The Daily Signal - How Police Unions Protect Bad Cops

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

Do police unions protect bad cops? How do collective bargaining agreements keep bad cops on the job? Where is there room for reform in this aspect of police departments? Charlyce Bozzello, communications director at the Center for Union Facts, joins The Daily Signal Podcast to break it down.  We also cover these stories: President Trump says he will challenge Nevada’s decision to send mail-in ballots to every resident in the state before the November election.  The president signs an executive order that will put green card holders and U.S. citizens ahead of foreign workers for high-skilled contract work. House Democrats subpoena four of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s top aides.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Charlize Bezello, the communications director at the Center for Union Facts, joins me today on the Daily Signal podcast to discuss. Don't forget. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple. podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now onto our top news. President Trump said he will challenge Nevada's rule to send mail-in ballots to every resident in the state ahead of the November election. On Sunday, the Nevada State Legislature passed a bill to send a mail-in ballot to every registered voter in the state so they can vote from home and avoid the polls during the pandemic. In response, President Trump tweeted on Monday, In an illegal late-night coup, Nevada's clubhouse governor made it impossible for Republicans to win the state.

Post office could never handle the traffic of mail-in votes without preparation, using COVID to steal the state. See you in court. Governor Steve Syslek is expected to sign the bill into law, which will make Nevada one of several other states, including California and Vermont, to send ballots to all registered voters, this fall. On Monday, President Trump signed an executive order that will put green card holders and citizens of the U.S. ahead of foreign workers for high-skilled contract work. The executive order keeps agencies from firing U.S. citizens or permanent residents with temporary workers in IT contract positions and also curtails agencies in the federal government from hiring temporary workers for high-skilled work, the Daily Caller reported. Carolyn Leavitt, White House Assistant

Press Secretary, told the Daily Caller, that President Trump will not tolerate lucrative federal contractors firing hardworking Americans in the pursuit of cheap foreign labor, like at the Tennessee Valley Authority. Today's executive order prevents this tragedy from occurring, encourages federal employees to hire Americans first, and yet again delivers on the president's promise to secure jobs on the homeland. House Democrats have subpoenaed four of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's top aides. Litae, the Undersecretary of State for Management, Tony Porter, Pompeo's senior advisor, Maurek String, the Acting State Department Legal Advisor, and Michael Miller, Deputy Assistant

Secretary of State for political military affairs, have all been called to testify. The subpoena of the four officials comes amid an investigation into the firing of former Inspector General of the Department of State, Steve Lenick. President Trump fired Lennox earlier this year at Pompeo's recommendation. Linnick was investigating Pompeo's use of federal resources for personal activity when he was fired, as well as the government's involvement with a Saudi Arabia arms deal. Both Trump and Pompeo deny that Lennox dismissal had anything to do with the investigation. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Elliot Engel, House Oversight and Reforms Committee Chairwoman, Carolyn Maloney, and Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate

Committee on Foreign Relations said in a joint statement Monday that the administration continues to cover up the real reasons for Mr. Lennox firing by stonewalling the committee's investigation and refusing to engage in good faith. And they added, that stonewalling has made today's subpoenas necessary and the committees will continue to pursue this investigation to uncover the truth the American people deserve. On Monday, the Republican Governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan issued a revised emergency order that takes away the authority from local governments to close schools. On Saturday, Hogan tweeted that he disagreed with the call from Montgomery County to close schools, saying, I strongly disagree with Montgomery County's decision to mandate the closure of private and parochial schools.

In his statement Monday for the Baltimore Sun, Hogan said, Private and parochial schools deserve the same opportunity and flexibility to make reopening decisions based on public health guidelines. The blanket closure mandate imposed by Montgomery County was overly broad and inconsistent with the powers intended to be delegated to the county health officer. It's a critical time in our nation's history. Now more than ever, at the Daily Signal, we're committed to equipping you with the best information and insight that we possibly can. And in order to do that, we need your help. By sharing your thoughts and suggestions through a five-minute online survey, you can help the Daily Signal improve. our reporting and reach more Americans with the message of freedom. Please take just five minutes to fill out the survey, which can be found at dailysignal.com

