Additionally, police unions and municipalities have
negotiated to throw out misconduct complaints after a certain time period. And
if an officer shoots someone, the contract likely gives him or her what’s known
as a “cooling off” period, which prevents management from questioning the
individual and witnessing officers about the incident within a certain time
period, usually 48 hours.
Also, some states give additional layers of
protections for officers, with laws generally known as police officers’ bills
of rights.
In fact, few, if any, unions have as much power in
bargaining for discipline, internal investigation stipulations and conditions
of employment as police do, say labor lawyers interviewed by the ABA Journal.
And although complaints about police union contracts are not new, the
criticisms have amplified since May, following the killing of George Floyd in
Minneapolis.
Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was arrested May 25
after he was accused of buying cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. He died
in police custody after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, allegedly held
his knee on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds despite Floyd’s pleas
that he could not breathe.
Following massive protests across the country amid
COVID-19 quarantine restrictions, Chauvin, 44, was arrested and charged with
second-degree murder days after Floyd’s death. The 19-year police veteran had
had at least 17 misconduct complaints lodged against him, but his only discipline
before Floyd’s death was two letters of reprimand, the New
York Times reports.
Reuters in
June analyzed Minneapolis Police Department officer complaints over the past
eight years and found that 9 of 10 misconduct investigations were resolved
without punishment or intervention with regard to behavior modification. Of
3,000 complaints during the time period examined, only five officers were
fired.
Janeé Harteau, a former Minneapolis Police Department
chief, told Reuters disciplinary decisions that get challenged and reversed via
arbitration and union grievances made it difficult to have accountability in
the department.
Taryn A. Merkl, a former assistant U.S. attorney in
the Eastern District of New York, agrees such reversals can handcuff the
effectiveness of police management. “When you include those sorts of checks on
management authority, it can create a culture in the department where officers
think management is adversarial to them, and whatever management decided to do
was unfair,” says Merkl.
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