GRSJ224/Police Unions: Shielding Police Misconduct, Brutality & Discrimination Against Minorities

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Police Unions: Shielding Police Misconduct, Brutality & Discrimination Against Minorities

Like most unions, police unions are charged with protecting their members from arbitrary or excessive disciplinary actions from their superiors, but they are now seen as protectors of bad officers who break the rules or even the laws in the performance of their duties.[1]  The first push to form police unions occurred around 1900, with the stated purpose of organizing officers to demand higher pay and improved working conditions.[2] The first successful police union was formed and recognized in New York City in 1964, with other major cities eventually approving their own local police unions.[2] Unfortunately, today’s police unions, especially in the United States, are seen as abusing the public trust by playing their role in shielding officers who have been accused or even proven to have abused their positions of authority and abused minority victims.[3][4] Police unions and their members are now often guilty of defending criminal officers and rehiring officers fired in other jurisdictions, ensuring that these racist individuals never really pay any serious consequences for their misconducts and even unjustified killings of unarmed visible minority victims.[5]

POLICE UNIONS

When cities and towns first began hiring police officers to patrol their streets and protect their citizens, each officer had to negotiate for their wages, benefits, and other aspects of their contracts individually. This situation created a power imbalance that favoured city officials who could offer lower wages and ignore ongoing complaints about poor working conditions, knowing they could fire any officer who complained too loudly.[2] Although the first efforts to organize into unions began around 1900, they were unsuccessful as city authorities and police chiefs blocked these initial efforts towards greater power equity.[2] Until 1964, when the first police union was finally approved in New York City, patrolmen’s benevolent associations and Fraternal Orders of Police were main means of exerting pressure on behalf of individual officers in their efforts to fight low wages and poor working conditions.[2] After NYC gained America’s first police unions, other jurisdictions soon followed, so by 1988, 70% of all police officers are covered by their local police union or other type of collective bargaining agreement.[2]    

POLICE UNION LEADERS

Leaders of police unions are elected by their rank-and-file members to fight for better wages and benefits, improved working conditions, and to protect members from disciplinary actions imposed by civilian and police authorities.[1] Union leaders believe that it is their legal and moral obligation to advocate for the members, regardless of whether their member is guilty or innocent of any charges of misconduct, racial discrimination or even the murder of unarmed suspects.[1] They have resisted any efforts that would strengthen management’s ability to properly discipline officers for misconducts and dismiss criticisms against officers and police unions as being reflective of anti-police attitudes or sentiments.[1]

MEMBERS OF POLICE UNIONS

For most rank-and-file police officers, their police unions are vital to protecting their rights to being “fairly” treated when being disciplined for their actions.[1] They are taught that their loyalty must lie first with their police unions and union members, rather than to the citizens they are sworn to protect. While the vast majority of police officers are very decent human beings who do a thankless job protecting people from criminals, a small minority are “bad cops” who use their shield and guns to impose their racist ideas on the citizens in their jurisdictions, particularly in non-white communities.[6][5]

RACIAL PROFILING & DISCRIMINATION AGAINST VISIBLE MINORITIES

Studies have found that police unions have been supporting tactics which reproduce the racialization of visible minorities, particularly among Black and Latino communities, in the United States.[1][4][6] A Department of Justice (DOJ) report filed in August 2016 on the Baltimore City Police Department found both rank-and-file and their supervisors were guilty of unconstitutional stops, illegal searches, unjustified arrests, and excessive force against Black individuals.[1] This report, as well as many others, found that unconstitutional practices like racial profiling, result in far greater numbers of unwarranted stops and arrests of visible minorities. Critical race theory (CRT) considers American laws structured to maintain society’s "White privilege", by discriminating against non-White Americans.[5]  Young men from communities of colour in America are racialized by American society as dangerous criminals and drug dealers as part of America’s “War On Drugs” and suffer disproportionately from being racially stereotyped.[7][8] When disproportionate numbers of non-White individuals are arrested for minor offences thanks to racial profiling, it is not surprising US prisons are similarly over-populated by visible minorities.[7][8] As Judge C. Victor Lander’s once accurately commented, “There are more [B]lack people in prisons and jails than in colleges and universities” in America.[8] Statistically, even though Black men make up only 13% of US population, they account for 35% of America’s prison and jail populations.[9] So over a third of all Black American men can expect to spend some time in jail or prison during their lifetime. In a typical American prison, Black inmates generally comprise roughly 50% of the total prison population.[8] One in six Latino men can expect to be incarcerated at some point in their life; whereas, white men are only incarcerated at a rate of one in 17.[9] These statistics demonstrate the disproportionate conviction of Black and Latino men and how systemic racism impacts America's coloured communities.

