My understanding is whenever legislators try to do reform legislatively the police union blocks them.
Seattle for example is having a lot of examples of police abuse. But Seattle is a democratic town, and Washington state is a democratic state. So on both the state and local level, the government is run by people who in theory should want to pass laws that prevent police brutality and encourage more community oriented policing.
My understanding is when Scott Walker and the republicans took over in 2010 in a lot of states, one thing they did was go after public sector unions (including but not limited to the police union). I generally support unions but if they are encouraging corruption or have other issues there should be some checks on them.
So how were people like gov. walker able to take on groups like the police union when other cities and states are not? A good deal of the police brutality is happening in blue cities within blue states.
Also if the democrats are unwilling or unable to take on the police union, what chance do they have of taking on other more powerful groups involved in health care, wall street, etc?
however the issue is more abolishing abusive policing behaviors rather than abolishing the union itself, if the police union blocks legislative efforts to make policing more productive and humane, something has to be done about it.
There generally isn’t enough political will to take them on. The only job of the union is to protect the police and extend that protection; they aren’t going away. Politicians taking them on, however, have lots of priorities and while police reform can take the stop stop for a while it doesn’t usually last.
I also think that while liberals and conservatives are willing to tackle police issues they want to do it from opposite ends. Conservatives are happy to abolish the union but like the “law and order” laws. Liberals are happy to take on the law and order stuff but reluctant to take on unions.
Most people support the police because they don’t have to fear them; in fact because they fear the “others” that the police protect them from. Therefore the police almost always in the past have had enormous public support. Any threat to the police becomes a political issue that no politician wants to touch.
Police unions understand this. They are extremely close-knit. They defend their members to the last second, no matter what the offense. They refuse to consider any compromises during negotiations. They reject all citizen review boards. And they know public relations, immediately and loudly screaming whenever anybody touches their privileges.
They get away with almost all of it because any threat to them becomes a threat to the majority community. Besides, police are notorious for staging sickouts or reduced enforcement when politicians try to put pressure on them. If the arrest rate drops suddenly, the majority goes crazy.
Any group with majority public support is nearly invulnerable. People hate health care companies and wall street financiers, so steps can be taken against them, if only tiny ones. But they love their police. Until now.
Minorities (of every conceivable sort) have been telling these tales since the beginning of police forces, but the majority has never cared enough to take action. I have real doubts that real reform will come now either. All it will take is one gruesome murder of a white child and the calls for more police will be back in full. Still, the need is huge and change is crucial. Let’s think good thoughts.