Unions have negotiated contracts that erase disciplinary records after a period of time, making it easier to get away with multiple violations. They have negotiated contracts that require officers be allowed to inspect the entire case against them before being questioned and have to allow 48 hours before questioning, allowing officers to tailor their stories and be untruthful. They have negotiated contracts disallowing anonymous complaints to be investigated, discouraging complaints. There are contracts allowing officers to use vacation time instead of serving suspensions.
The result of these contracts are police with long histories of abusive behavior are kept on because each incident is investigated separately and the standard of proof is so high for discipline. For example, in Columbus Ohio, a young man was hospitalized for three days after being arrested for underage drinking. He sued and received a $30,000 award. The arresting officer had 40 prior complaints against him and yet was cleared by the internal police investigation.
In Oakland California, a cop was fired after killing two unarmed people in 7 months, the second person he shot in the back. The city paid the dead man’s family $650,000. The police union appealedthe firing, and the arbitrator found the contract was not followed, and reinstated the officer with back pay.
It may not completely solve the problem of police brutality but it would help. A recentstudy found that collective bargaining led to a 45% increase in violent incidents. What other policy has the potential to cut police brutality in half?
What, exactly, do you find objectionable in the seminar in the linked video? If you are unfamiliar with Grossman, one of his core beliefs is that human beings are inherently reluctant to kill other human beings. I, personally, don’t believe that. All you have to do is look at the homicide rate in the U.S. I’ve investigated plenty of killings that fly in the face of this theory. What he is saying in that video is that, if you are not prepared to take a life in self-defense or defense of another, you might want to consider other employment. To intersperse bad police shootings with his seminar is BS. The video clearly implies that the officer who killed Castine did so because he went to Grossman’s training. There is absolutely zero evidence for that. The “Warrior” mindset is not what you pretend it to be. The idea is that, when the time comes, be prepared to give it your all and to not go down without fighting to your last breath. Be prepared both mentally and physically.
The same thing applies to the mantra “Going home at the end of your shift is rule number one.” In context, this doesn’t mean “Everyone’s safety is secondary to yours” but rather, “The suspect’s safety is secondary to yours.” If anyone has a problem with that (and some people do) I don’t know what else to say. Officers put the safety of the general public before their own thousands of times every single day.
I’ll grant that some officers take the warrior thing too far and are wannabe Delta Force guys. As an academy instructor, I can say that this trait doesn’t usually show itself at the recruit level. Even if it did, getting rid of a recruit is no easy task. Everything must be documented with all the is dotted and ts crossed. We have some recruits who we KNOW will be a problem once they get out there but, unless they commit some serious violation they will probably graduate. All we can do is warn the hiring agency. Fortunately, in my state departments can fire new officers during their first year, basically, without cause and it happens. Especially in smaller (less than 100 officers) departments where administration has a better handle on what is going on on the front lines. But if the new is politically connected… And in large agencies they can get lost in the sauce if the Field Training Program isn’t up to snuff - which is often the case.
We try to instill in the recruits that they are not going to war and the public is not the enemy. But those who end up in high crime areas may face a different reality - humping 911 calls one after another where arrests for violent crimes (including DV) and drug dealing are, if not a daily occurence, all too common. Constant exposure to these highly emotional contacts where they are viewed as the enemy by at least one of the parties takes its toll and officers become hardened.
Add to all that the conflicting demands “Keep your cool. Show no emotion. Treat everyone the same” while, at the same time, “Have a heart. Can’t you give ME a break? Don’t be so robot-like!”
Pretty much everyone agrees that we need to do a better job policing. The devil is in the details.
If the police who make up a union want to make it harder to fire police who do wrong, then what does removing the union do?
Oh, it makes it so that now, in that rare instance where you DO get a police officer willing to come forward and substantiate a citizen complaint against another officer, that substantiating officer can be fired without cause.
Because who is going to stop them? The union that no longer exists, with its protections that no longer exist?
To the extent that there is a problem with policing, police unions may be a symptom by association, but they are not the problem and I find it highly suspect that there is substantial overlap between groups that want to eliminate unions (including police unions), and groups that want all the protestors to just shut up already and stop complaining (or stop blaming the police, but rather blame the democratic politicians who are largely aligned with and sympathetic to their views).
We’ll start with the erased disciplinary records: If someone has committed a serious infraction, it doesn’t matter whether it is in their file or not, as they should be fired.
Smaller stuff, maybe not completely erase it, but it would suck to be on your 24th year, and be denied a promotion because of a minor incident while you were a rookie.