slash survey. Again, that's dailysignal.com slash survey. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Charlize Bezello on her perspective on how police unions can protect bad cops. I'm joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Charlize Bezello. She's the communications director at the Center for Union Facts. Charlese, it's great to have you on the Daily Signal podcast. Thanks, Rachel. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Well, thanks for making time to come on. Your organization just launched a national education campaign regarding police unions and their collective bargaining agreements that protect bad cop behaviors. So, Charlize, before we dive into everything here, can you give us a quick refresher on what collective bargaining agreements are? Sure. So every union has a collective bargaining agreement with their employer. And when it comes to police unions, the employers obviously the state or the locality or whatever government that they're operating under. And so those agreements sort of define the rules and the standards that the police officers or whoever else falls into the bargaining agreement are held to. And they also, oftentimes with police especially, they have certain rules that make it difficult for the state. or the locality or whatever it might be to reprimand police officers. And so on that, how do collective bargaining agreements protect bad cops?

What are ways that these things basically shield them in ways that is not helpful? Sure. So there's a growing pool of evidence that shows police unions and these collective bargaining agreements or CBAs. They help keep the bad cops on the beat. They use lengthy appeals processes. They keep disciplinary records hidden or sometimes just thwart reasonable discipline altogether and otherwise just have these provisions that only serve to emboldened violent police officers.

Now, it's not really anything new for unions to impose provisions that protect their members at essentially any cost. We've seen this with teachers' unions for years. They have provisions in their agreements that make it. it very difficult to fire, underperforming teachers, and ultimately students are the ones who suffer for it. But in the case of police unions, a similar thing is being done, but the stakes are even higher when you have years of virtually unchecked misconduct that could lead to violence and even death in some cases, as we have seen especially recently. Well, that's actually the next question I was going to ask you about how big is the problem

of bad cops. And as you mentioned briefly, we've seen a lot of discussion surrounding this issue in light of the death of George Floyd on May 25th. How big and widespread of a problem is this? So I just, I think it's more of a, you know, there are a minority of bad cops out there. The vast majority of cops are great, but it's their police union contracts that make it very difficult to hold the small amount that are bad accountable. And then that can lead to potentially violent cops staying on the streets, meaning there's a better chance that another tragedy could occur that not only incites anger toward police overall, but drastically diminishes the morale of good cops and makes it harder for them to do their jobs. So I don't know if you would say that this

is, you know, in precincts across the country, there are just millions of bad cops waiting to waiting to strike, I don't think that's the case at all. But when a violent cop is allowed to stay on the beat long enough for something truly tragic to happen, it gets this sort of national play. Rightfully so, people are outraged. So even if it's a minority of cops that aren't being held accountable, it becomes a huge issue, especially when it does lead to these sort of violent deaths or murders in many cases. Well, the national education campus, that you started includes a website, police union facts.com.

Can you highlight some of the most important points on this site? Sure. So I think one important thing to understand, and it's one of the more shocking statistics in my opinion, is that many police union contracts actually include extremely lengthy appeals processes for officers that are accused of misconduct. So that just means if an officer is initially fired for misconduct,

they can and actually oftentimes will get rehired. One particularly surprising study looked at 656 police union contracts, and it found that the median contract actually gave officers up to four layers of appellate review. And then that was typically followed by another appeal to a third-party arbitrator. And in more than half of those cases, the officer being accused was actually allowed input as to that arbitrator was. So, I mean, this is in countless police union contracts, and it really stacks the deck in favor of police officers, even if they were rightfully dismissed originally.

And then in addition to that, these kinds of contracts just include tons of provisions that could thwart very reasonable and sometimes necessary discipline. Some of them include provisions like limiting officer interrogations, mandating the destruction of disciplinary records, banning civilian oversight, preventing anonymous civilian complaints, and limiting the length of internal investigations. So another study found that at least 88% of the contracts that were studied contained at least one of these types of provisions that could thwart legitimate discipline. So I just think of it this way. Could you imagine if the same rules applied to criminals or somebody who was even on a criminal trial? I mean, it would be obstruction of justice, yet police unions don't really seem to mind that there's this double standard when it comes to their own members. And Bloomberg actually

recently did a similar study of police union contracts and found that 43% provided for the removal of reprimands that had been added to an officer's personnel file after any given length of time. And that's something that happens a lot too, where these contracts include provisions where, whether it's one year, maybe it's five years, after that set amount of time, the misconduct record will just vanish from a police officer's personnel record. And if that's not bad enough, we also highlight that oftentimes records are just hidden from other police departments. There was a particularly tragic case in Cleveland.

