Who Is Behind Police Unions?

Behind every officer is a police union built to protect them from discipline and keep corrupt power in place.

Police Unions And The Fight To Reform Law Enforcement

After the death of George Floyd in police custody, activists across the US have advocated for a fundamental shift in policing. One hurdle to any significant changes in many localities are police unions, which have significant power over policies that affect police, and the local politicians who would approve and implement them.

NYPD Union Boss RAGES: “Start Treating Us With Some Respect”

Some police officers are getting very offended by people holding them accountable. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks

‘Deeply broken’: Chris Hayes on what Buffalo PD video shows about culture of police

Chris Hayes on video of Buffalo police pushing elderly protester: “In just those 15 seconds, that scene is an entire syllabus on how the culture of policing is broken. What has happened to it, and how it operates, and how it has essentially created a whole that is worse than the sum of its parts.”

Fmr. NYPD Detective Says Unions Contribute To ‘Toxic Police Culture’

Marq Claxton, director of the Black Law Enforcement Alliance, explains how police unions gained power over department discipline and operational issues. He tells Ali Velshi that amid outcry and protests, that influence won’t remain because “times are changing and reform is in the air.” Aired on 6/12/2020.

Police Unions Support Trump

OPINION: Many Police Unions have openly supported Trump, who behaves like a bully… an authoritarian wanna-be dictator who calls the Press the “Enemy of the People”, who has violated his Oath of Office in numerous ways such as Abuse of Power, Obstruction of Justice, Obstruction of Congress, Emoluments Violations, admitted to sexually abusing women on Access Hollywood tape, accused of sexually abusing women by numerous women and engages in the most outrageous, despicable, & UN-Presidential conduct ever seen by a POTUS. Trump has also been condemned by top United States military leaders.

How Police Unions and Arbitrators Keep Abusive Cops on the Street

Officers fired for misconduct often appeal the decision and get reinstated by obscure judges in secretive proceedings. When Frank Serpico, the most famous police whistleblower of his generation, reflected on years of law-enforcement corruption in the New York Police Department, he assigned substantial blame to a commissioner who failed to hold rank-and-file cops accountable.

Officers fired for misconduct often appeal the decision and get reinstated by obscure judges in secretive proceedings.

Protect People, Not Police Lobbyists | News & Commentary | American Civil Liberties Union

On March 13, 2020, Louisville police officers killed Breonna Taylor, a Black medical worker, during a botched no-knock raid on her apartment. Her death was one of the thousands of police killings that drove the largest protests in American history that spring and summer over policing and racism in the United States.

Per the above ALCU  article; “On March 13, 2020, Louisville police officers killed Breonna Taylor, a Black medical worker, during a botched no-knock raid on her apartment. Her death was one of the thousands of police killings that drove the largest protests in American history that spring and summer over policing and racism in the United States. But as demonstrators continued to march in Louisville’s streets, the local Fraternal Order of Police entered into secret negotiations with the city on their next contract, and used that opportunity to lobby for extraordinary protections for officers that would block any meaningful changes to how Louisville approaches public safety”.

“Unfortunately, this practice isn’t isolated: Nearly half the states in the U.S. have laws granting police special protections from investigation and discipline. And in the 46 states that allow police to collectively bargain, 84 percent of police contracts impose at least one significant barrier to disciplining police and fostering genuine public safety, including granting their lobby undue influence over the department budget and scale”.

“To truly ensure police do not continue to act with impunity and in order to scale back the role of police in society, we must address the ways that police lobbyists consistently undermine reform efforts at closed-door collective bargaining tables, in state capitols, and in local and state elections. To create and foster the genuine public safety BIPOC communities are demanding, the ACLU is launching a campaign today to expose the lobbying power of police. This campaign will help dismantle the legal and contractual protections from state laws and local contracts granted through police lobbying power that protect officers with special rights from punishments and consequences, and block our ability to generate holistic public safety systems”.

“Police violence is an all too common form of homicide in the United States: In 2020 alone, police killed 1,127 people. There were only 18 days that year in which a police officer did not kill someone. Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people. In fact, police violence is a leading cause of death for young Black men in the United States; over the course of their lives, about one in every 1,000 Black men can expect to be killed by police”.

“While this is far from a new crisis, widespread use of technology to capture and spread footage of police use of force and killings over social media has forced many more people to acknowledge the scope and depravity of police violence. Major media outlets now regularly cover police violence, and advocates loudly demand bold advances in reducing the role, resources, and power of the police”.

“Police lobby for a status quo that protects them instead of the people, in ways that are extremely problematic and harmful to the communities they purport to serve. When negotiating with city and county officials for local union contracts, police lobby for contract provisions that shield their officers from discipline, allow for police departments to act without any transparency or oversight, and preemptively rule out many of the changes communities are demanding. These contracts can:

• Ensure that a bulk of local funding is dedicated to police, thereby neglecting other critical social services and resources;
• Destroy disciplinary records over time so that no one — including the public and future employers — can discover an officer’s previous misconduct;
• Delay interviews of officers who injured or killed someone so they can “cool off” and restrict how long an officer can be interrogated, who can interrogate them, and the types of questions that can be asked; and
• Give officers unfair access to information while they are under investigation, including body cam footage, statements of witnesses, and other crucial pieces of evidence.

“In state capitols, police lobbyists are extraordinarily successful at convincing state legislators to kill bills that would reduce the role and power of police and pass legislation that ties the hands of local officials by codifying statewide discipline-evading provisions through Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights (LEOBOR) laws. Their success at securing these protections should come as no surprise. Police lobbyists spend millions each year to influence politicians, then leverage that influence to block efforts to hold the police accountable and rig the system in favor of officers who engage in misconduct”.

“Police lobbyists exert largely unseen yet enormous power over elected officials and over the state of public safety in the U.S. Enough is enough. It’s far past time to limit the power of police lobbyists to dictate what public safety looks like. Police violence is its own threat to the safety of community members: There is no public safety if we don’t know which cops kill community members, there is no public safety if police are able to keep their jobs after injuring or killing community members, and there is no public safety when police misconduct is nearly impossible to punish. We need to protect people, not police lobbyists”.

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