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<h1 class="title">Blood on Their Hands: The Racist History of Modern
Police Unions</h1>
<p> <span class="posted"> Posted: <time
datetime="2015-01-22T16:30:37-05:00"> 01/22/2015 4:30 pm EST<br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/g-flint-taylor/blood-on-their-hands-the-_b_6475348.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/g-flint-taylor/blood-on-their-hands-the-_b_6475348.html</a></small></small></small></b><br>
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<p>Outraged by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/03/eric-garner-bill-de-blasio_n_6264368.html"
target="_hplink">statements</a> concerning the killing of Eric
Garner, Patrick Lynch, the longtime leader of the New York City
Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (PBA), the NYPD's officers
union, recently made the outrageous <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/24/the-nyc-police-union-has-_n_6379148.html"
target="_hplink">assertion</a> that the Mayor had "blood on
his hands" for the murder of the two NYPD officers.</p>
<p>In Milwaukee this past fall, the Police Association called for,
and obtained, a<a
href="http://fox6now.com/2014/10/30/milwaukee-police-union-poised-to-take-no-confidence-vote-on-chief-flynn/"
target="_hplink"> vote of no confidence</a> in MPD Chief Ed
Flynn after he fired the officer who shot and killed Dontre
Hamilton, an unarmed African American; subsequently, the union's
leader, Mike Crivello, praised the District Attorney when he
announced that he would not bring charges against the officer.</p>
<p>In Chicago, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a longtime
supporter of<a
href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/17213/jon_burge_torture_chicago_has_not_paid_for_his_crimes"
target="_hplink"> racist police torturer Jon Burge,</a> is now
seeking to circumvent court orders that preserve and make public
the police misconduct files of repeater cops such as Burge, by
seeking to enforce a police contract provision that calls for
the destruction of the files after seven years. And in a show of
solidarity with the killer of Michael Brown, <a
href="http://www.chicagofop.org/darren-wilson-defense-fund-donations/"
target="_hplink">Chicago's FOP is soliciting contributions</a>
to the Darren Wilson defense fund on its website.</p>
<p>Such reactionary actions by police unions are not new, but are
a fundamental component of their history, particularly since
they came to prominence in the wake of the civil rights
movement. These organizations have played a powerful role in
defending the police, no matter how outrageous and racist their
actions, and in resisting all manner of police reforms.<br>
<strong><br>
New York</strong></p>
<p>In June 1966, New York City Mayor John Lindsay, responding to
widespread complaints of police brutality, called for a civilian
review board.<a
href="http://qz.com/317338/the-nyc-police-union-has-a-long-history-of-bullying-city-hall/"
target="_hplink"> Five thousand off duty NYPD cops</a> rallied
at City Hall in opposition, and the head of the PBA, leading the
campaign against civilian review, intoned that "I am sick and
tired of giving in to minority groups, with their whims and
their gripes and shouting. Any review board with civilians on it
is detrimental to the operations of the police department."
Invoking the specter of increased crime, the PBA mounted a
massive public relations campaign against the measure, and it
was defeated in a referendum that year.</p>
<p>In 1975, in response to proposed budget cuts that included
police layoffs, the <a
href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/29/a-brief-history-ofpublicspatsbetweenmayorsandpolice.html"
target="_hplink">PBA ordered a rampage </a>through the city's
black and Puerto Rican communities, with thousands of off duty
cops waving their guns, banging on trash cans, and blowing
whistles for several nights until Mayor Abe Beame obtained a
restraining order.</p>
<p>Ten years later, after Mayor Ed Koch revived the issue of
civilian review in the wake of a white cop killing Eleanor
Bumpurs, an elderly and mentally ill black woman, the PBA again
condemned the idea, <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/06/opinion/when-the-police-threaten-disorder.html"
target="_hplink">staged a work slowdown in response</a> to the
attempted prosecution of the officer, Stephen Sullivan, and
pressured Koch into reinstating Sullivan even though he had been
criminally charged with the killing.</p>
<p>In 1992, when David Dinkins, the first (and only)
African-American Mayor of New York City sought to implement a
civilian review agency to investigate allegations of police
misconduct, the<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/17/nyregion/officers-rally-and-dinkins-is-their-target.html"
target="_hplink"> PBA organized another City Hall rally in
protest</a>. This time, the crowd of officers <a
href="http://qz.com/317338/the-nyc-police-union-has-a-long-history-of-bullying-city-hall/"
target="_hplink">numbered 10,000</a>, with PBA members
hurtling barricades, jumping on cars, blocking the Brooklyn
Bridge and kicking a reporter. Some of the rally's participants
carried signs showing Dinkins with a bushy Afro haircut and
swollen lips, with racist slogans, including ones that ridiculed
him as a "washroom attendant."</p>
<p>In the mid-1990s, the independent Mollen Commission, appointed
by Mayor Dinkins to investigate police corruption, <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/03/nyregion/police-contend-pba-leaders-hindered-stings.html"
target="_hplink">documented</a> widespread police perjury,
brutality, drug dealing and theft in the NYPD, and found that
"by advising its members against cooperating with
law-enforcement authorities, the P.B.A. often acts as a shelter
for and protector of the corrupt cop." These findings were
seconded by senior NYPD officials and prosecutors who<a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/03/nyregion/police-contend-pba-leaders-hindered-stings.html"
target="_hplink"> were quoted by the New York Times</a> as
saying that they would continue to "have trouble rooting out
substantial numbers of corrupt officers as long as the P.B.A.
