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wixard posted:That would be nice, but how do we do that without the unions threatening to strike until we pay cops enough money to have comprehensive "malpractice" insurance? I'm pretty sure specific LEO liability insurance products already exist. How many victims of police abuse will be able to successfully navigate civil trials to get awarded more than 7 figures and actually put a dent in the union's finances? If the threat of union strikes were the real issue then wouldn't we have a reformed police system in all the states where public workers and/or emergency workers are forbidden from striking? Strong unions aren't a universal in the United States, but I'm unaware of a state where police act tremendously better than any other state. You're still ignoring all the states where cops can't strike and/or unions are weak. \/ Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Aug 5, 2014 |
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Aug 5, 2014 21:37
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wixard posted:certainly politicians if they wanted to have a union This is actually a perfect analogy to what a police union does -- imagine if Congressmen went on strike because a judge said they can't make Islam illegal or because the voters gave them a clear mandate to raise food stamp spending, and they decided they didn't want to comply with those directives. That's EXACTLY what a police union is. People with government power blackmailing the checks on their power and the democratic process to do what they want instead.
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Aug 5, 2014 21:40
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meat sweats posted:This is actually a perfect analogy to what a police union does -- imagine if Congressmen went on strike because a judge said they can't make Islam illegal or because the voters gave them a clear mandate to raise food stamp spending, and they decided they didn't want to comply with those directives. Isn't that more or less what's been going on for the last four years or so?
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Aug 5, 2014 22:22
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KernelSlanders posted:Isn't that more or less what's been going on for the last four years or so? Something like that. Do you think this is a good thing? Because if not, you will have a hard time defending police unions.
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Aug 5, 2014 22:48
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wixard posted:But deep down my gut is telling me that would be a bad law, because I'm having trouble deciding if I'm making a real distinction or just trying to figure out how to ban LEO and CO unions with a general statement. I can't think of anything else offhand I would definitely want it to apply to (certainly politicians if they wanted to have a union), maybe the IRS? Any regulatory body would fall under that law as well. No unionization for the FDA, SEC, etc.
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Aug 5, 2014 22:51
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Police have a real need for union protection, it is an unsafe job. However, that doesn't mean that police unions should have all the powers of regular unions. Many states ban police from striking and have weak union laws yet still have police abuse. Also your analogy doesn't really work because what you're calling "congress striking" is a majority of representatives doing what they were elected to do. Which may be nothing, but conservatives like the status quo so how is that shocking?
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Aug 5, 2014 23:26
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The issue with police unions is them refusing to implement directives like "stop hassling people for being black" or "wear lapel cameras." Job safety (an already-debunked myth in this thread) or strikes for pay are not the primary concern.
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Aug 5, 2014 23:58
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Trabisnikof posted:If the threat of union strikes were the real issue then wouldn't we have a reformed police system in all the states where public workers and/or emergency workers are forbidden from striking? Strong unions aren't a universal in the United States, but I'm unaware of a state where police act tremendously better than any other state. This was a couple years ago now and I'm going mostly off the cuff so I might be foggy on details, but Camden, NJ managed to end up with a union contract so strong they had to dissolve the city's police department to get out from under it, and start over with a Camden County Police Department with hundreds of brand new officers fresh out of training and civilians taking all the office jobs. It was something absurd like 30% of the force managed to call out and still get paid each shift, they had already laid off a huge chunk of the force because the city was completely broke, senior officers working fixed first shift hours got the incentives that were supposed to be for rotating shifts, etc. I'm pretty sure they weren't coming to the scene of your crime if there wasn't physical injury or some arbitrary amount of property stolen/destroyed, they certainly never showed to smooth over fender benders in rush hour. http://phillytrib.com/news/item/6607-camden-mayor-stands-by-police-firings.html http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20140429_In_Camden__more_cops__less_crime.html There were hundreds of people waiting to sign up and be cops, and the city desperately needed cops but had 0 money. The union let hundreds of cops lose their jobs instead of working with the city to rehire the cops who got laid off by adding furlough days into their schedules, which every other person I knew who worked for Camden County already had to deal with (I worked with the parks department on outdoor concerts). The mayor had to dissolve the city police department in order to hire a few hundred unemployed people from the community who were waiting to work for what the city was offering the cops. Most of the cops who got disbanded, including the chief, stuck around afterwards so I guess it wasn't such an unreasonable offer. There's plenty of private security work in all the gated communities and shopping centers in the well-off white suburbs around Camden, I guess it's paying better than that. There's no CEO or board of directors tweaking a business plan to run away with a bunch of profit from a city at the expense of the cops. I'm not saying there's no corruption, but there's literally nothing a bunch of broke people in one of the most crime-ridden areas of the country can hold over the head of a police force, but the reverse is not true. Twice as many residents were shot when the cops were running around with 175 paid police compared to when they had the 400+ cops they needed.
