Something About the Whole Life/Death Thing Sets Them Apart
A review of over 80 big-city police union contracts and 13 state "police bills of rights" by activist group Campaign Zero found that nearly 90 percent contain language barring police officers from true accountability in some way.
As the New Yorker's James Surowiecki writes, "All labor unions represent the interests of the workers against the bosses. But police officers are not like other workers: they have state-sanctioned power of life and death over fellow-citizens."
Related: Chicago's police union is particularly bad. The contract includes language making it incredibly difficult to fire officers, even for heinous acts, and hamstrings police oversight agencies. As TMN's Sam Stecklow reported earlier this year, the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police until recently regularly distributed misinformation about the victims of police shootings from the scene of the crime, to stave off lawsuits from families and charges from prosecutors, and have been at the center of efforts to destroy police misconduct files dating back to 1967.