resists them."</p>
<p>The Times further quoted these officials as complaining that
the PBA, "fortified with millions of dollars in annual dues
collections . . . is one of the most powerful unions in the
city. As an active lobbyist in Albany and as a contributor to
political campaigns, the P.B.A. has enormous influence over the
department and is typically brought in for consultations before
important management decisions are made."</p>
<p>In the Abner Louima case, the PBA's role extended beyond
reactionary advocacy and agitation to active participation in a
conspiracy to cover-up the brutal crimes of its members. In
1997, an NYPD officer sexually assaulted Louima in a Precinct
Station bathroom by violently shoving a broken broomstick into
his rectum. His attacker and three of his police accomplices
were charged with criminal civil rights offenses.</p>
<p>Evidence in the criminal proceedings revealed that a PBA
official had <a
href="http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/03/loui-m09.html"
target="_hplink">chaired an early meeting</a> with the
implicated officers, one of whom was a PBA delegate, at which
they fabricated a false story designed to exonerate one of the
conspirators. Even after the officers were convicted, the PBA
continued to defend the officers, both publicly and with
financial support, and to advocate for them with their
fabricated version of events--with<a
href="https://www.nycpba.org/archive/ch/99/ch-990827-schwarz.html"
target="_hplink"> none other than Patrick Lynch claiming</a>
that "people with a political agenda have fanned the flames of
this incident," leading to an "innocent man . . . being punished
beyond belief."</p>
<p>More recently, Lynch and the PBA, together with the NYPD
sergeants and captains associations, after condemning Federal
Judge Shira Scheindlin's order that sharply limited the NYPD's
discriminatory stop and frisk policies, unsuccessfully sought to
appeal her order after Mayor de Blasio made good on his campaign
promise not to appeal.</p>
<p>And this past year, confronted with another indefensible case
of NYPD violence, PBA President Lynch again went on the
offensive. In August, after the medical examiner determined that
Eric Garner's death at the hands of officer Daniel Pantaleo was
a homicide by means of a chokehold, Lynch declared that the
examiner was "mistaken" in finding that the death was a
homicide, and that he had "never seen a document that was more
political than that press release by the [medical examiner]."</p>
<p>In a classic case of doubletalk, he further asserted that it
was "not a chokehold. It was bringing a person to the ground the
way we're trained to do to place him under arrest." He chastised
Mayor de Blasio for not "support[ing] New York City police
officers unequivocally."</p>
<p>In December, Lynch praised the Staten Island Grand Jury's
decision not to charge Panteleo, while accusing Garner of
resisting arrest, brushing off two police misconduct
lawsuits--one for sexual assault during a search-- brought
against Panteleo and idolizing him as "literally an Eagle
Scout," a "model" cop, and "mature, mature" officer.</p>
<p>And once again, the PBA unleashed<a
href="http://news.yahoo.com/nypd-work-slowdown-will-be-dealt-with--very-forcefully---bratton-says-230926632.html"
target="_hplink"> a work slowdown in further protest </a>of
Mayor de Blasio that lasted several weeks.</p>
<p><strong>Chicago</strong></p>
<p>In Chicago, the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents CPD
patrol officers, has a similarly notorious history.</p>
<p>Handmaiden to the rioting cops who indiscriminately and
brutally beat demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention,
the FOP held a reunion of their 1968 troops in 2009 at the FOP
Lodge. They proudly displayed pictures of some of the wanton
police brutality on their website and, in an attempt to rewrite
history (and the <a
href="http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/tu_chicago7_doc_13.html"
target="_hplink">Walker Report's findings</a> of a "police
riot"), trumpeted that "the time has come that the Chicago
Police be honored and recognized for their contributions to
maintaining law and order--and for taking a stand against
Anarchy. ... The Democratic National Convention was about to
start and the only thing that stood between Marxist street thugs
and public order was a thin blue line of dedicated, tough
Chicago police officers."</p>
<p>In the 1970s and 1980s, the FOP, demonstrating its reactionary
and racist essence within its own ranks, aligned itself against