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Aug 6, 2014 00:13
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meat sweats posted:The issue with police unions is them refusing to implement directives like "stop hassling people for being black" or "wear lapel cameras." Job safety (an already-debunked myth in this thread) or strikes for pay are not the primary concern. Police can do that just as easily without a union. Do you have any proof of a union ordering its members to defy a lapel camera regulation or ordering the harassment of back people? Cops in the south have weak unions and still manage to harass black people just fine. If police unions were a major factor in police abuse then states with weak union laws should have statistically less abusive police right?
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Aug 6, 2014 00:20
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Trabisnikof posted:Police can do that just as easily without a union. Do you have any proof of a union ordering its members to defy a lapel camera regulation or ordering the harassment of back people? Yes, I've posted several links in this thread about this exact phenomenon. http://www.kake.com/home/headlines/Police-Union-City-settle-body-camera-fight-contract-violations-261012031.html http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/11/dallas-police-union-recording-cops-creat http://www.policeone.com/police-products/body-cameras/articles/6389107-NYPD-Union-resists-order-to-test-body-cameras/
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Aug 6, 2014 00:30
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Trabisnikof posted:If police unions were a major factor in police abuse then states with weak union laws should have statistically less abusive police right?
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Aug 6, 2014 00:32
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It's also worth noting that in states with laws banning or restricting public employee unions, police still form "professional associations" or "benevolent societies" that are unions in every practical aspect, because police can ignore the law whenever they feel like it. So there really are no "states without police unions" to compare to.
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Aug 6, 2014 00:40
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wixard posted:Someone mentioned earlier that the police union managed to lobby hard enough for Rick Perry to veto the law TX legislature passed that would prevent cops from taking people into custody for any minor offense. Twice. Texas isn't exactly a strong union state. Right, and it doesn't take a union to lobby. It would be unconstitutional to prevent police from forming a lobbying group. meat sweats posted:It's also worth noting that in states with laws banning or restricting public employee unions, police still form "professional associations" or "benevolent societies" that are unions in every practical aspect, because police can ignore the law whenever they feel like it. So there really are no "states without police unions" to compare to. So you admit that removing unions won't actually fix the problem, good.
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Aug 6, 2014 00:41
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Yes, it is my opinion that all organization and lobbying by police should be banned.
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Aug 6, 2014 00:46
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meat sweats posted:Yes, it is my opinion that all organization and lobbying by police should be banned. Well until you can change the First Amendment good luck with that one buddy.
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Aug 6, 2014 00:46
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I love the artwork on this guy's sign http://www.walb.com/story/26204559/speed-trap-sign-stirs-up-poulan-area 
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Aug 6, 2014 01:23
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Trabisnikof posted:Right, and it doesn't take a union to lobby. It would be unconstitutional to prevent police from forming a lobbying group. What harm would befall police officers if they didn't have unions? Do you think it's politically viable anywhere for local politicians to bleed cops dry while crime rates skyrocket?
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Aug 6, 2014 02:01
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Farking Bastage posted:I love the artwork on this guy's sign ahahahaha quote:Chief Whisenant believes the sign sends a bad message. “I’m not sure exactly what he is trying to say but the respect he has for law enforcement, you can tell by the sign.” 
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Aug 6, 2014 02:25
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Farking Bastage posted:I love the artwork on this guy's sign Oh my god this owns. Unfortunately I can already imagine a no-knock raid warrant being signed by a judge, for suspicion of marijuana dealing. An officer accidentally discharged his weapon and the projectile struck the handcuffed homeowner in the back of the skull. Police seized all private property. A police investigation concluded the officer was not at fault and acted legally.
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Aug 6, 2014 02:43
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Wasn't there a case somewhere where the police decided it was illegal to warn people about speed traps? Like someone was setting up a website or putting up little signs to warn people about speed traps and poo poo and the police shut it down and the courts some how allowed it.
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Aug 6, 2014 03:32
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wixard posted:Someone mentioned earlier that the police union managed to lobby hard enough for Rick Perry to veto the law TX legislature passed that would prevent cops from taking people into custody for any minor offense. Twice. Texas isn't exactly a strong union state. It wasn't exactly the same bill twice, I misspoke about that, but the reality is actually a little more telling about the police union's political power. The second time the bill came up, it wasn't a prohibition like it was the first time. This time, it said police departments would make their own written policy on what was arrestable, and they'd follow that policy and provide for that a supervisor could review whether an arrest had conformed to the written policy. If police wanted to keep arresting people for fine-only misdemeanors, they absolutely could, they just had to put that in writing and live by their policy. That was the second bill vetoed.
