Policing and Police Unions

[ancianita]

Doctors, lawyers and teachers, among other professions, have unions. Unions in most professions, as separate from labor unions, exist to promote the professionalism of their members, and to negotiate contracts that pay for their professions' value.

Police unions only do the latter, and sometimes slip in some contracted "agreements" with civilian governments that are contrary to civilians' interests. Due process after citizen complaints is seldom what they support, though some might. Police unions should not support any secrecy surrounding the due processing of civilian complaints before the taxpayers who pay their salaries, which pay union dues. Today's police union leaders who support lawbreaking police are in the wrong.

Vetting professionals for government services should make clear that professionals are subject to public scrutiny. Teachers and other government workers don't get due process secrecy, and neither should police. Their unions should not insist on secrecy in the name of "privacy."

Policing was formed to maintain racial capitalism. From the Rangers who maintained Indian control before whites "settled" North America from East to West, to being slave patrollers and Jim Crow law enforcers, policing in the U.S. has been, from the start, a racist institutionalizing of law and order in service to land and property protections demanded by capitalism and the propertied rich classes.

History shows that policing has never been a neutral structure, no matter what Americans are told about "equality under the law." Policing has prioritized public order over rule of law. Policing has consistently been a "punch down" instrument of class war richies and their tools in state and federal governments. Biased prosecuting attorneys have been instrumental in protecting both police jobs and the propertied class, using racial capitalism's legal arguments arguments to protect richies' racial capitalist interests from local to federal court levels, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The legal history of policing, the courts and the law, has been meticulously revealed in Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, which I consider the best legal history of institutionalized racism ever written.

Police unions don't get to suddenly revise who police are, or justify what police do; union leaders don't get to mislead the public about what policing history is, and why their structures exist. To complain before media cameras, to harbor any lawbreaking, civil rights violating police under cover of protecting good police are not in Americans' interests. They are not enough to stop the shift in rule of law that must happen in Americans' interests.

Therefore, police unions need to go. Right along with the so-called police departments their so-called members work for.

Whatever restructuring police departments must do, so must police unions do in support of restructuring a fairer nation.

They've established structures in the past, and they can re-form new structures now. For the country's better governance, legal structure, and future as a real democracy.

[Laelth]

1. Honored to be the first k&r. n/t

-Laelth

[Squinch]

2. Start messing with the unions and you are playing right into Mitch McConnell's hands. Get

rid of the police unions and you open the door to getting rid of ALL unions, and thereby destroy what little is left of the middle class.

The police unions ARE egregious. That is because their membership is egregious, and they vote in monsters as their leaders.

The issue does not begin with the union. The issue begins with the police administration. It begins with who those administrations are hiring and how they vet those hires. It begins with what those administrations let the police get away with and what they agree to when they contract with the police.

The unions did not create this monster. They are only a reflection of their members. The firefighters, teachers, civil servants etc have managed to engage in unions without murdering people.

This is NOT A UNION ISSUE. This is an administration and vetting issue.

[ancianita]

3. Mitch McConnell isn't running the current drive for restructuring. Restructuring of unions runs WITH

and not separate FROM, restructuring police departments and how civilians control that. So beginning with police administration is one way to start restructuring police departments. Not negotiating with police unions until they sign agreements with both administrations and newly structure police departments is one way to get union leadership and union contracts to change.

"Egregious" unions take advantage of the natonwide police shortage. It's been hard as hell for police departments to get qualified new applicants to increase their ranks. 800,000 active police are in the U.S., give or take, according to the definitions of the counters. That's a 1:400 ration. That gives the current population leverage in demanding the restructuring of police departments.

That most union leadership existed before union members joined those unions argues that leadership guides its members, and not the other way around. So far. So police union leadership is being driven to have to deal with new rules of new police departments. That's the way Minneapolis, New York City and seven states are operating right now. And it's a good start.

This is a rule of law issue, and who will control rule of law in this country. It is about the consent of the governed. Civilians are taking it back, demanding new structures that rule them by their consent.

[Squinch]

7. There is only a nationwide police shortage because police are used every time

911 is called. Fix that nonsense, and that problem goes away.

And most union leadership in most unions are voted in each year. So the membership simply chooses the ones who serve their purposes year after year. Change the nature of that membership, change how they are chosen and trained, and the leadership will change. And that is the ONLY way to change the union leadership.

Again: if you start giving any level of our government power to disband police unions, or dictate their terms, and you will destroy all unions. And in doing that you will destroy the American middle class.

[ancianita]

10. The basis of the nature of the police union membershipis determined by department hiring standards.

Policing through 911 is indeed a drain.

