Dang, man, don’t thee cops have a UNION? Where the hell is the police union in all this??
Your comment is spot on.
Of course these cops have a union. There are just over 3000 officers in Baltimore, and about 1000 other employees of the police department.
If each of the officers in Baltimore donated just 0.2% of his/her take-home salary to the six suspended officers this would replace their pay while they are suspended.
Doesn't seem like that much of a burden to me.
The union should have legal representation on retainer for exactly this type of problem, and that should handle the immediate legal costs.
Looking at other high-profile cases, they may be able to get very good legal representation for a quite modest cost, and if they really want/need a very high priced, high cost attorney there is plenty of time to look into that in the next few weeks and months.
The median police salary plus bonus in Baltimore is $53,958 per year. This is just for patrol officers, not for higher ranks, who make more, much more sometimes. If each of 3000 officers gave $500 to a special union assessment for legal costs they would have a $1.5 million dollar legal fund, which would go a long way toward a strong defense. And this does not even start to cover the donations they could get from other unions around the country.
But, like unions everywhere, these guys would rather spend someone else's money than their own.
There is going to have to be a lot of transparency on the union's finances, reserve funds, and ability to internally raise money before I donate to their costs.
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It is really hard for me to believe there was no police misconduct at all when they put a healthy man into the van and took a fatally-injured one out. If they had driven directly to the station they ride would have been only a couple of blocks.
I expect that they will end up with some kind of a plea bargain rather than a trial. This even further reduces the legal costs.