Posted on 06/03/2020 7:51:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
No one wants to watch an innocent man suffocate under the knee of a cop while bystanders plead for his life. Yet millions now have that haunting image seared into their memory.
The question to ask in response is simple: what could have been done to prevent this? While I’m in quarantine and can’t see my students, I imagine their predominantly minority faces and wonder how can I keep them from a similar fate?
Policy recommendations to prevent another tragedy like the one that befell George Floyd have ranged from defunding the police to ending qualified immunity and military surplus transfers to departments. But if peaceful protests—of which there have been many—are to achieve any meaningful change, they need a goal.
In the particular case of George Floyd, there is an obvious answer: at least two cops should have lost their jobs long before the event even occurred. George Chauvin, the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, had previously received 20 complaints filed against him, resulting in two letters of reprimand. His partner, Tou Thao, was sued in 2017 for stopping a man without cause and beating him in the street. In both cases, their contracts protected them.
Unfortunately, this is more common than not. Even after the most egregious conduct, many cops keep their jobs. As previously reported in The Atlantic, there is a long history of precincts still employing cops that would have been fired were it not for police unions keeping them on the force. One off-duty cop pulled his gun on a supposed criminal while intoxicated, misfired, killed the man who was later deemed innocent, and then returned to work.
There are numerous stories of on-duty boozing, theft, and abuse. In each case, the police union fought to reinstate these officers despite their inappropriate conduct.
Unfortunately, our priors often blind us when it comes to any talk of reforming police unions. On the left, any contention against unions is untenable. An author for Slate acknowledged the tension between social justice and police unions but couldn’t bring herself to renounce support for any organized labor. On the right, there’s a strong wariness against being perceived as anti-cop or weak on crime.
In reality, reforming police unions should be a bipartisan issue. The right has a history of undercutting the power of public-sector unions and, in this case, doing so would help promote a greater degree of racial justice in our country. In response to the critics, a weakening of their powers need not imply a complete abolition of unions. Studies blame collective bargaining and other roadblocks to thoroughly investigating cops, not the existence of unions per se.
Yet as with all unions, so too do police unions protect mediocrity, if not incompetence, in a profession trusted with upholding law, order, justice, and safety.
Studies confirm this position. Rob Gillezeau, professor at the University of Victoria, posted about his upcoming research into police violence and unionization. His team found that collective bargaining leads to “a substantial increase in police killings of civilians.” The protections that their contracts allowed shifted the incentives such that, when there was a swift decision to shoot or not, those protections pushed the decision to fire.
Furthermore, Gillezeau’s research found that “collective bargaining rights are being used to protect the ability of officers to discriminate in the disproportionate use of force against the non-white population.” Similar studies conducted by Oxford University as well as the University of Chicago Law School came to the same conclusion: strong unions, and in particular collective bargaining rights, lead directly to an increase in the use of excessive force.
A related negative effect of unions is their tendency to retard or stifle any meaningful reform. After the Ferguson riots in 2014, body-cameras on police officers developed bipartisan support. Then, a union in Miami blocked the initiative.
When my governor Scott Walker sought to limit bargaining rights, police unions got an exemption. Aggressive union contention blocks any structural reform that isn’t merely an increase in funding. But funding is easy. Real, structural reform requires accountability and work.
What could this mean for other proposed reforms? Perhaps ending qualified immunity or the demilitarization of the police isn’t the answer. But if unions are left in such positions of control, such proposals won’t even get discussed.
I’m sympathetic to the crusades against racial profiling and excessive force. But, like many, I’ve spent too much time these past few days watching videos of rioters looting businesses and burning down police stations. Wanton hooliganism will not result in the change we need in America’s police forces.
A man died because a union protected two bad cops. For the sake of the innocent and for the cause of protecting all the good cops out there, the time to reform police unions is now.
We have laws...Obey them...
Minneapolis is Rat from top to bottom. Rat governor, Rat mayor and on and on. Rat City Attorney Klobuchar didn’t bother to do anything about this Chauvin guy even after complaints of serious misconduct. Minneapolis could not be more thoroughly Rat-infested. So, no, the problem isn’t the police unions. The problems is this rodent infestation in all of the Blue areas of the country.
Maybe the police should have some changes made, but why doesn’t ANYONE ever suggest that blacks themselves change their behavior so that they don’t bring themselves into so much contact with the police?
Not the press.
Why are you objecting so hard to "get rid of the bad apples" ?
This is an excellent piece. I know conservatives like me like to rail on teachers unions because I believe they’re in it for themselves and don’t give a hoot about children. But if we were honest with ourselves, I think we have a blind spot when it comes to cops and even police unions. But public sector unions of every kind should not exist including police unions. Striking and collective bargaining certainly should not be allowed if you’re on the public dole.
FU
Unions for public workers should be abolished.
You can decide to believe what you want from the cherry picked “evidence” the media throws out.
I will wait until everything is out at the trial.
“””’Why are you objecting so hard to “get rid of the bad apples” ?””””””””””””””””””
I have never said any such thing.
I believe in due process and the right to a vigorous defense.
Have you ever heard of due process?
If you believed what you see in the media then the Duke LaCrosse boys would have been in prison for live within two minutes.
Excellent point.
The only way to fix public unions is to abolish them. They are an abomination.
Private unions are fine as long as management has the right to fire and rehire after good faith negotiations have failed.
I think it's high time for conservatives to get off this idea that we should reflexively defend police officers because they somehow reinforce our idea of a "law and order" society.
That's nonsense. An armed citizen should reinforce our idea of a "law and order" society. A police officer is emblematic of: (1) a society where crime is so rampant that a permanent police presence is needed, and/or (2) a citizenry too weak and cowardly to defend itself and who see the police as nothing more than taxpayer-funded security guards.
A couple possible fixes would be to vastly increase prison terms leaving much fewer repeat offenders out there to resist arrest and get themselves killed. Another thing that might help black America is creating better jobs in urban areas like one of Trump’s initiatives of bringing manufacturing and factory jobs back to America.
That is not the only problem. Spend more time reviewing who or what causes these these problems.
“Given that horrible unrest happens even if a white policeman was justified in killing a black thug, it is impossible to fix the problem without addressing the systematic pathology of the black community and the Democrat Party.”
Agreed.
I did not get ANY of my information from the media.
I read the statement of probable cause against the arrested ex-policeman.
Here’s the fix, school reform. K-12 is ruinous for the Black race.
The extreme due care for due process given to state actors, BY THE PROSECUTORS, should be exercised for all citizens, but it is not.
It's the two-tiered justice system that IS the problem.
Balderdash..... pure drivel
To fix the problem there must be cessation by force of all attempts to resist arrest.
In all cases of rioting there is resisting arrest at the root. Police must be empowered to incapacitate resisters to bring about cessation of the resistance. The civil rights of the police are violated when resisters endanger the police doing their jobs making an arrest.
And with that you determined the cop to be guilty of whatever they charge him with.
The POS muslim Antifa supporter Ellison is in charge of going after the guy. He will probably charge him with being the second gunman on the grassy knoll by the time this is over.
Again, do you know what due process is?
Are you unable to understand that people have the right to defend themselves?
“”””””’I did not get ANY of my information from the media.””””
Interesting. So you found the toxicology report by yourself.
Good.
Did you notice it said fentanyl intoxication and meth?
Do you know what that means?
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