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Aug 6, 2014 04:08
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wixard posted:I'm a proud IATSE member, I support unions as a general rule, but over the course of this thread I'm starting to agree that police unions aren't in our society's best interest. I can't decide where I want to draw the line though, because I think it would be absurd to dismantle teacher's unions, or deny union membership to government workers in any trade that exists both privately and publicly. Public and private unions are incredibly different. A private union has a mutual goal with their adversaries in management: a long-lasting, profitable enterprise that is a good place to work. A public union is at cross-purposes with their "adversaries"/the voters/the politicians, because their work-product is harder to define and they use taxpayer money to wield tremendous influence in elections (influence that very rarely benefits said taxpayer). I made a long post on this back in the day, and the literature on unions makes careful distinctions between public and private unions. And while people point to the usefulness of public unions in other countries, they don't realize that public unions behave far differently in the US vis a vis lobbying/political power, specifically on the local level. On the topic of public unions, teacher's unions are a less severe problem than police unions, for the obvious reason of the DANGER levels of the occupation, but also because the police force tends to attract low IQ individuals (in fact, if you score too highly on their tests you will not be hired, and this has been upheld in courts), and many of these individuals are also bullies or have violent backgrounds -- whereas those attracted to being a teacher are by-and-large altruistic, intelligent people. With a teacher's union the problem is isolated to the very bottom X% that are absolutely terrible at their jobs, stunt children's educations, and cannot be fired under any circumstances, even including some felonies; in a police union you have a far larger & more insidious problem due to the one-for-all-and-all-for-one culture that has been created, and the closing of the ranks anytime there is impropriety. I think there's a "good cop" myth out there that basically says you cannot stigmatize the police force/police union for bad cops. To a certain extent they're right (I'm guessing virtually all cops are "good people"), and in principle the argument makes sense. But in any real world situation - and you can see this in videos time after time - when one bad cop escalates a situation to violence, the rest of them follow suit. When's the last time you saw a situation where one cop was too aggressive and the other cops held him back? That'd be a unicorn-sighting. No, there is a certain herd mentality to these encounters. And you can even see it when the situation has de-escalated and they're writing their individual police reports. All of the reports toe the company line, up to and including flat out lying in the report. And on the good cop/bad cop dichotomy, you very rarely see those labeled as "bad cops" punished in any meaningful way, rendering the distinction sort of moot. The whole system stinks, and there cannot ever be meaningful reform unless the role of the unions in protecting bad cops is diminished. And the difficulty of reform is made far more difficult because of the political clout that the police unions wield. I think the voter tide is turning on this, though. Slowly, but surely.
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Aug 6, 2014 04:10
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Trabisnikof posted:Well until you can change the First Amendment good luck with that one buddy. I have the right to disobey a law saying I must wear a camera as part of my government job to prevent me from bashing in black skulls for fun. It's free speech. Officer Reddit, coming to a police force near you!
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Aug 6, 2014 04:29
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How hard would the police push back against a concerted effort by voters and politicians to rein them in? I mean let's assume a hypothetical where public opinion really shifted enough to get politicians elected who would earnestly attempt actual reform, and where police pushback only firmed up the public's resolve - would the cops eventually back down, or how far would they take it? Arkane posted:Public and private unions are incredibly different. A private union has a mutual goal with their adversaries in management: a long-lasting, profitable enterprise that is a good place to work. A public union is at cross-purposes with their "adversaries"/the voters/the politicians, because their work-product is harder to define and they use taxpayer money to wield tremendous influence in elections (influence that very rarely benefits said taxpayer). You're high as hell if you don't think there are real, serious tensions between workers and management within the public sector. I would not consider most public sector managers as representatives of the voters, and to that end I think most public sector employees deserve the same right to organize and protect their interests from uncaring, incompetent, or malicious supervisors and managers. I'm totally willing to cut a special case for police officers though, given their disproportionate impact on public safety.
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Aug 6, 2014 04:46
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meat sweats posted:I have the right to disobey a law saying I must wear a camera as part of my government job to prevent me from bashing in black skulls for fun. It's free speech. Ignoring your straw-man for a second, the point still stands that if the non-union "brotherhoods" and other organizations are enough to continue the corruption you despise, so banning unions won't do a thing. You yourself admit this: meat sweats posted:It's also worth noting that in states with laws banning or restricting public employee unions, police still form "professional associations" or "benevolent societies" that are unions in every practical aspect, because police can ignore the law whenever they feel like it. So there really are no "states without police unions" to compare to. Instead you want to ban the police from organizing and spending money on political speech. That would require a constitutional amendment and if we're going to that much effort, I'd rather say have an amendment directly limiting police powers rather than indirectly limiting powers by limiting speech.