Officer Timothy Lauman shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice. He had previously resigned from his police department. He was about to be fired for being deemed unfit to serve, but he sort of beat them to the punch and left. but when he moved over to the Cleveland Department, he did not have to have to disclose his reason for leaving his former job, and therefore they didn't know that they were hiring a potentially violent cop who had already been deemed unfit to serve.

And then it ultimately led to the death of this young man. And there are countless other cases that we do have listed on the site where in a very tragic death by a police officer, they actually had a lot of misconduct complaints against them ahead of time. And it just seems as though their police union contracts were really a big roadblock in holding them accountable and keeping them off the streets until it was too late. Well, Charlis, you had mentioned that one stat about how 88% contained at least one provision that with more legitimate discipline. Looking at these problems, like how does this happen to begin with? where is the breakdown when it comes to reporting these issues and then, you know, acting on it so

they're not repeated? Sure. So I think a large part of it is that police unions typically lobby very aggressively to keep these records hidden from the public. I do believe it's just this huge lack of transparency. For instance, you know, as I mentioned before, a lot of police officers who had a bunch of misconduct complaints against them. And eventually we didn't find out until a killing had occurred.

That's not something that should be happening. But police unions are really fighting tooth and nail to keep those types of records hidden. A really good example of this is, well, I mean, it should be said, first of all, that we now know that the police officer who killed George Floyd had 18 misconduct complaints against him before the murder occurred. And so another well-known killing by a New York police. police officer in 2014, Officer Daniel Pantileo, he used the chokehold against Eric Garner, resulting in Garner's death. And thanks to Section 50A of the New York Civil Rights Law, it basically shrouds police officer personnel and disciplinary records in secrecy. So we didn't know at the time that Garner actually had, I believe it was seven disciplinary complaints against

him and 14 individual allegations prior to Garner's death. That was all kept very secret. And it wasn't even until 2019 that he was fired for this action. And even now, right now, the Police Benevolate Association, which is the union in New York, is helping sue for his job back. And the police union fought very aggressively against any repeal or changes to 50A. until recently they were victorious, but the state has actually now repealed 50A, but that has also not stopped the union from suing the state to tie up these police personnel records in a lawsuit. So they're still doing everything they can to stop this transparency from getting out there. A similar thing happened in California.

A 2018 law to increase transparency for police officer records was met with a huge fight from the state's police union. several departments even responded by shredding years of records. That included records of police shooting investigations. So it's really the police unions that are fighting against this transparency, I believe that's the first issue that we need to combat. When we're able to know about the history of the police officers that are on the street, that are keeping us safe, I think that's one important step to making sure that these types of things,

don't happen in the future. Well, police unit facts.com mentions the Justice Act, which is a police reform bill currently being considered by Congress. What is the Justice Act and what does it do? Sure. So there's a lot of reform bills going around right now, which is wonderful. We definitely are seeing bipartisan support for this issue. And it's sort of become a question of, you know, not that we do we need reform, but what kind

of reform? How are we going to go about it? So a few things the Justice Act does very well is sort of speaking to this transparency issue that I laid out before. It has some specific provisions that would require reporting of violent tactics that are used by police officers. This would include no knock warrants, which are essentially when a officer is serving a search warrant, they can not announce themselves or not knock first before they go in. These are just another controversial tactic that police officers use. But it would also require state and local governments that receive certain federal funding to, quote, maintain a system for sharing disciplinary records of law enforcement officers.

So that's the kind of system we're lacking right now. And this system would be accessible to other law enforcement agencies. It could be accessible from one department to another, one precinct to another. Individual officers would have the ability to see their own records and to submit related information. if they felt they needed to. But before hiring any law enforcement officer, these agencies would be required to search the system and review any other records.

