Police Unions Offer Extraordinary Protection

 #Samantha Michaels, "The Shield," Mother Jones, September/October 2020.

"Law enforcement kills more than a thousand Americans a year. Many are unarmed, and the disproportionate number are African American. Very few of the officials involved face serious, if any, consequences, and much of that impunity is owed to the power of police unions." "In their territorial 'safe zones,' police unions can offer their members extraordinary protections."

"In the city's large, and largely segregated, Black communities, police brutality has been a first-order for decades." "By the end of the sixties, a racialized law-and-order ideology has emerged as a sort of unexamined consensus, and it has basically prevailed since then, providing the political context in which police unions thrive." "White cops, Black and brown suspects: that remains the dominant paradigm."

"But, statistically, law enforcement does not make the list of the ten most dangerous jobs in America. Studies of patrol officers' service calls have shown that less than five percent are related to violent crimes." "Pro-police analysts always talk about 'bad apples'; it's only a few cops who misbehave -- ten per cent, tops. But the problem is that the other ninety per cent inevitably know about the misconduct and thus are made compliant." Ben Breecoto, a sociologist at Rhode Island College, says: 'These organizations function as lobbies to both resist accountability legislation, and shield implicated officers,'  he writes. It is "a relic of mid-century policing, when cops were always right and usually white, and could take a free hand in Black and brown neighborhoods."

#Bill Fletcher Jr., "No!" The Nation, November 2-9, 2020.

"Much of white organized labor took pride in building this exclusionary state, and therefore now finds it difficult, if not impossible, to come to terms with its role in racist oppression and imperil expansion." "Also, unions are understandably afraid that the expulsion of police from organized labor could expose themselves to a right-wing assault on public-sector collective bargaining."

"But racial injustice is not just the extinguishing of Black lives; it is also about segregated housing, poor health care, exclusion from skilled employment, and an education that prepares particular racial minorities only for prisons and menial work."

#Kim Kelly, "Yes!" The Nation, November 2-9, 2020.

"You'll never see cops join a picket line; instead, they're the force that the bosses call to break the strike." "Report after report reveals the proliferation of white supremacists and far-right rhetoric within the ranks of law enforcement." "We cannot stand by and watch as our so-called union of brothers, continues to brutalize and extinguish working-class lives with impunity." "It is imperative that labor unions address and eradicate the poison from rank-and-file members up to the highest levels of leadership." 

"In 2016, nearly 40 percent of union members voted for Donald Trump, including over 50 percent of white male members, but the problem is not a new one."

Fletcher and Kelly were debating the issue of police unions remaining as part of the overall organized labor movement.