Police "unions" are not unions
Periodically, some dimbulb will pop up and say, “Hey, you love unions but you hate police brutality - so how about police unions, huh? Ever think of that? Huh? Huh?”
Yeah, I know. Thing is, police unions aren’t “unions” in the traditional sense.
To understand the different, try William Finnegan’s incredible, long New Yorker piece, “How Police Unions Fight Reform,” a masterful history and analysis.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/how-police-unions-fight-reform
Police unions got off to a rocky start. Policing was an ugly and dangerous job in the 19th century (it’s not dangerous now, it’s not even in the top ten most dangerous careers), but the labor movement wasn’t interested in helping cops.
And with good reason! As cops transitioned from being “slave patrols,” hunting Black people who’d escaped bondage, they found a new role in brutalizing and murdering striking workers.
The first US deaths of unionists was in 1850, when NYC cops clubbed striking tailors to death. Despite the role of cops in striker deaths (in 1937, Chicago PD opened fire on striking steelworkers and families, murdering 10), the AFL started chartering police unions after WWI.
But the solidarity went one way: by the 1960s, the NY Police Benevolent Society promised politicians they would never “strike or affiliate with any other union.”
Front-line workers’ unions like teachers and nurses strike to improve conditions for the people they care for; police unions’ main cause is reducing oversight and accountability, waging a decades-long war on civilian oversight boards.
There is an explicit racist agenda in resisting oversight: cops do not want Black people, or politicians who answer to Black people, having a say in police procedure. When NYC Mayor Dinkins - the city’s first Black mayor - proposed civilian oversight, the response was UGLY.
They ran ads showing a white woman emerging from the subway, looking terrified, warning against civilian review: “Her life…your life…may depend on it.”
In 92, cops protested Dinkins’ plan with a 10,000 person rally in which cops brandished firearms, consumed alcohol, and waved racist signs with slogans like “Dump the washroom attendant.” Others depicted Dinkins as a minstrel, engaged in lewd sex acts.
A drunk, off-duty cop stopped Black councilwoman Una Clarke from crossing Broadway during the rally: “This n_____ says she’s a member of the City Council,” he told his partner.
On of the rally’s highlights? Rudy Giuliani, screaming obscene chants through a bullhorn. He ran for mayor the next year.
In most regards (public interest, solidarity), police unions are not real unions, but there’s one area in which they excel: getting sweet deals for their members. NYPD cops retire after 20 years on $74.5k/year pensions.
As terrible and corrupt as the NYPD are, they’re far from the most racist and brutal police forces. That’s saying something, because BOY is the NYPD racist and brutal:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/27/ip/#nypd-who
Compare ‘em with St Louis, where cops murder at 14 times the rate of NYPD; or Chicago, where the racial disparity in police murders is 27.4:1 black:white (in NYC it’s 7.8:1).
Police unions hate the public. Their overall message is that the public are hostile and must be controlled.
As Kirk Burkhalter - multigenerational cop turned NYU law prof - says: “imagine a nurses’ union that hated patients, that went on TV and talked about how much trouble the patients give them.”
American cops are among the worst-trained, most undisciplined in the world. Cops in the US can start work after 11 weeks training (mostly in “firearms and survival”).
In some Western European countries, cops compete for entry into highly selective police academies where they study for 3+ years under top professors.
US cops’ training is both inadequate and inappropriate. Again, policing just isn’t that dangerous. Roofing is more dangerous! Only 5% of patrol callouts involve any form of violent crime.
Real unions focus on solidarity, and while cop unions will protest anti-union bills that threaten them, when they are carved out of anti-union bills (like Wisconsin’s bill that targeted sanitation, education and nursing), it’s crickets.
The main focus of police unions is omerta: as the 1931 Wickersham Commission reported: “It is an unwritten law in police departments that police officers must never testify against their brother officers.”
As Rhode Island College sociologist Ben Brucato wrote: “These organizations function as lobbies to both resist accountability legislation and shield implicated officers.”
Fixing policing is a long road, but it must start. We can begin by getting the AFL-CIO to sever all ties with police “unions.”
