President Obama’s newly announced police‐reform package lives up to one’s worst expectations. He flatly refuses to curtail the federal police militarization program, instead calling for a big hike in federal spending on aid to local departments with the usual micromanaging strings attached. These strings will predictably make departments more responsive to Washington, and lobbies with clout there, as distinct from their local communities. As USA Today notes, one powerful interest group has been especially active behind the scenes: “The Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union, has waged an intense lobbying campaign to keep the surplus equipment flowing,” with its executive director specifically speaking up in favor of the transfer of armored vehicles and personnel carriers. A Washington Post editorial notes that while the administration has now released some useful information on the Pentagon’s 1033 surplus‐gear program, it still apparently has no plans to improve data gathering on police use of lethal force.
In a related story that shouldn’t be missed, Conor Friedersdorf assembles excessive‐force and misconduct horror stories of cops reinstated in union arbitration proceedings from Oakland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Miami, Sarasota, and elsewhere around the country. He concludes:
I’d rather see 10 wrongful terminations than one person wrongfully shot and killed. Because good police officers and bad police officers pay the same union dues and are equally entitled to labor representation, police unions have pushed for arbitration procedures that skew in the opposite direction. Why have we let them? If at‐will employment, the standard that would best protect the public, is not currently possible, arbitration proceedings should at a minimum be transparent and fully reviewable so that miscarriages of justice are known when they happen. With full facts, the public would favor at‐will employment eventually.
You can’t tackle the excessive force problem credibly unless you tackle the power of the police unions. Period.
[adapted from a post at Overlawyered]