<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-container gmail-content-width3">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<font size="1"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/30/police-union-contracts-collective-bargaining-officers?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR3p5jG0WzeMWO99IQAuUMYZ6Co9BrE50ZdZ5r2_FqULLlEa563L0GOSKVY">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/30/police-union-contracts-collective-bargaining-officers?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR3p5jG0WzeMWO99IQAuUMYZ6Co9BrE50ZdZ5r2_FqULLlEa563L0GOSKVY</a></font>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">'It makes it very difficult to fire them': police union contracts protect bad officers, critics warn</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Tom Perkins - June 30, 2020<br></div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-line-height4 gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<p>A court in 2009 convicted Washington DC police officer Michael
Sugg-Edwards of sexually assaulting a teenage woman in his squad car.
After conducting its own internal investigation, the department quickly
fired the then 35-year-old officer.</p>
<p>But, six years later, Sugg-Edwards was back on the force. A provision
in the police union’s contract allowed him to appeal against the
decision to a union-selected arbitrator who reversed the department’s
firing and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3912331-Suggedwards-2.html">reinstated</a> him – with back pay.</p>
<p>Such protections for officers who commit crimes are not unique to
Washington. About 475 police union contracts at the nation’s largest
departments hold similar arbitration provisions, according to a 2019
Loyola University <a href="https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9652&context=penn_law_review">study</a>.
Those are accompanied by a startling array of other complex protections
that shield officers accused of often violent misconduct from
accountability.</p>
<p>It all builds up to form a picture of how police contracts – which,
like other labor contracts, govern the working conditions under which
officers operate – have rendered police departments’ disciplinary and
oversight processes ineffective as officers are rarely held accountable
for wrongdoing. That then encourages the police violence that sparked
the massive nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by
a white police officer in Minneapolis.</p>
<p>“These [contract provisions] tie the hands of police chiefs and
others who are trying to hold police officers accountable,” said Carl
Takei, an ACLU senior staff attorney focused on police practices. “It
makes it very difficult to fire or discipline officers who engage in
misconduct.”</p>
<p>The protections’ impact on officer accountability is documented in a
growing body of empirical studies and analyses. Nearly 90% of contracts
at 178 midsize-to-large departments have at least one “problematic
provision” that “could thwart legitimate disciplinary actions against
officers engaged in misconduct,,” Loyola policing scholar Stephen Rushin
<a href="https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3890&context=dlj">wrote</a> in a 2017 study of contracts and police bills of rights.</p>
<p>Among police-friendly provisions that Rushin and <a href="https://www.checkthepolice.org/#review">Campaign Zero</a>, an activist group that tracks police union contracts, identified in separate <a href="https://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/87-Geo.-Wash.-L.-Rev.-646.pdf">analyses</a> of over 650 departments:</p>
<p><span>•</span> 137 police agencies prohibit investigators from
interrogating officers immediately after an incident. Louisiana’s bill
of rights grants officers 30 days, while Chicago officers are provided
48 hours.</p>
<p><span>•</span> 184 jurisdictions allow officers to review evidence against them before being interrogated.</p>
<p><span>•</span> 47 agencies require expungement of police misconduct
records, in some cases after as little as two years. Others entirely
shield disciplinary records from the public.</p>
<p><span>•</span> 74 departments don’t allow an officer’s misconduct history to be considered in future cases.</p>
<p><span>•</span> At least 40 departments require taxpayers to cover an officer’s defense expenses.</p>
<p>Rushin said the protections’ impact is clear: “We have definitely
made a lot of collective bargaining concessions at a substantial number
of departments that can make it extremely difficult to hold police
officers accountable.”</p>
<p>That’s illustrated in the Floyd case. The Minneapolis police
department contract and Minnesota police of bill of rights helped
protect officer Derek Chauvin, who, before killing Floyd by kneeling on
