times been guilty of trying to shut down the argument about police practices by saying it’s ‘anti-police’. OTOH a lot of activist groups and rank and filers on the left are in the bad habit of trying to shut down all sorts of discussions by crying ‘racism’.
Or why we should require cops to go through weekly therapy sessions, or something. hell I don’t know what the answer is but anecdotally, I have seen reasonably decent guys turn into tin star assholes after dealing with the worst society has to offer for a few years.
To clarify, as I misunderstood your specific words there: I guess you meant FOP when saying ‘group’. But what I mean is that any union is there in part to make sure others prove a particular member is ‘[unjustifiably] harming those in their care’. And in notable cases that accusation has been slung but later appeared questionable at best (Michael Brown case). And even where police was more clearly questionable (say Freddie Brown case) it’s not hard to understand IMO why police would want an organization with their back given how the Baltimore/MD authorities acted in carrying forward weak prosecutions under political pressure. A suspect should never have died in the latter circumstances, but criminal wrongdoing is a higher bar.
I’ve never been a cop or related to any (firemen among NY Irish in my family tree ) and don’t consider myself especially pro-cop. But I can understand why most cops probably don’t agree with you about FOP, and it’s no mark against them that they don’t. There’s wrong done by cops obviously but also sacrificial lamb seeking among cops in the BLM era. That might be ‘for the greater eventual good’ at a safe distance, but nobody wants to be one of said lambs.
Which union spends more time publicly defending those members accused of abuse?
But let’s go further: which union issues threats more? Police unions have made it a pretty regular tactic to refuse to work events that feature people critical of police. Imagine if teachers’ unions encouraged a work-to-order approach with the children of critics of public education.
There are good unions and bad unions. FOP is the worst.
I agree. It should be a paid part of their current weekly schedule, not an add-on on top of it. That might mean additions to each particular force (to ensure the same number of hours of policing), meaning an increase to the budget–but I bet that after a year, most municipalities would find that policing costs had dropped, due to fewer lawsuits and such.
True, but not supporting the Nazis was hazardous to one’s health. That’s significantly different from one group of supporters voluntarily claiming to be racists in larger numbers than any other supporters.
No it isn’t apples and apples in very simple terms. Teachers are essentially never involved in justified killings. Police often are, not particular police officers but cumulatively nationwide. Killing suspects, even when it’s justified, is highly emotional at least for those closely involved and also especially lately highly charged and divisive politically on a much broader level. Teachers’ unions simply don’t find themselves in cases like Darren Wilson, where it became a cause celebre that that police officer killed Michael Brown, and who was widely accused of ‘execution style murder’, but it doesn’t appear he actually acted wrongly once all the facts were known, murky at the very least. The NEA is very much less likely to face cases where its members justifiably kill members of the public, by the very nature of the two jobs.
And as to your last claim, same problem. Besides doubt about ‘a regular tactic of refusing to work events featuring people critical of the police’ again the role of teachers means there just isn’t a direct analog.
Teachers unions use all kinds of methods and pressure at their disposal to advance of the interests of their members as most of the members see it. It’s inherently the same for any union. I still don’t see any logic in deeming the FOP ‘bad’ in comparison to unions in a completely different situation by the nature of the job of their members. If you were to contrast various police orgs with different opinions about the BLM constellation of issues, I think you’d be on potentially firmer ground. Comparing police and teachers you can only reasonably say IMO you find the perceived self interest of most police less valid than the perceived self interest of most teachers, under the safe assumption their unions or ‘fraternal orgs’ will reflect member perception.
Per Erich Hartmann (WWII top ace, also history’s top ace to date) one of his commanders would tell new pilots that if they wanted to walk the Nazi Party line, they needed to go join the Waffen SS or something. That kind of thing was not welcome in their air group. They were fighting for their country as soldiers, and that was it.
No, what I’m saying is that both are radical, fringe groups and just because they endorse a candidate based on their (not the candidate’s) radical fringe beliefs it is not indicative of that candidate’s grassroots supporters in general. Not at all.
Feminism isn’t a “radical, fringe group”. For one thing, Hillary Clinton says she’s a feminist, and has never tried to deny it or avoid association with other prominent feminists. Trump has repeated and re-tweeted white supremacist rhetoric multiple times, but he’s usually (and tepidly) tried to avoid associating with open white supremacists.
A national survey by the Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation finds 6 in 10 women and one-third of men call themselves a feminist or strong feminist, with roughly 7 in 10 of each saying the movement is empowering.
Yeah, what iiandyiiii and EvilEconomist said. People who think feminists are fringe radicals are the reason feminism exists (and the reason it needs to exist).
) and don’t consider myself especially pro-cop. But I can understand why most cops probably don’t agree with you about FOP, and it’s no mark against them that they don’t. There’s wrong done by cops obviously but also sacrificial lamb seeking among cops in the BLM era. That might be ‘for the greater eventual good’ at a safe distance, but nobody wants to be one of said lambs.