So the issue of, you know, police unions keeping disciplinary records shielded or hidden from the public or keeping misconduct records from bouncing from department to department would be essentially taking care of. It would also make it a criminal offense to knowing and willfully false. a report, that's another issue that's come up a lot, especially in these controversial

killings where, you know, we can see with our eyes it's been recorded what happened, but the police report doesn't actually reflect a lot of the detail. A lot of people mention a sort of culture of silence among police officers. They don't want to hold their fellow officers is accountable. They don't want to put those types of things in writing, but it would actually make it a criminal offense to not accurately write a report. And this would have a little bit of some teeth, too. There would be a penalty for violating it that could be as little as a fine or up to even 20 years in prison. And then just a little bit beyond that, the Justice Act would also create a couple commissions that would really be dedicated to investigating issues and proposing reform. I think it would

it would really seek to collect data and promote transparency in the many areas of policing where solutions aren't yet super obvious or where solutions sort of vary based on state, based on locality. We definitely don't want a situation where police officers can't do their jobs and can't protect their communities based on a law, but we do need to promote transparency. We do need to fight against these provisions in police union contracts that prevent us from holding bad cops accountable, especially when violence is involved. Charlies, what about the argument from some that police officers need unions, particularly those

in cities where good officers are affected by very liberal mayors and or city council members where, you know, some feel that police unions are the only thing standing in between that? Sure. So this is definitely one of the main talking points, especially of police unions, And when they repealed 50A in New York, the police union, the head of the PBA there, was definitely telling everyone that cops would be put in danger by this if their disciplinary records were made public. And it's certainly a valid concern. However, there is not a ton of compelling evidence to suggest that cops would be in more

danger if their disciplinary records were made public. There's actually a very interesting forthcoming survey in the Cordo Law Review that looked into this and it found very little evidence that public access to misconduct records would endanger officers. In fact, it surveyed hundreds of law enforcement administrators. They were primarily police chiefs, sheriffs, and they actually found that these administrators said access to public records of police, disciplinary records and misconduct would be beneficial to their departments and their communities much more so than it would be harmful to officers. It's also worth note. It's also worth note that, that when these types of records are made public, it's not an unbridled release of personal

information on this police officer. It doesn't include their address. It won't include their contact information. So it's not like we're putting their private information out there to the public. And also this, just because we recently did some polling on this issue, and one of the responses actually speaks pretty well to this. So we said to people taking the survey, police union contracts often include provisions that make it difficult to fire police officers who have complaints lodged against them. Unions say that these policies are necessary to protect police officers from unfair targeting. Do you think it's more important to protect all police officers or more important to make it easier to get bad cops off the force? And an overwhelming 68% of people said they believed it was more important to get bad cops off the force.

So I think given all of that, I don't know. if you can make it a real case that police officers are in, are in more danger if these records are made public. And then lastly, Charlize, what other opportunities for reform do you see, you know, available that people should try to pursue? Well, I think that certain states and localities are definitely looking into the police union issue. Minneapolis left its collective bargaining agreement with the police department. And it's possible that other cities will be and Bolden to do the same, or at least to take a much closer look at their collective bargaining agreement. I think these things are often best done at the local level when you can really sit

down with the stakeholders in the area and sort of figure out what's best for the community. And, you know, borrowing that, like I said, I think legislation like the Justice Act that really does want to focus on transparency and accountability will be the next step here. And fortunately, I think there's a lot of support around these efforts. I don't think anyone will say that there doesn't need to be transparency or accountability, especially in light of recent events. And police unions have escaped pretty serious criticism for a while. And now it's a good time to really look at the role they're playing and keeping bad cops out there.

Well, Charlies, thank you so much for joining us today on the Daily Signal podcast. It's been great having you. Thank you so much for having me. And that will do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. And don't forget, we do need your help to continually improve your podcast experience. So please be sure to head to dailysignal.com slash survey, or you can click the link in today's show notes to take the five-minute survey. Your thoughts and suggestions are critical to our work for America.

Thanks again for listening, and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half. a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.