Scripting better rules for police to follow
If you wanted to binge-watch every movie featuring a hero cop breaking the rules, you wouldn’t be able to see all of them by the time the pandemic ends. The trope betrays the reality that it’s good for police to have rules to follow. There also are a lot of benefits to scripting as many as possible into police union contracts, so everyone sticks to the same guidelines.
Curious about how the special session will go if it indeed embraces the theme of police accountability? It’s foreshadowed pretty well in the reaction to the ACLU of Connecticut’s new analysis of provisions in police contracts.
ACLU Legal Director Dan Barrett said “contract provisions that allow police to avoid meaningful discipline, transparency and accountability have got to go.”
Whatever the context, any use of “got to go” can reliably be counted on to draw blowback. In this case, the report sparked a fiery response from Larry Dorman, a spokesman for a union that represents more than 2,000 officers, including those in Bridgeport, Norwalk, Wilton and Westport departments.
“I think it’s sad to see the Connecticut ACLU joining the ranks of corporations and billionaires that are trying to knee-cap the unions,” Dorman said.
“Knee-cap” is pretty tone-deaf under any circumstances related to unions, but particularly so given the gravity of the moment.
Good police — and there are so many of them — deserve better than for their ranks to be painted with a broad brush. And the people who pay their salaries (that would be taxpayers) deserve for contracts to strive to protect them over officers accused of malfeasance. That will require more discipline from municipal leaders during negotiations.
The streets of our towns and cities are the workplace of police officers. Like any other office, they are expected to behave appropriately. When complaints are filed, taxpayers should be able to have trust in the process.
But the union contracts make almost every office in Connecticut a little different. A Hearst Connecticut Media review last year identified seven cases of officers who were fired by municipalities over the previous two years only to have the cases overturned because of contract violations.
The ACLU report points to police chiefs who are handcuffed by provisions, departments that put an expiration date on discipline in officers’ records, and towns that forbid the use of anonymous complaints.
There are several potential remedies that will be dissected in the months to come: Whether to keep discipline records as permanent parts of an officer’s file, making more personnel information applicable to the Freedom of Information Act, and how to bring reform to such language in contracts.
But first, union and police leaders need to want the same goals. That 17 departments, including the state police, did not respond to the ACLU’s requests for contracts runs counter to that spirit.
Leave the rule-breaking to the screen. Real heroes don’t bend, break or hide behind the rules.
The streets of our towns and cities are the workplace of police officers. Like any other office, they are expected to behave appropriately. When complaints are filed, taxpayers should be able to have trust in the process.