That’s the headline on a recent Atlantic magazine article that argues police unions “condition officers to see themselves as above the law” and are therefore “dangerous” rogue organizations that let their members “get away with murder.”
We’ve heard that before from the likes of police haters like Pamela Price and Carroll Fife. Yet it’s so odd, when you think about it. These same “progressives” love employee unions like SEIU when they’re working hand-in-glove with secretive City Council members to get higher taxes on the ballot so that union members can get big fat contracts. SEIU is therefore a “good union.” But the Oakland Police Officers Association is a “bad union” because they work on behalf of their members, the sworn officers of OPD. Go figure.
The Left just can’t make up its mind about unions. When are they good and when are they bad? But we have to admit, the Right is just as confused. So which is it—is OPOA “an obstacle to police reform,” as the Atlantic alleges, or is the union simply doing what all unions do, which is “organizing for better wages and benefits”?
I think only an unreasonable agitator would argue that cops don’t deserve their own union. They have bosses and management, same as nurses, teachers and city bureaucrats, and they need the organized help of a union to negotiate with management. I’ve been very outspoken in my support of OPOA, for a simple reason: Oakland cops are constantly under fire (sometimes literally) and they deserve to be represented and defended by smart, savvy unions who know how to have a knife fight in a phone booth and win. Do the anti-cop forces really think they can attack, insult and smear cops and that no one will stand up for them? That’s not going to happen in any world I live in.
The Atlantic article makes some crazy assertions. It begins with the tired old meme that “in the apocalyptic rhetoric of police-union leaders, every victim of police misconduct is a criminal, and anyone who objects to such misconduct is probably also a criminal and, by implication, a legitimate target of state violence.”
But this is a Big Lie. I’ve never heard OPOA state that “every victim of police misconduct is a criminal.” It is true, on the other hand, that many if not most people who are injured or killed by cops attempted to fight against the cops to keep themselves from being arrested. It’s also true that in many of those cases the criminals came at cops with knives or guns. Cops have every right to defend themselves under such circumstances. We know that the “gentle giant,” George Floyd, and the ex-con who was accidentally killed at Fruitvale Station, Oscar Grant, both had criminal records, and both tried to resist being arrested by police before their respective demises. Pointing these facts out is merely filling in gaps in the public record, so that the conclusions we, the public, reach are not based solely on the assertions of defense counsel, such as John Burris, or the suspects’ relatives who argue that such-and-such was “a good boy” who loved kittens and coached Little League. So shut up, cop haters, with your propaganda. Better yet, try telling the truth to offenders: if you don’t want to get hurt by cops, then don’t fight them when they ask you to please stop resisting arrest and cooperate.
The police bashers at the Atlantic then argue that “police unions reflexively come to the defense of men like [Derek] Chauvin (accused of killing George Floyd), while opposing any meaningful reforms of department procedures.” This, too, is a lie. If OPD wasn’t serious about fixing any problems that may exist within their ranks, they wouldn’t have cooperated with the Negotiated Settlement Agreement for more than twenty years. It’s quite apparent that OPD is extremely serious about fulfilling all the “tasks” the Special Monitor lays on them. Perhaps most serious of all the Atlantic’s charges is that “police unions will condition their members to see themselves as soldiers at war with the public they are meant to serve.”
This isn’t only a big lie, it’s a horrendous thing to say. Cops don’t see themselves as “at war with the public.” They see reality for what it is: dangerous. I’ve talked to many cops and the only “war” they see themselves participating in is one they wish they didn’t have to fight: against armed, violent criminals who wish to rob the public of their right to a peaceful, safe existence. Cops rightfully view gangbangers, muggers, murderers and thieves as unnatural predators who must be isolated from polite society; it’s their job, as soon as they put on the uniform, to protect honest citizens from being prey, and I for one thank God we have such fine men and women on the force. They’re not out there hassling or harassing anyone, not these days when their every behavior is scrutinized by suspicious “watchdog” agencies, and we have Fife playing “Gotcha!” every time a cop is accused, wrongly, of violence.
Look, police have every right to feel set upon. They feel the hatred coming from the eyes of so many people in the street they’re trying to protect. And all that they—the cops—ever ask civilians for is to treat them with a modicum of respect. As the Atlantic article quotes a cop talking to an imaginary cop hater, “Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge.”
Would you ever say such stupid stuff to a cop? Why? Because you think you have the right to? It’s dumb, it’s self-destructive, it’s rude, it’s disrespectful, and it accomplishes precisely nothing except to put your own safety on the line. The Atlantic reveals more that it perhaps intended when they conclude their article with this slur: “Led by their unions, the police in America have become a constituency with a strong interest in the ability to dispense violence with impunity.”
That, too, is a final lie in the coffin of this dreadful, untrue article. The “constituency” with an interest in dispensing violence with impunity are the gangs of the inner city, with their Che Guevara posters and ghost guns who roam Oakland with impunity, knowing that John Burris and James Chanin are out there to protect them, that leftwing racist DAs like Pamela Price will spring them from prison, and that rogue City Councils like Oakland’s will see to it that the police are kept in a weakened, demoralized position. It’s a zero-sum game, folks, and if the police lose, then you do, too, and the criminals win.
Steve Heimoff