As time passes by, the main problem at the NYPD is the police union known as the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association. When ever a cop is in trouble, here comes the PBA to the rescue regardless if it’s corruption or brutality. Which has always been that way since its founding. So how far is the union willing to protect their members if their union members came under federal investigation for corruption or brutality?
It was the unions that put semi-automatic weapons in the holsters of city police officers in the early 1990s, over the strenuous objections of the department’s leaders. It was the unions that preserved the right of officers to live in the suburbs, resisting the attempts of several mayors to make them live in the city they patrol. They have usually gotten their way on issues of staffing, shifts, overtime and pensions. And the unions have repeatedly thwarted investigations into corruption and brutality on the force – including the bathroom sodomization of Abner Louima in 1997 – using tactics including warning officers of undercover operations and trying to discredit the Internal Affairs Bureau.
The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association “often acts as a shelter for and protector of the corrupt cop,” an official city investigations commission concluded in 1994, referring to the largest and most powerful of the unions. Now those unions are using their muscle to demand apologies and humiliation from Mayor Bill de Blasio, who they say has been insufficiently respectful of the police force. Because the mayor has given a platform to police critics like the Rev Al Sharpton, and has spoken openly of the fear many black residents experience in dealing with the department, many officers turned their back on him at the funerals of two officers murdered on the job.
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