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Aug 6, 2014 05:45
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The government can be banned from negotiating with police unions and police-unions-in-all-but-name without barring police unions from existing -- no free speech problem, just an end to the influence of police on the law. This would resolve my concerns.
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Aug 6, 2014 12:31
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Baronjutter posted:Wasn't there a case somewhere where the police decided it was illegal to warn people about speed traps? Like someone was setting up a website or putting up little signs to warn people about speed traps and poo poo and the police shut it down and the courts some how allowed it. I thought that was related to DUI checkpoints more than speedtraps, but it's been a while.
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Aug 6, 2014 15:22
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Cops beat a mentally ill man tied to a stretcher: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/exclusive-emts-turn-officers-beat-handcuffed-patient-article-1.1891706 EMTs intervene. Cops' response: gently caress EMTs. http://theerant.yuku.com/topic/68862/FDNY-EMTs-official-complaint-against-NYPD-of-EDP-Handling#.U-JDmfmIB8G
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Aug 6, 2014 16:03
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Baronjutter posted:Wasn't there a case somewhere where the police decided it was illegal to warn people about speed traps? Like someone was setting up a website or putting up little signs to warn people about speed traps and poo poo and the police shut it down and the courts some how allowed it. There was an app that informed people about sighted DUI checkpoints and a bunch of Senators got all mad and told Apple to take it down.
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Aug 6, 2014 16:26
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meat sweats posted:EMTs intervene. Cops' response: gently caress EMTs. http://theerant.yuku.com/topic/68862/FDNY-EMTs-official-complaint-against-NYPD-of-EDP-Handling#.U-JDmfmIB8G That forum's a gem. 
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Aug 6, 2014 16:33
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Why do cops call other people civilians?
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Aug 6, 2014 16:40
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meat sweats posted:The government can be banned from negotiating with police unions and police-unions-in-all-but-name without barring police unions from existing -- no free speech problem, just an end to the influence of police on the law. This would resolve my concerns. Oh, so you mean like in Texas, where the state is banned from negotiating with unions? That doesn't seem to work as well as you think. If you're going to stop police from lobbying, which seems to be your actual complaint, that would be a free speech issue.
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Aug 6, 2014 16:42
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Farking Bastage posted:I love the artwork on this guy's sign That sign is on Highway 82... you know what else is on Highway 82? That's right. Doobie's Dog House. god bless.
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Aug 6, 2014 16:48
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Looks like a great branding opportunity.
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Aug 6, 2014 18:33
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In other news, the NYPD's Sergeants Benevolent Association is now suggesting a work slowdown in response to the city's elected government asking the police to please stop choking our citizens. quote:“Going forward, for members of the NYPD, we want you to do your job and follow the rule book the way it’s written,” Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins said during a news conference in Manhattan. “If there’s a delay getting to the next place, so be it.”
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Aug 6, 2014 18:51
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A police subunion is directly threatening public safety in the name of being able to continue illegally abusing people. But remember, all unions are always good!
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Aug 6, 2014 18:53
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meat sweats posted:A police subunion is directly threatening public safety in the name of being able to continue illegally abusing people. Now I know what a strawman is.
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Aug 6, 2014 19:06
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I think your obsession with the union being the problem rather than the inherent power and lack of oversight is a little off. The police already have so much political power they don't really need a union, and even if they were some how stripped of the right to have one they'd just lobby as a group anyways and have just as much political power and "solidarity". The existence of unions isn't the problem here.
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Aug 6, 2014 19:07
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Baronjutter posted:I think your obsession with the union being the problem rather than the inherent power and lack of oversight is a little off. The police already have so much political power they don't really need a union, and even if they were some how stripped of the right to have one they'd just lobby as a group anyways and have just as much political power and "solidarity". The existence of unions isn't the problem here. The union is what prevents all the solutions addressing "inherent power and lack of oversight" from being implemented. After a rare moment when the public and the politician class actually was outraged enough to issue a "do not kill people for fun anymore" directive, it is the union saying "no, we refuse to comply."
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Aug 6, 2014 19:08
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meat sweats posted:The union is what prevents all the solutions addressing "inherent power and lack of oversight" from being implemented. After a rare moment when the public and the politician class actually was outraged enough to issue a "do not kill people for fun anymore" directive, it is the union saying "no, we refuse to comply." Actually, the union is asking its members to follow all the rules exactly by the book. That's how this kind of labor action works. But keep living in a fantasy land. quote:“Going forward, for members of the NYPD, we want you to do your job and follow the rule book the way it’s written,” Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins said during a news conference in Manhattan. “If there’s a delay getting to the next place, so be it.” Meanwhile the laboratory of democracy has proven police unions aren't the problem. Can they be a tool used by corruption, sure. But the South has shown that corruption can do just fine without a union.
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Aug 6, 2014 19:21
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