the forces that were fighting to bring affirmative action to the
CPD. The Afro American Patrolman's League led the battle and was
confronted in their legal struggle at every turn by disgruntled
white officers and the FOP.</p>
<p>In 1990, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution that
declared December 4 "Fred Hampton Day." On December 4, 1969,
Hampton, a dynamic young Black Panther Party leader, was slain
in his bed by Chicago police in what, by 1990, had been
documented and widely accepted in the African-American community
as a politically motivated murder. Surprisingly, Mayor Richard
M. Daley did not oppose the resolution. But the FOP most
certainly did.</p>
<p>FOP President John Dineen launched a lobbying campaign to
repeal the resolution, publicly belittled the BPP's service
programs and slandered Hampton, who was considered to be a
martyr by many African Americans and activists, as a person who
"dedicated his life to killing the pigs." History repeated
itself in 2006 when, after the City Council unanimously voted to
rename the block where Hampton was murdered "Chairman Fred
Hampton Way," FOP President Mark Donahue organized the families
of slain CPD officers to lobby for its rescission, while
publicly voicing his cop membership's "outrage" and "disbelief"
at the decision.</p>
<p>In the early 1990s, the FOP began its campaign-- which it
continues to pursue to this day--of defending Jon Burge and his
fellow police torturers. In November 1991, the emerging evidence
of a pattern of police torture by Burge and his cadre of
all-too-willing enforcers compelled the City of Chicago to
initiate administrative proceedings before the Chicago Police
Board in order to fire Burge and two of his co-conspirators for
the<a
href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-persistence-of-andrew-wilson/Content?oid=999832"
target="_hplink"> brutal electric shock torture of Andrew
Wilson</a>. Since the city was no longer financing the
torturers' defense, as it had in the civil rights damages case
brought by Wilson, the FOP stepped up and gladly assumed
responsibility.</p>
<p>The FOP and its spin-off organization, the<a
href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/cops-on-trial/Content?oid=879122"
target="_hplink"> Burge-O'Hara-Yucaitis Family Fund Committee
(BOY),</a> then set out on a campaign that sought not only to
raise money for the defense, but also to viciously attack
Burge's victims and the lawyers from the People's Law Office,
(including myself) who had brought much of the damning evidence
to light. They falsely accused us of fabricating the evidence of
systemic torture and of making millions from exposing the
scandal. They also organized a raucous fundraiser at a local
union hall where Burge was lionized by thousands of cops and
prosecutors.</p>
<p>After a six-week evidentiary hearing, the Police Board fired
Burge and suspended one of the other charged officers. Dineen
called the decision a "travesty of justice," and only weeks
later the FOP announced that it intended to enter a float
honoring Burge and his compatriots in the annual South Side
Irish Parade--a parade in which Chicago Mayors and numerous
other politicians regularly marched. The public outrage and
cries of racism that followed the FOP's announcement were swift
and strong, and the FOP was forced to withdraw the float.</p>
<p>A few years later a federal judge, quoting Martin Luther King's
"Letter from a Birmingham Jail," ordered that a number of police
files that documented the systemic nature of the torture "with
all its pus flowing ugliness" be released "to the natural
medicines of air and light." The FOP intervened in the suit,
seeking to overturn the order, and continued to pursue its
battle to suppress the files with an unsuccessful appeal.</p>
<p>In 2008, the FOP again became actively involved in defending
Burge after he was indicted for perjury and obstruction of
justice for lying under oath about whether he tortured
African-American suspects. The FOP Board, without putting it to
a vote of its membership, pushed through a resolution to pay for
Burge's lawyers in the criminal case.</p>
<p>Defending its decision, FOP President Mark Donahue asserted
that Burge, despite the more than 100 documented cases of
torture that had been amassed against him over the years, had
been unfairly tarnished by allegations from criminals, and that
politicians and lawyers for Burge's victims had fueled a media
hysteria which "caused Jon Burge to be the 'poster child' of
alleged police torture in this city for an entire generation."