his neck, had been investigated by internal affairs at least 17 times
since 2001.</p>
<p>Per the union contract and bill of rights, the department erases
exonerated or unsubstantiated misconduct records; delays interviews for
48 hours after an incident; prohibits meaningful civilian review boards;
grants officers access to some evidence in an investigation; allows
disciplinary action to be overturned by an arbitrator; and requires the
public to pay for an officer’s defense.</p>
<p>Even amid intense public outcry, most details of previous complaints against Chauvin remain <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/29/officer-charged-george-floyds-death-used-fatal-force-before-had-history-complaints/">hidden from the public</a>.</p>
<p>A recent <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55ad38b1e4b0185f0285195f/t/5d92b749ad13ae3d9b293125/1569896278868/Sheriffs+Unions+Misconduct.pdf">study</a>
strongly suggests contractual protections increase violent behavior
among officers. It examined violent misconduct records after a 2003
Florida supreme court ruling that allowed the state’s sheriff’s
departments to unionize. City departments already had collective
bargaining rights, so the study compared violent incidents at the two
types of departments.</p>
<p>It found a 40% increase in violence – like assault and excessive
force – at the sheriff’s departments and no increase at the city
departments.</p>
<p>“We really think what’s driving this is decreased deterrence of
wrongdoing from collective bargaining, and that’s a really significant
part of the policing story,” said John Rappaport, one of its authors and
a policing scholar at the University of Chicago Law School.</p>
<p>Officers may feel safe committing crimes because data suggests that
those who engage in misconduct are rarely disciplined internally.</p>
<p>A Chicago police review <a href="https://chicagopatf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/PATF_Final_Report_4_13_16-1.pdf">taskforce</a>
found only 7% of complaints resulted during a four-year period in
disciplinary action, and arbitrators reversed or reduced punishments in
73% of those cases. The report stated that collective bargaining
agreements “provide an unfair advantage to officers” and “have
essentially turned the code of silence into official policy”.</p>
<p>The officer who shot Laquan McDonald 16 times in the back <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/10/28/warning-signs-were-clear-before-laquan-mcdonald-s-murder">escaped discipline</a>
in more than 20 complaints against him for excessive force. The Chicago
police contract offers a range of protections from delaying
interrogations to arbitration. Meanwhile, a Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/police-fired-rehired/">investigation</a>
of large departments found more than 450 out of nearly 2,000 officers
fired for wrongdoing were reinstated, despite committing often violent
crimes.</p>
<p>In San Antonio, an officer <a href="https://www.ksat.com/news/defenders/2020/01/10/sapd-officer-had-an-unusual-offer-beat-him-in-a-fight-and-you-could-go-free/">fired twice</a>
for challenging handcuffed suspects to fight him for their freedom was
reinstated by an arbitrator both times. A second San Antonio officer who
engaged in unauthorized car chases was also <a href="https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/crime/article/Twice-fired-SAPD-detective-cited-again-for-13679020.php">reinstated twice</a>. In Columbus and Oklahoma, officers who <a href="https://abc6onyourside.com/news/local/columbus-officer-reinstated-months-after-video-showed-him-kicking-man-in-head">kicked</a> men in the head were rehired.</p>
<p>Cities made many of the disciplinary concessions to unions in lieu of
pay increases during the 1980s when municipal tax revenue was tight.
Unions won’t give up those protections, Rushin said, which leaves it to
politicians to enact change.</p>
<p>He noted state lawmakers can force transparency by opening the collective bargaining process. In Washington, legislation <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/dc-police-reforms-make-it-easier-to-fire-officers-for-misconduct-expands-civilian-review-over-force/2020/06/11/3804dcaa-ab45-11ea-a9d9-a81c1a491c52_story.html">approved this month</a>
takes away the union’s ability to negotiate disciplinary processes and
gives that authority to the police chief and mayor, the DC council
chairman, Phil Mendelson, told the Guardian.</p>
<p>“When police have the ability to kill somebody, the disciplinary
process should not be bargained for,” he said. “When the police have the
ability to take away liberty, the police should not be policing
themselves.”</p>
<div>
<div><br></div>
</div>
</div></div></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
</div>