POLICE UNIONS PROTECTING ‘BAD’ RACIST COPS

Police unions promote the idea of ‘blue solidarity’ which divides the world into an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dichotomy.[4] These unions tend to protect all their members regardless of what misconducts or crimes the officers are accused of or the evidence against the accused. Police unions in the US and other jurisdictions also tend to support policies which stigmatize and discriminate against racialized minorities.[4] Police officers who commit violence against members of Black and Latino communities are more likely to be protected from prosecution or other serious consequences thanks to the ‘blue solidarity’ of their unions and members. Rank-and-file members are more likely to target minorities with aggressive control strategies, including increased incidences of police brutality and excessive use of force when dealing with visible minorities, knowing their police unions will shield them from being strongly disciplined.[1][3][10] Police union members will almost inevitably erect their ‘blue wall of silence’ when asked to testify against fellow officers in misconduct or officer-involved shooting cases.[10]  Media reports on the murder of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown who was shot by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer on August 9, 2014 sparked public outrage. Other Ferguson officers gave conflicting testimony and supported the officer who shot the unarmed Black teenager six times when his hands were up as a sign of surrender, crying “Don’t shoot, I give up.”[7][11] There are literally dozens of other incidents of bad police officers killing unarmed visible minority victims and having their misconducts defended by their unions and fellow officers. Only in recent months has public outrage over the murder of George Floyd sparked massive protests and demands for police reforms, as well as the firing and charging of white police officers who kill unarmed Black individuals.[12]  However, there is a long list of dead Black and Latino Americans who were killed by racist white officers, including Eric Garner (2014), Tamir Rice (2014), Alton Sterling (2016), Philando Castile (2016), Stephon Clark (20118) and Breonna Taylor (2020).[12]  

Too often, good officers protect bad officers.[10][13] Even when racist officers are fired from their jobs, police unions across the United States are quick to rehire that racist officer and put them back on the streets despite their record of misconduct or even murder.[13] By staying loyal to the concept of “blue solidarity”, police unions and their members are supporting and condoning the systemic racism and individual racist actions of the bad officers.

REFORMS & RETRAINING

Only by imposing strict reforms on existing police unions which have protected or shielded “bad cops” in the past and providing retraining to alleviate some of the systemic racism found in some police forces will the number of dead unarmed visible minorities at the hands of police officers finally shrink. Officers who allow their racial bias to impact their ability to do their job of protecting the people must be prosecuted like the criminals they are. The “blue shield” should only be used to protect good officers wrongfully accused of misconduct, instead of being used to defend bad officers who have clearly broken the law.    

 

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Fisk, Catherine L., and L. Song Richardson. "Police unions." Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 85 (2017): 712.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Levine, Michael J. “Historical overview of police unionization in the United States.” Police Journal 61, 4 (1988): 334-343.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Bies, Katherine J. "Let the sunshine in: Illuminating the powerful role police unions play in shielding officer misconduct." Stan. L. & Pol'y Rev. 28 (2017): 109.
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Thomas, Mark P., and Steven Tufts. "Blue solidarity: police unions, race and authoritarian populism in North America." Work, Employment and Society 34.1 (2020): 126-144.
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 Benoît, Jean‐Pierre, and Juan Dubra. "Why do good cops defend bad cops?." International Economic Review 45.3 (2004): 787-809.
  6. 6.0 6.1 Brown, Liyah Kaprice. "Officer or overseer: Why police desegregation fails as an adequate solution to racist, oppressive, and violent policing in Black communities." NYU Rev. L. & Soc. Change 29 (2004): 757.
  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 Fornili, Katherine Smith. "Racialized mass incarceration and the war on drugs: A critical race theory appraisal." Journal of Addictions Nursing 29.1 (2018): 65-72.
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Silton, D. J. "US prisons and racial profiling: a covertly racist nation rides a vicious cycle." Law & Ineq. 20 (2002): 53.
  9. 9.0 9.1 Hinton, Elizabeth, LeShae Henderson, and Cindy Reed. "An unjust burden: The disparate treatment of black Americans in the criminal justice system." Vera Institute of Justice. May (2018).
  10. 10.0 10.1 10.2 Smith, Brad W., and Malcolm D. Holmes. "Police use of excessive force in minority communities: A test of the minority threat, place, and community accountability hypotheses." Social Problems 61.1 (2014): 83-104.
  11. Carasik, Lauren. "The second tragedy of the Michael Brown shooting." (2014).
  12. 12.0 12.1 BBC News. “George Floyd: Timeline of black deaths caused by police.” (2020, June 26). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52905408
  13. 13.0 13.1 Friedersdorf, Conor. “How police unions and arbitrators keep abusive cops on the street.” The Atlantic, (2014, Dec. 2). https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/how-police-unions-keep-abusive-cops-on-the-street/383258/