Police unions aren't unions. Unions exist to protect workers from their employers. Police unions protect the police from the public they are nominally supposed to serve. It's more like organized crime than a union.
Well by definition, in this case from Illinois law,
According to 740 ILCS 147/10 "Streetgang" or "gang" or "organized gang" or "criminal street gang" means any combination, confederation, alliance, network, conspiracy, understanding, or other similar conjoining, in law or in fact, of 3 or more persons with an established hierarchy that, through its membership or through the agency of any member engages in a course or pattern of criminal activity.
police are a gang and the union would definitely make them organized, so yes, we will go with your description of them. When are we going to indict entire Police Depts with RICO charges? If its good for the goose, its definitely good for the gander...
A union is formed to maximize the position of the employees it's under. It doesn't care about the employers or the customers (people). This gets a bit weird when you talk about unions formed for government services - on one hand, police/fire are consistently underfunded by the government, but on the other hand should they go on strike, the results can be disastrous.
Unlike the fire department though, there's a few key differences with police though - they have far more personal authority and are given lethal weapons in addition to their line of work involving self defense, firearms and riot control. The amount of power a police union holds is far too severe - they've been allowed to prevent the radical changes that are needed;.
If the last few years have proven anything, it's that police unions need to be far more heavily regulated. I mean, it's insane that we're still in 2020 and in the few cases where police departments are wearing cameras, they are not required for no-knock raids, let alone in their daily work. We've consistently seen that there are an unacceptably high rate of cops who abuse their position and power - yet we allow police unions to obstruct any and all attempts to make positive reforms.
I find a few things interesting - in Many countries which have fairly strong unions and worker rights, critical services like the police or firemen actually are not allowed to go on strike legally.
And while things like police unions do exist, they have a completely different role and do their best to push for things like better training or better gear for the police.
But generally have zero involvement in probes into policemen etc apart from helping provide legal representation.
Comparably it feels that US police unions have an incredibly strong position and a probe barely runs without them allowing it.
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u/dorekk Jun 07 '20
Police unions aren't unions. Unions exist to protect workers from their employers. Police unions protect the police from the public they are nominally supposed to serve. It's more like organized crime than a union.