Police reformPolice Unions Are One of the Biggest Obstacles to Transforming Policing
There’s a major, and usually insurmountable, obstacle to reform: police unions. Research suggests that these unions play a critical role in thwarting the transformation of police departments. Across the United States, police are shielded from both public and departmental accountability by multiple layers of contractual and legislative protections. Nearly all of these measures reflect the political will and political might of police unions.
Protesters and community organizers are increasingly calling for defunding and disbanding the police as a way to end police violence.
Advocates argue that moderate reforms like enhanced training and greater community oversight have failed to curb police violence and misconduct.
But there’s a major, and usually insurmountable, obstacle to reform: police unions. Research suggests that these unions play a critical role in thwarting the transformation of police departments.
Union officials like John McNesby in Philadelphia, where I live and work as a scholar of law and the criminal justice system, do not deny this. Over the course of his 12-year career as president of the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, he has derided the city’s civilian review board and predicted in 2010 that beefed-up misconduct procedures would wind up “… at the bottom of the litter box.”
He was right. The union has successfully petitioned the Pennsylvania State Labor Relations board to overturn tougher disciplinary measures.
Philadelphia’s police union is not alone in its power to maintain the status quo. In cities and states across the U.S., the benefits and protections afforded police have been provided by public officials who have catered – and caved – to union demands over many decades.
Lack of Accountability
Across the United States, police are shielded from both public and departmental accountability by multiple layers of contractual and legislative protections. Nearly all of these measures reflect the political will and political might of police unions.
Measures that discourage accountability vary by jurisdiction, but typically include some combination of collective bargaining agreements, civil service protections, a Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights and discrete legislative statutes.
Taken together, they afford police greater procedural safeguards than citizens suspected of a crime have and offer more employment assurances than are available to other public servants.
They also make efforts to deter brutality and corruption all but impossible.
Commissioners seeking to tighten disciplinary protocols in departments plagued by police violence and misconduct have terminated officers only to see them reinstated in arbitration.
So-called “purge clauses” require departments to remove all records of disciplinary actions against officers after periods of time typically ranging from two to five years. This can stymie the ability of external investigators to discover and analyze patterns of misconduct in a department. Following the police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, investigators from the Department of Justice had to obtain a consent decree to gain access to disciplinary records that were buried behind purge clauses.
