NEW YORK – Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson delivers congratulatory remarks at the New York City Police Department Police Academy graduation ceremony held at Madison Square Garden, Dec. 29, 2015. More than 1,200 NYPD Academy recruits graduated during the ceremony. Official DHS photo by Jetta Disco.
In 2011, there was a furor raised when some politicians tried to reform collective bargaining for government workers. But now, write the editors of the WSJ, some governors are blaming public-union labor agreements for not making progress with police reform.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Sunday said police collective bargaining and arbitration have prevented the city from holding officers accountable for misconduct. Derek Chauvin, the officer charged with killing George Floyd, had at least 17 misconduct complaints against him in 18 years. His personnel file provides little detail about how these complaints were handled. But it appears he was disciplined only once—after a woman said he pulled her from a car and frisked her for exceeding the speed limit by 10 miles per hour. He received a letter of reprimand.
Minneapolis’s Office of Police Conduct Review has received 2,600 misconduct complaints since 2012. Only 12 have resulted in discipline, and the most severe punishment was a 40-hour suspension. “Unless we are willing to tackle the elephant in the room—which is the police union—there won’t be a culture shift in the department,” Mr. Frey said.
Some 40 states require or permit collective bargaining for police. A Duke Law Journal study in 2017 that analyzed 178 police union contracts concluded that a “lack of corrective action in cases of systemic officer misconduct is, in part, a consequence of public-employee labor law” that in most states permits unions “‘to bargain collectively with regard to policy matters directly affecting wages, hours and terms and conditions of employment.’”
Read here what former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has to say about policing and George Floyd.
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