This would fix the problem.

EDITORIAL

If you want more accountability, rein in police unions

Washington Examiner

June 08, 2020

The death of George Floyd has prompted important questions about law enforcement, criminal justice reform, and realistic steps toward holding accountable the officers who serve and protect. One such step is to reconsider law enforcement’s relationship with the powerful police unions that protect bad cops.

Like other public-sector unions, teachers' unions, in particular, police unions have become a powerful machine that defends officers against investigation, discipline, and dismissal, even when they deserve it.

Witness how, in Minneapolis, the president of the city’s police union, Bob Kroll, immediately sought to defend officer Derek Chauvin after he was recorded kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes as Floyd begged for breath. Kroll slammed Floyd as a “violent criminal” and railed against the Minneapolis Police Department’s decision to fire Chauvin and the other three officers involved in Floyd’s death.

“I’ve worked with the four defense attorneys that are representing each of our four terminated individuals under criminal investigation, in addition with our labor attorneys to fight for their jobs. They were terminated without due process,” Kroll wrote in a letter to the union’s members, according to the Minnesota Star-Tribune.

This is a typical union response, and completely impossible to square with the video evidence of Floyd’s death. Chauvin, whose 20-year record with the department is littered with complaints, had no business carrying a badge in the first place. He had faced 17 complaints in total, 16 of which were closed without discipline. The other one resulted in two letters of reprimand. The Minneapolis Police Department has not released specific information about these complaints, explaining why they were filed. They could be related to benign issues such as tardiness, or severe problems related to the use of excessive force.

Either way, it’s concerning that this man faced a complaint, on average, almost every year he worked for the Minneapolis Police Department, and he never faced any meaningful consequences. Such careers have become all too common among law enforcement, in large part due to the intervention of police unions.

This intervention can take place in a variety of ways: Unions leaders can and often do make use of the bully pulpit that’s been given them by running to the media and using the public’s high regard for law enforcement to their advantage.

Police unions also use the protections they’ve collectively bargained into the disciplinary appeals process to slow down the justice system when officers begin to face scrutiny. One study found that 70% of the 656 union contracts evaluated by researchers allow officers to appeal to an “arbitrator,” or a third party, who has the power to determine disciplinary action or dismiss it altogether. And here’s the catch: About 54% of these contracts gave the unions the power to select the arbitrator. In other words, if the union appeals an officer’s case and the appeal is approved, it can choose an arbitrator who will make the case disappear.

This is why so few cops are held accountable. Even when they are, police unions are able to drag the process. To use the example of Chauvin once again, it took the Minneapolis Police Department five days even to arrest him. There is no satisfactory explanation for this delay. Investigators did not need to “nail down” every piece of evidence. All they needed was probable cause to believe that a crime had been committed. For that, they had the video of Floyd’s death.

Perhaps law enforcement should be afforded some extra consideration due to the nature of the job. But officers should not be allowed to play by a whole different set of rules — rules that are often written by their unions and negotiated into effect.

At this moment, the principle of equal protection under the law is looking increasingly irreconcilable with the aims of the organizations representing police officers in the workplace. Police unions are prioritizing individual job protection of even bad cops, at the expense of law enforcement’s broader mission to protect the life, liberty, and property of the communities.

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