Invoking what can be described as the FOP's unrepentant motto,
Donahue vowed that it "will stand with the police officer every
time." A group of African-American officers unsuccessfully <a
href="http://wethepeoplemedia.org/uncategorized/cops-fight-their-own-over-burge/"
target="_hplink">challenged the decision in Court</a>,
stating, "We do not support torture. We do not condone torture.
We do not embrace torture. We will never support that type of
behavior on the department."</p>
<p>In 2011, Burge, despite his high-priced FOP-financed defense,
was convicted of three felonies and sentenced to four-and-a-half
years in federal prison. Nonetheless, the Police Pension Board,
which was comprised of four former or present CPD officers and
four civilians,<a
href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/16231/fired_chicago_police_jon_burge_pension_lisa_madigan"
target="_hplink"> voted 4-4</a> on the question of whether
Burge should be stripped of his pension, which he had been
receiving since 1997. By law, the tie was resolved in pensioner
Burge's favor.</p>
<p>Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed suit, seeking to
reverse the decision, and the FOP defended the ruling, with an
FOP-financed private lawyer arguing on behalf of Burge. The case
was appealed all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court, which,
in a 4-3 decision this past summer, <a
href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/17213/jon_burge_torture_chicago_has_not_paid_for_his_crimes"
target="_hplink">ruled in favor of Burge and the Pension
Board.</a></p>
<p>This appalling history is not limited to New York, Chicago or
Milwaukee by any means. Other notable examples include Detroit
in the mid-1970s, where the Detroit Police Officers Association
challenged police reforms and affirmative action initiatives
which sought to stem rampant police brutality against African
Americans with a lawsuit; after it lost its case, it
orchestrated <a
href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/29/a-brief-history-ofpublicspatsbetweenmayorsandpolice.html"
target="_hplink">a police riot</a>.</p>
<p>In Los Angeles in the early 1990s, African-American Mayor Tom
Bradley condemned the state court jury verdict which absolved
LAPD officers of criminal charges for brutally beating Rodney
King, by stating that the verdict "will never blind us to what
we saw on that videotape," and further stated that "the men who
beat Rodney King do not deserve to wear the uniform of the
LAPD." In response, the L.A. Police Protective League reacted
with a vengeance that, according to Police Chief Richard
Riordan, <a
href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/when-tragedy-leaves-divide-1419211713"
target="_hplink">lasted for years</a>.</p>
<p>And more recently, in Seattle, the Police Officers' Guild
mounted a verbal attack <a
href="http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Mayor-Sunday-to-be-John-T-Williams-Day-in-1031102.php"
target="_hplink">on then-Mayor Michael McGinn</a> after he
stated, in response to the shooting of a Native American
word-carver, that the Seattle police force had no place for
officers who did not share his commitment to racial justice. </p>
<p>Whether unions which represent police officers, correctional
guards and other law enforcement officers are the same kind of
workers' organizations as other unions, which can potentially be
used to further the interests of the working class as a whole,
has been <a
href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/the-bad-kind-of-unionism/"
target="_hplink">vigorously contested</a> by many progressives
and leftists over the years. But the disturbing history of these
powerful organizations makes it very clear that they mirror and
reinforce the most racist, brutal and reactionary elements
within the departments they claim to represent and actively
encourage the code of silence within those departments. They are
far from democratic, with officers of color and women having
little or no influence.</p>
<p>In truth, police unions further the-all-too-accurate conception
that the police are an occupying force in poor communities of
color, and are antithetical in principle and action to the
progressive principles of the labor movement.</p>
<p><em>Flint Taylor is a founding partner of the People's Law
Office in Chicago. He is one of the lawyers for the families
of slain Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark,
and together with his law partner Jeffrey Haas was trial
counsel in the marathon 1976 civil trial. He has also
represented many survivors of Chicago police torture, and has
done battle with the Chicago Police Department--and the
Fraternal Order of Police--on numerous occasions over his 45
year career as a people's lawyer.</em></p>
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