The inspect the case and have 48 hours clause is bullshit, and should be taken out. Not that they shouldn’t have a chance to prepare a statement, but that’s more than a bit excessive. When police ask me questions, they don’t have to tell me what they already know.
I am always of mixed minds about anonymous complaints. I think that they should be investigated, but not necessarily as fully as if there is a person standing behind their words. Someone anonymous says, “I saw officer Charlie stealing from the cookie jar.” Then you check Officer Charlie for any crumbs, keep an eye on the cookie jar. If someone says, “I am John Doe, and here is my identification, and I saw Officer Charlie stealing from the cookie jar.” Then that should be taken more seriously.
If I were to re-write such a contract, then they would forfeit their vacation time when suspended.
Do all police contracts have all these clauses, or is it the case that some areas have different ones?
Now, with the police violence issue out in the air, do you think that democrats would give their blessing to contracts like these? Personally, I think they probably fear voter backlash at this point far more than they fear the union itself.
Do police unions in republican dominated municipalities have contracts that are substantially different from those in democratic areas? How much does a politician really have to do with the negotiations over clauses and sub-paragraphs, anyway?
So, I absolutely agree that the parts of the union contract that you have highlighted here are problematic based on your description and that we should lobby our governments to remove such language as quickly as possible.
I would agree that streamlining the disciplinary process and removing some of the protections for officers in the disciplinary process would probably decrease violence substantially. I don’t know that you have to get rid of unions to do that.
I would think that, at this time if nothing else, that there would be more than enough public pressure and electoral will to hold police to account, that a politician could get these changes through, even with a $1 million ad campaign against them.
Anyway, the point of all this is that sps49sd was deflecting blame from the police who commit violence, through the union that defends violence, and to the democrats who adore unions. If there is any truth to this whatsoever, then the problem is actually pretty easy to fix, as there is no democrat anywhere that is going to approve a contract with these clauses as you have described them.
Yeah, that’s the thing. I don’t want cops to be fired because they treated some wealthy or influential person by the same laws and standards as they would treat an indigent.
I don’t want cops fired because they do not fit in with the “culture” of a department, as that culture seems inevitably to be that of discrimination and corruption.
I do want cops fired for abusing their authority. I want them not just fired, but prosecuted, if they violate someone’s civil rights.
How we find that happy medium, I’m not sure. But blaming democrats and dismantling unions does not seem to be a path to that destination to me.
What is the problem? Bad police officers.
What is the solution? Get rid of the bad officers.
Why hasn’t the solution been implemented? Contracts that make it very difficult to fire bad officers.
Who is responsible for the contracts? Unions and Democratic politicians. Since it is impossible to keep Democratic politicians out of office, the only way to solve the problem is to change the unions.
Just about everyone is in favor of making people in their line of work harder to fire. Most people are not able to put that into practice because they are not in a position to negotiate that. Police unions are.
They are not alone in that, most unions negotiate byzantine rules for getting rid of bad workers if they are able. NY city schools rubber rooms are a symptom of that. The difference is that in most professions a bad worker means a slightly worse product instead of a beaten or killed civilian.
The problem is that the public is fickle and professionals are not.
A couple years ago I became briefly embroiled in local school board politics. I watched many school board meetings and spoke at one. Some meetings were heated with lots of public outcry, most were boring and poorly attended. What they all had in common was that the president of the local teacher’s union was always there and was usually the first speaker. The attention of the public comes and goes but people who work with local government for a living are always there.
Contracts negotiated in the next six months will probably be somewhat harsher, but after that the public will be distracted and the press will be covering whatever is hot. Then contracts that come up next year and the years after that will go back to the way things are now. The only way to permanently change police contracts are to change the rules surrounding how they are negotiated to give police less power.
I suggest that nearly all Republican positions are situational and negotiable. Just as they claim to be fiscally conservative and then blow out the deficit when they find it convenient, you’ll never find a Republican union buster getting tough on police unions.
Republicans only have one unwavering principle, which is serving white power and white property, and their sole praxis is taking over the judiciary and law enforcement organs.
You are correct that government works best when the public is engaged.
Right now, the public is engaged, so is a good time to get changes made. If the public is aware of contract negotiations going on, they will insist that these clauses be stripped from the contract, or at least modified to be more responsible.
I’ve been to my share of school board meetings too. You know who also was always there? The head of the PTA.
Maybe that is what is needed in these negotiations, someone to represent the “clients” of the officers, as well as the employers and employees.
When the school board starts doing something that the PTA objects to, the PTA spreads it to all the parents and other stakeholders in the district, then those meetings are heated with lots of public outcry. If the same thing happened, where community leaders sat in on the negotiations, and raised an outcry about poorly thought out provisions, then maybe we’d get some of those tamped down.
