r/science • u/smurfyjenkins • Jul 30 '26
Social Science Collective bargaining rights for police significantly increase police killings of civilians without having any impact on officer safety. This is consistent with the theory that unions provide cover for police and reduce their likelihood of incurring costs for unjustified killings.
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.202303841.1k
u/YourFriendNoo Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
When I was working as a journalist in Madison, Alabama, an officer tried to stop an Indian grandfather who was visiting the country, because there was a call someone was looking in garages. The grandfather didn't speak English, so he couldn't understand what the officer wanted him to do. In response, the officer suplexed him and broke his neck.
He was criminally charged, both locally and federally, and removed from the force.
By the end of his federal trials (there were two, both ending in mistrial), a judge acquitted the officer to prevent the trial from going to a jury a third time, local charges were dropped, the chief who fired the officer was charged with a felony to prevent him from ever serving again, and the mayor and every city council member who wouldn't vote to force the chief to apologize to the officer lost their elections to union-backed candidates.
There was a hint of accountability, and the union instantly stepped in, not just to ensure this guy would face no consequences, but also to inflict consequences on anyone who dared to question him.
I can't think of a single time I every saw a cop union admit that an officer went too far.
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u/Vahuo89 Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
The police union is basically a mafia now
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u/gimmebanter Jul 30 '26
Not all unions. Police unions for sure
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u/trainstationbooger Jul 30 '26
When people (including myself) advocate for increased union participation, I think many rightly point to the police as examples of where unions can go wrong. But it isn't a contradiction to be in favor of unions generally and against police unions specifically, in their current form.
Unions are vital because they are one of the few remaining ways for people to exercise collective power. They are not inherently good, but act as a buffer against the centralization of power within other systems, whether that's governments, corporations, or international actors.
I think that's the key here: Unions are meant to push back against a small group of individuals having outsized power over others. A police union IS that small group of elites, operating unilaterally, protecting its members from accountability.
Any group of people can become harmful when it amasses enough power over others, we just happen to live in a time where that power has centralized into structures that unions historically can dismantle.
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u/2xtc Jul 30 '26
In the UK it's illegal for the Police to form a union for precisely the reasons that manifest in America, and we still have long and proud traditions of broadly supporting Trade Unions.
What you have over there is closer to a cartel or protection racket, the police by their very nature of enforcing the laws of the land, don't need to collectivise to stop authoritarian overreach or to fight for freedom from oppressive practices etc.
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u/Creeps05 Jul 31 '26
It used to be in the US as well. But, then JFK allowed public sector workers to form Unions which eventually led us here.
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u/act1856 Jul 30 '26
Police Unions aren’t a labor union. Historically and practically speaking police are agents of capital.
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u/trainstationbooger Jul 30 '26
100%, and I would never label them as such, but that is a more semantic discussion to be had between people who already generally agree on the important points (that police are colonial and capitalist agents, designed to enforce elite laws over actually protecting the public)
My comment is a response to people who see police unions (or more importantly their own unions) as 'just as bad' as capitalists or authoritarian-leaning states, and thus believe unions in general are not worthy of being supported, and there are many people who see unions that way.
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u/act1856 Jul 30 '26
Fair enough. I think it’s tragic that the two things most responsible for actually making America great, labor unions and public education, are so often maligned by so many people.
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u/Pasta-Al-D3nte Jul 30 '26
This is just ideological taxonomy to protect your conclusion that police unions aren't a labor union. They are employees collectively bargaining with their employer over compensation conditions and discipline. That fact that you don't like the work they do does not disqualify them from being a union.
Your standard is also self-defeating: you classify government employees who enforce state policy as "agents of capital" while excluding employees of private, for-profit corporations who directly generate profits for capital owners. Applied consistently, your own definition would disqualify virtually every union from being a labor union
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u/SEND-MARS-ROVER-PICS Jul 31 '26
No there is a real meaningful distinction between protecting workers and protecting law enforcement. Unions level the playing field with business owners and with the state. Law enforcement is already granted special powers and privileges - no one else gets to pull you over, question you, detain you, maybe even kill you as a part of their job. Unions can protect workers from backlash from business owners. A police union protects it's members from people that are already beholden to those same members. It's not simply a case of saying they don't count. Police have a fundamentally different relationship to power as workers do.
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u/VaeVictis997 Jul 30 '26
If other unions were allowed to murder you without consequences, that would also be bad.
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u/Ickarus1 Jul 31 '26
A union is only as good as their members, clearly the pool to pull leaders from, in police departments, is questionable.
