During this past session, the Virginia State Legislature passed bills to significantly expand the provisions allowing public workers to unionize. Unions tend to be good things. However, in recent years, we have learned that police officer unionization across the country has been seriously problematic.
Labor unions exist to protect workers, but most workers are not authorized to use deadly force as part of their jobs. Regrettably, police unions have contracts that make it virtually impossible to hold police accountable for killing unarmed citizens, especially African Americans.
Although half of the people shot and killed by police are white, blacks are 2.8 times more likely to be killed by police than whites. Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate. Police union contracts limit the ability of authorities to hold police officers accountable for misconduct, including the use of force and the killing of unarmed civilians. Fortunately, various citizens, groups, and local governments are calling for changes to these police union contracts.
Many of these contract agreements limit officer interrogations after alleged misconduct, mandate the destruction of disciplinary records, ban civilian oversight, prevent anonymous civilian complaints, and limit the length of internal investigations.
The limitations placed on questioning officers accused of misconduct are especially problematic.
Imagine if, before interrogating a suspect, police officers had to provide the suspect with written statements from all other witnesses with knowledge of the crime. Imagine if, before conducting interrogations, police officers were required to give suspects and their attorneys a full and truthful accounting of all the evidence against them. And imagine if police were required to provide all suspects and their attorneys with advance notice – anywhere from twenty-four hours to ten days in length – before conducting interrogations.
Police departments would resist that kind of limitation on their work and would proclaim that such restrictions would make it difficult for them to prosecute criminals. Yet that is precisely what many police union contracts require when the suspects are police officers. Thus, we have one set of procedures for law enforcement officers and another for other citizens.
The case of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge in 2016 is one of many instances of delays in interrogation affecting the prosecution of the case. Videos appeared to show Sterling being shot six times in the chest and back at point-blank range. The public had many questions. Was Sterling armed? Was the use of force necessary? However, under Baton Rouge’s police union contract and the associated state Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights, officers did not have to answer any questions for thirty days. The result is that the officers were never prosecuted.
The strength of police union contracts has become absurd. For example, in Illinois, these contracts override state law. Thankfully, legislation introduced in the state legislature would overturn this policy.
The District of Columbia has reined in the outsized power of its police union contracts. The Council recently passed legislation that bans any matters related to law enforcement discipline from its police union contract.
Police union contracts across the country have gotten so out of hand that other unions are calling for changes, apparently the result of the widespread protests after the killing of George Floyd. Protesters called on the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the leading labor federation, to expel the International Union of Police Associations, which represents over 100,000 law-enforcement officers.
The Association of Flight Attendants adopted a resolution demanding that police unions address racism in law enforcement and hold officers accountable for violence against citizens or suffer removal from the Labor Movement.
The Service Employees International Union, with 2 million members, has pushed for holding public-sector unions, like police, accountable to racial justice.
In Seattle, a labor union coalition issued an ultimatum to the local police union to acknowledge and address racism or be kicked out of the alliance. A janitors’ union has also weighed in. The Twin Cities union representing thousands of janitors has suggested that community members join city officials at the bargaining table during police contract negotiations.
And a Harvard labor law professor argues that the labor union movement has a responsibility to push for police reform, including amending laws to prohibit negotiations over matters involving the use of force. That is the position of a Virginia citizen group, the Combating Racial Injustice Police Committee.
To avoid the consequences of these overreaching police union contracts, Virginians should limit them to the usual union issues of working conditions and avoid including matters of discipline.
