How police unions became such powerful opponents of reform efforts
During the past five years, as demands for reform have mounted in the aftermath of police violence in cities such as Ferguson, Baltimore and now Minneapolis, police unions have emerged as one of the most significant roadblocks to change. The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition.
They aggressively protect the rights of members accused of misconduct, often in arbitration hearings that they have battled to keep behind closed doors. And they have been remarkably effective at fending off broader change, using their political clout and influence to derail efforts to increase accountability.
While rates of union membership have dropped by half nationally since the early 1980s, to 10%, higher membership rates among police unions give them resources they can spend on campaigns and litigation to block reform. A single New York City police union has spent more than $1 million on state and local races since 2014.
In St. Louis, when Kim Gardner was elected the top prosecutor four years ago, she set out to rein in the city’s high rate of police violence. But after she proposed a unit within the prosecutor’s office that would independently investigate misconduct, she ran into the powerful local police union.
The union pressured lawmakers to set aside the proposal, which many supported but then never brought to a vote. Around the same time, a lawyer for the union waged a legal fight to limit the ability of the prosecutor’s office to investigate police misconduct. The following year, a leader of the union said Gardner should be removed “by force or by choice.”
Politicians tempted to cross police unions have long feared being labeled soft on crime by the unions, or more serious consequences.
When Steve Fletcher, a Minneapolis city councilman and frequent Police Department critic, sought to divert money away from hiring officers and toward a newly created office of violence prevention, he said, police stopped responding as quickly to 911 calls placed by his constituents. “It operates a little bit like a protection racket,” Fletcher said of the union.
A spokesman for the Minneapolis Police Department said he was unable to comment.
A few days after prosecutors in Minneapolis charged an officer with murder in the death of George Floyd, the president of the city’s police union denounced political leaders, accusing them of selling out his members and firing four officers without due process.
“It is despicable behavior,” the union president, Lt. Bob Kroll, wrote in a letter to union members obtained by a local reporter. He also referred to protesters as a “terrorist movement.”
In other instances, unions have not resisted reforms outright but have made them difficult to put in place. Federal intervention is often one of the few reliable ways of reforming police departments. But in Cleveland, the union helped slow the adoption of reforms mandated by a federal consent decree, according to Jonathan Smith, a former U.S. Justice Department official who oversaw the government’s investigation of policing practices there.
“A major role for police unions is basically as an insurance policy,” said Dale Belman, a labor relations professor at Michigan State University who has consulted for police unions. “The feeling of a lot of officers is that it’s very easy to sacrifice them. Something goes wrong, and boom.”
This has only become more true in an era of ubiquitous cellphone cameras and social media.
It remains to be seen how the unions will respond to reform initiatives by cities and states since Floyd’s death, including a new ban on chokeholds in Minneapolis. But in recent days, unions have continued to show solidarity with officers accused of abusive behavior.
The president of a police union in Buffalo, New York, said the union stood “100%” behind two officers who were suspended Thursday after appearing to push an older man who fell and suffered head injuries. The union president said the officers “were simply following orders.”
Unions can be so effective at defending their members that cops with a pattern of abuse can be left untouched, with fatal consequences. In Chicago, after the killing of 17-year-old Laquan Mcdonald by Officer Jason Van Dyke, it emerged that Van Dyke had been the subject of multiple complaints already. But a “code of silence” about misconduct was effectively “baked into” the labor agreements between police unions and the city, according to a report conducted by a task force.
New York City’s police unions have been among the most vocal opponents of reforms in Albany, including calls to reform the state’s tight restrictions on the disciplinary records of officers.
The city’s patrol officers’ union, with roughly 24,000 active members, and another representing sergeants have been sharp critics of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who took office in 2014 riding a wave of discontent over stop-and-frisk policing. The mayor promised reform, but after the fatal shooting of two uniformed officers in Brooklyn by a man who invoked the police killing of Eric Garner, de Blasio faced an all-but-declared revolt by rank-and-file officers.
When liberal politicians do try to advance reform proposals, union officials have resorted to highly provocative rhetoric and hard-boiled campaign tactics to lash out at them. This past week, the head of the sergeants’ union in New York posted a police report on Twitter revealing personal information about the daughter of de Blasio, who had been arrested during a protest.