I can agree that good hiring and better training with performance based reviews leads to good police unions and good leadership voting. That takes restructured police departments with civilian oversight.

Our government's power is given to it by civilian voters. When you exclude any government power you're excluding the communities of voters who decide who they consent to. Voted in governments don't get voted in to dictate terms, except in the interests of voters. That means to police departments. That means in police contracts which include outside private events hiring, general salaries, overtime, benefits and the rest.

There will be no destroying of police unions, just their improvement, even if current holdouts to "above the law" policing fight against that change.

Police don't protect the middle class' personal rights, just property rights; the prevalence of domestic courts show that. Police protect order so middle class workers can pay bills, government fees, court ordered fines. Police still help enforce all that, so they'll still be around.

[Squinch]

12. Are you saying that the police union is part of the government that is

unrightly excluded from voter's consent? If so, that is not what a union is at all. That is not how any of this works.

A union has nothing to do with the government. A union is a collective bargaining apparatus. It is simply what it is named: a union of the workers for the sake of bargaining. It has nothing to do with the government.

Voters and municipal administrators have nothing to do with selecting union leadership. They have to do with the hiring and selection of the police themselves.

[ancianita]

13. I'm not saying that at all. It is not part. Yet there is a connection. This doesn't have to be all-

or nothing thinking here.

As you know, I'm going with your idea here:

Change the nature of that membership, change how they are chosen and trained, and the leadership will change. And that is the ONLY way to change the union leadership.

to which I said:

I can agree that good hiring and better training with performance based reviews leads to good police unions and good [union] leadership voting.

So, to say that I'm saying that union makeup is part of government muddies how we both see unions. Yes, unions are outside of government as part of labor's organizing. That part is obvious. Police don't make their own city ordinances or raise taxes to pay themselves with.

It makes sense that the civilian government that forms police departments wants a say in the policing rules and oversight of police. They pay for it. That in no way makes unions extensions of government. Union members pay for their own bargaining unit, the union, not government. The connection is the expectation of civilians in government, who pay government to pay for services rendered -- that when police unions negotiate, they do bargain for benefits salaries based on the quality of their performance, which is connected to the training that that department set up. Not the union.

Unions do not hire. They are not part of the police department. No one goes to a police union to get hired. Men don't hang around a police union hall waiting to get hired or sent by the police department into training. Unions don't hire or train; they do professionalize police's training. For police to get promoted, it's not the unions who set the promotion and pay standards. Police departments hire and train. When police unions accept contract terms, it's not they who contract with criminology departments at universities, and/or other organizations to advance police training beyond basic training. Unions only bargain for the salary scales those advancements would pay for.

Bargaining only? Nothing else? The better the training, the better the performance, the better community (voter) satisfaction, the higher the benefits that come out of union negotiations. A circular win-win. No one in the circle may have anything to do with the others, and yet there is an indirect connection.

This isn't theoretical. To say that communities have nothing to do with selecting union leadership doesn't mean they have no connection. There's a reason that police are required, in many places, to actually reside where they police. That's so that police are also part of the community they police. No matter that the community doesn't actually vote for union leaders, those leaders are in the community. No entity paid for by community taxpayers -- government, departments, direct service personnel or their unions -- exists in a bubble.

Except the military. On their own bases and forts. And now police are being militarized in a country designated a "battleground" through the 2011 (or 2013)NDAA. It shows. Use the equipment of the military, and police start to take on a militarized attitude toward communities.

Recently when communities outside cities pulled their police out of big city protests, it's because they didn't want their police seeing or treating those cities' protesters as "enemies."

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

4. It doesn't stop at the police either

Friendly AG's and DA's, friendly judges, and elected officials who have had years to push for reforms are all partially at fault for this mess. Police couldn't get away with all the abuses without the legal cover provided by the laws passed by lawmakers and the deference and leniency given to them by the legal system. I've long been an advocate that leniency in sentencing should never be given to convicted cops, judges, or public officials. I don't care if they honorably served their communities for years prior to their crime. They are given more power and responsibility then the average citizen and should be held to a higher standard. If they don't want to be held to that standard then find a different job that doesn't involve life or death decisions or decisions that affect the community as a whole.

[Squinch]

6. Yes. This exactly!

[soothsayer]

5. Yep, a very slippery slope

[msongs]

8. it begins with alleged good cops not doing anything to purge the bad ones in the name of unionism nt

[Squinch]

11. In the name of unionism??? Seriously? That has been going on since

long before there ever were unions.

The union is simply a collective bargaining entity.

[SheltieLover]

9. K&R!