You’ve heard the debate surrounding American police departments.
But what you may not know is that some of the
biggest obstacles to police reform are... police unions.
Police unions have been propelled into the limelight after the killing of George Floyd.
We're going to look at what these police unions do,
and how they’ve become a political power that help police officers
evade accountability.
The largest police union is the Fraternal Order of Police, or FOP,
which was created in 1915.
The FOP currently reports approximately 330,000 members
in more than 2,000 local chapters, or lodges.
Now, what do police unions actually do?
Like other unions, they negotiate members’ contracts with their employers.
This is called collective bargaining.
But they do differ in some ways from other traditional unions –
more on that in a bit.
Police contracts include protections for officers after incidents
in which citizens are killed or injured by officers.
Many contracts include a so-called “cooling-off period” of at least 24 hours.
And guess what: During this period,
they are not required to speak to any investigators, including the FBI.
Police officers get together to collude stories
to make sure that their justification for the use of excessive force or deadly force
is both consistent with the standard operating procedures of police officers
and also consistent with state and federal law.
Contracts also often limit how departments
record complaints against officers.
For example, some can erase records after as little as six months.
So without a paper trail, it’s harder to fire officers,
and their record doesn’t follow them to other jobs.
Activists have been speaking out about police unions for a while,
but they’ve recently caught the attention of the general public.
Stop treating us like animals and thugs
and start treating us with some respect.
This is an example of what criminal justice professor and former police officer
Kalfani Turè calls “blue fragility.”
Blue fragility is part of the policing ethos.
It's about shielding the profession from criticism, from scrutiny.
Police unions say they work to secure better pay and benefits for officers,
and that they have a duty to defend their members.
But police unions have also held back police forces as a tactic
to build leverage against accountability policies.
So let's break this down:
Police departments are supposed to be accountable through a chain of command
to elected bodies, such as mayors and councils.
But police unions are not restricted in the same way.
Instead, they pressure politicians
and the general public by warning
what their absence could mean.
They’re asking us to pull back.
They’re asking us to walk away from you.
They’re asking us to abandon our communities.
Blue fragility is a maneuvering to parry critics
and to end conversation around desperately needed reform.
It shuts down legitimate criticism.
Unions have resisted policy, training and discipline reforms.
But Bill Fletcher Jr., a labor and racial justice activist,
says unions aren’t entirely to blame.
They bargained with somebody. So who do they bargain with?
Knock knock. They bargain with government.
They bargain with government officials.
Government officials did not have to agree to that.
So the question I think needs to be asked and answered
is why did government officials agree to that?
So with thousands of members spread across the United States,
it’s no surprise that police unions wield considerable political influence.
For decades, Democrats were the party that supported labor unions,
while Republicans opposed them.
But, it’s not quite so clear-cut with police unions.
The essence of trade unionism is social uplift.
Law enforcement unions by definition, they're organizations
that are operating within a repressive apparatus
that is quasi-military, authoritarian and is not looking out
for the larger social needs.
Firstly, police unions have a lot
more money than other labor unions
in the U.S.
While overall labor union membership
has halved since the early 1980s,
police unions have maintained higher
membership rates.
This means they have more money to spend on campaigns
and blocking reform.
With money, they have influence.
The Fraternal Order of Police has been credited with assisting Donald Trump
with his presidential election victory in 2016.
Trump’s campaign courted the police
and publicly showed support for officers to get them on their side.
I am the law and order candidate.
Police unions hold influence at a state and local level too,
where police departments answer to city governments
and also enforce their policies.
Local officials often benefit from donations,
but perhaps more importantly, endorsements from police unions.
For example, California’s largest police union,
the Peace Officers Research Association of California, or PORAC,
has spent $3 million over the last three years on political operations.
This includes campaign contributions
to candidates from both parties.
So you can probably see how it becomes harder and less politically palatable
for officials to take on police unions,
or rally around cases involving officers.
In May 2020, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
actually called out the political power of police
and how politicians are scared of it.
And, with protection from politicians through fear and funding,
police officers don’t face accountability.
This, by and large, is not intended per se to protect
bad officers, but is intended to protect the actual profession.
And as sort of a collateral byproduct,
if you will, as a byproduct all too often, bad officers are protected.
It’s also impossible not to talk about race
and representation in police unions.
The vast majority of them have presidents who are white.
Even among forces that have more officers of color,
out of the largest 15 departments,
Memphis is the only one with a Black union leader.
All you need to do is be neutral, be a non-racist, just be a cop.
And if you maintain that capacity,
you, in fact, in the end are spoiling the entire institution,
as willing individuals by the way,
but you're spoiling the entire institution.
But you're also maintaining structural racism,
structural inequality, racial inequality, and you're upholding white supremacy.
So, if police unions are problematic...
can they be reformed?
Some within the labor movement say police unions have stalled progress
with their conservative influence
and refusal to protect communities over their individual needs.
So they’ve called for police unions to be expelled
from union federations like the AFL-CIO.
But it’s not so straightforward.
Others say that arguing to get rid of police unions
undermines workers' rights to have access to a union.
There are forces on the political right, who are saying, yes,
we should abolish police unions. That's absolutely right.
And in fact, we should abolish all public sector unions
because all public sector unions put a restriction, in their mind,
on the ability of the public to gain accountability.
And there have been efforts for years to try to destroy unions
among the postal workers, et cetera.
And so any action that was used to render police unions illegal
would inevitably translate into a broader effort
to try to crush public sector unions.
And I don't think we should fall for it.
The death of George Floyd sparked a national reckoning
of how U.S. police forces operate,
and police unions have become a central part of the discussion.
Should they be leading the charge in suggesting reforms?
Or should they be abolished entirely?
But with the power that unions hold,
can change really come about?
We need to be saying to our political leaders
that we need to rethink policing.
We need to demilitarize policing,
we need to restructure policing
and we will be the guardians
and we will protect society from barbarism.