Speaking of making friends, Steve Cohen, writing at the New Republic, points out that part of the problem with the Chicago Police Department is its collective bargaining agreement:
The collective bargaining agreement between the City of Chicago and Lodge No. 7 of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) is not an exciting document. Many of its 158 densely worded pages are devoted to topics like insurance subrogation and access to the mailboxes at department headquarters. In 2014, the City Council voted unanimously, 49-0, to approve the current agreement, which runs through June 30, 2017. Until recently, the next set of negotiations promised to play out the same way the last one did, the same way similar ones have, for years, in municipalities big and small, all across the country: quietly, behind closed doors, far from the eyes of the communities most affected by the outcome.
Now, as racial justice activists shine new light on the troubling consequences of police union contracting nationwide, Chicago has its own morbid reasons to scrutinize what has long been a fatally overlooked aspect of a fatally overlooked crisis. Within the pervasive system of corruption, complicity, and negligence that led to Laquan McDonald’s death and then facilitated its cover-up, Chicago’s police officers union has emerged not just as a political impediment to reform, but also as a major institutional foundation underpinning racial injustice.
Let’s say, arguendo, that Mr. Cohen is right and the CPD’s collective bargaining contract is a barrier to effective oversight? What’s the proper policy solution?
For a follow-up question is there a problem with providing proper oversight to any other groups of public employees with union representation and if not why not?
I think unions are part of the issue here. There is some line-drawing needed here, but at some point, the role of unions and collective bargaining agreements can not be to assist in creating a record that protects police officers from criminal misconduct. I don’t understand what role the union spokesperson is supposed to have in propagandizing the public about a shooting.
I don’t know how police departments can have effective management when every slight misconduct is sent off to a formalized arbitration process that is intended to compartmentalize the acts and provide minimal punishment that sets the stage for expungement. I also agree with the statement in the link that contract provisions which require a buffer period before police can be interviewed is not likely to preserve accurate memory, it is more likely to do the opposite, in perhaps unpredictable ways. Destruction of evidence should not be a valid contract provision.
The confluence of politics and collective bargaining makes it even worse. I’m not reflexively against union representation but public employees may present a special case in which it’s inherently corrupt and unworkable.
From my perspective, a textbook conflict of interest. Policy solution? Damned if I know. In a private sector corporation you can form compensation committees and then rely on fiduciary standards and proxy fights. In public venues you only have the voting booth, and now we are just chasing our tails.