Police officers get bogus complaints against them all the time. It is the nature of the business. If the crooks know all they gotta do is rack up a bunch of “citizen complaints” against a good honest cop- all we will have is bad crooked cops.
The number of complaints is more or less meaningless. Hard working diligent officers will get more complaints. Cops who do a lot of arrests will get more complaints- you dont think crooks dont know how to work the system?
It is the seriousness of the complaint and the evidence.
This is some deep stuff and you are going to be torn apart on this board for saying it as it sounds very racist. This is the reason why if Biden picks a black woman as his VP he will lose.
The one thing you are leaving out is that it was done by design.
I don’t want to hijack this thread but there are lots of black youtubers that expand on what you are saying.
To blame a group of people who are oppressed and impoverished for being oppressed and impoverished is a very common conclusion that many come to because they want a quick and easy solution that someone else has to do.
To understand the actual problems that are addressed in thickpancreas’s post is to not only accept that there is far more factors at play, but to also accept that we cannot just sit back and demand that they fix the problems that we perceive, but that we need to accept some level of culpability in propagating and profiting from the same systems that impoverish and dehumanize them.
Understanding complex subjects is hard. Accepting responsibility is even harder. Much easier to just blame the victims. I understand the motivation, I just disagree that it contributes in any meaningful way to solving the problem.
The victims are 200 years old at this point. Read what I am saying here : They definitely were victims, and some STILL are victims of racism and that shit needs to be stomped out but it needs to stop being the end all be all issue. Racist policies needs to stop, that even means the racist policies that are trying to right a 200 year old wrong (like AA)
I am willing to accept some but it rarely is seen to be some and more often than not I am being asked to assume all responsibility.
The black community is going to have to police themselves, just like police forces are going to have to police themselves.
Too often, people (like you) are looking to blame others, ANYONE ELSE for the problems that continue to plague their communities and more often than not they have it within themselves to fix those problems on their own (if they need help, I am more than willing)
The Chinese Americans are somehow different and far removed from the black communities, but really they aren’t that different in the modern respective history within the US. But, they have pulled themselves out of the poverty and racism that certainly was a giant hindrance in the early 1900’s through hard work, education, and familial support.
There are people who are alive today who lived under Jim Crow, attended schools segregated by law, and lived in federally sanctioned race-based communities that denied the opportunity to pay a mortgage, vice rent, to them or their parents and so ensured that, whereas white families could accumulate wealth by eventually owning the home they lived in, it would be much more difficult for people of color with similar income to do so.
Bull shit it’s a 200 year old wrong. I mean, it is. But it’s also a 400 year old wrong and a 60 year old wrong, to say nothing of all the discrimination that is still going on today, albeit less explicitly codified into law.
It’s almost as if, in spite of some very thinly quaint stereotypes about Chinese laborers building railroads out west, beginning the early 1900s, there was a wave of racist legislation that severely restricted immigration from China, not finally lifted until the mid-20th century, and that those families who have immigrated from Asia since then have been disproportionately represented by those with higher levels and income you. That is, the people who can most afford to uproot and move overseas in the era of tightly regulated immigration that we live in now, where one cannot simply arrive on a boat with all possessions on ones back and be allowed to immigrate legally, as so many European families did during earlier immigration booms.
So you’re comparing a systemically oppressed population that is descended largely from slaves, versus a relatively high proportion of families who had the means to immigrate to the US in the modern era, once explicitly racist immigration policies that banned immigration from certain parts of the world altogether were eliminated, and replaced with an overall more sting net, but also more uniform, set of policies.
This is a great point. During Reconstruction, and even into the early 20th century, many black American communities were thriving. They even created “black Wall Street”. And then most of this was destroyed, and many of those involved murdered, by white Americans.
This wasn’t the fault of black Americans. Generally, through American history, when black people built thriving businesses or any sort of wealth, there was a very high chance of that wealth being plundered by white Americans (and white-controlled institutions).
Imagine if all your ancestors’ attempts and hard work to create legitimate business and wealth had been plundered, over and over again, decade after decade. That might have some affect on your outlook on the best approach to life, right? And then imagine that someone tells you “it’s your fault that your community lacks wealth and services”. You’d laugh in their face, wouldn’t you? Only someone supremely ignorant of history could say something like that.
And even with all this history, most black Americans keep trying, keep being great citizens, keep working hard, etc., and create a massive portion of the cultural fabric of our society. And still they’re rhetorically denigrated and demeaned, again and again, mostly by white conservatives. Especially if they dare speak up about unfair treatment.