How Police Unions and Arbitrators Keep Abusive Cops on the Street
- Apr 6, 2024
- 1 min read
When Frank Serpico, the most famous police whistleblower of his generation, reflected on years of law-enforcement corruption in the New York Police Department, he assigned substantial blame to a commissioner who failed to hold rank-and-file cops accountable. That's the classic template for police abuse: misbehaving cops are spared punishment by colleagues and bosses who cover for them. There are, of course, police officers who are fired for egregious misbehavior. Yet all over the U.S., police unions help many of those cops to get their jobs back, often via secretive appeals geared to protect labor rights rather than public safety. In practice, too many cops who needlessly kill people, use excessive force, or otherwise abuse their authority are getting reprieves from termination. In Oakland, California ... the San Jose Mercury News reports that "of the last 15 arbitration cases in which officers have appealed punishments, those punishments have been revoked in seven cases and reduced in five others." "In Philadelphia, an inquiry was recently completed on 26 cases where police officers were fired from charges ranging from domestic violence, to retail theft, to excessive force, to on duty intoxication," Adam Ozimek writes in a Forbes article on reforms to policing. "Shockingly, the Police Advisory Committee undertaking the investigation found that so far 19 of these fired officers have been reinstated.
2014-12-02, The Atlantic