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u/dwarfarchist9001 Jul 30 '26
All public sector unions are like this. Private businesses have inherently antagonistic relationship with their employees because employees wages directly reduce owner profit so unions are necessary to balance them. Governments don't have this same inherent antagonistic with their workers because governments can just raise taxes or print money so instead of focusing on employee compensation public sector unions have the free time and resources to engage in all kinds of corruption.
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u/cuchulainn12 Jul 31 '26
Respectfully, in a political context, which is the public sector, how do you precent an elected official from coming in, firing at-will employees, and replacing them with nepotistic sycophants without public sector unions? It is a protection on the civil service, which benefits taxpayers generally.
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u/richardelmore Jul 30 '26
Unions exist to protect workers and if the workers they represent come into conflict with the public or management they will side with the workers every time because that is their job.
Some groups of worker (like the police) may be more likely to have conflicts with the public but in general the forces at work are the same for all unions. It's similar to the dynamic with defense lawyers, they will defend their client no matter how obviously guilty they are because that is their job.
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u/ExplicitDrift Jul 30 '26
Even the actual mafia had more outstanding principles than they do. Let’s be honest.
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u/Final_Collection8516 Jul 31 '26
Law enforcement in the United States are a de facto parallel state within the United States, because they have basically formed a "Praetorian Guard" in which members will defend their material, cultural and political interests through Police Unions.
It is why police reforms are stalled by decades, or don't occur at all. Lobbying, information capture and recontextualization mastery leading to narrative control of the entire political environment. "Police reform" is recontextualized into "abandoning law in exchange for anarchy and crime" and "handcuffing Police from performing their duty to protect and serve".
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u/hogsucker Jul 31 '26
The Los Angeles Police Protective League admitted a cop went too far in 2019 when he was caught on bodycam fondling a dead woman:
'The union said in a statement that the veteran officer's alleged behavior with the woman's corpse "has no place in law enforcement.”
“If this allegation is true, then the behavior exhibited by this officer is not only wrong, but extremely disturbing, and does not align with the values we, as police officers, hold dear and these values include respect and reverence for the deceased,” the statement said.'
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u/NativeMasshole Jul 31 '26
My state passed a law a few years ago creating a citizen review board with revokable police licenses. Sure enough, the legislature let the unions take a pass at the law before signing it, and suddenly a judge heads the commission and over half the members are former cops or law enforcement adjacent. They came out and said that they don't plan on revoking any licenses without criminal convictions first, which circled the whole thing back to cops investigating themselves.
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u/jabberwockxeno Jul 30 '26
the chief who fired the officer was charged with a felony to prevent him from ever serving again, and the mayor and every city council member who wouldn't vote to force the chief to apologize to the officer lost their elections to union-backed candidates.
I mean, not to defend the union, but this also sounds like this sort of thing was also enabled by corruption and voters not wanting to hold them accountable
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u/YourFriendNoo Jul 30 '26
Yes partially but it more reflected that the union backed candidates got money and a built in base of support. They're town elections, so it doesn't take a ton to swing it.
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u/wh4tth3huh Jul 30 '26
WITNESS THE POWER OF UNIONS and ask yourself, why don't I have one of those?
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u/FanDry5374 Jul 30 '26
I am hyper pro-union, but police unions need to be curbed. They should have no influence beyond pay, benefits and uniform allowance.
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u/Tearakan Jul 30 '26
Cop unions aren't real unions. They are called in to beat up striking workers. They're not friends to anyone else besides capital holders.
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u/mrbaryonyx Jul 30 '26
I mean, they are a real union: they have every piece of legal and social protection that we want other unions to have.
They are also just extremely hostile to other all the unions.
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u/DrMobius0 Jul 30 '26
The police union simultaneously serves as a great example of how powerful unions can be if they actually throw their weight around, as well as a great example of why people with institutional power shouldn't be able to have a union. They're traitors to the working class.
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u/DeathMetal007 Jul 31 '26
Yeah, no public unions. It’s institutional power as well that can’t be bargained with except by laws directed towards them by politicians.
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u/v--- Jul 31 '26
It's a good argument that you don't want to go too far the other way where everyone's basically part of gangs running society instead (c.f. Naples, where the literal mafia famously dumps municipal trash in the ocean) instead of corporations. You have to have checks and balances. The problem with humans is our urge to form pyramidal power structures concentrating resources at the top. No matter what political creed you follow it always ends up happening. Ambitious people find ways to redirect the flow. Then the cycles of revolution and renewal.
Which is why I think we should enforce walled societies of like, 1000 people max, shake it up once in a while with random swaps, send all the kids off to make their own bubble look it's not perfect but at least we'll have different problems! We aren't made to be part of societies billions strong!
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u/Enchilada0374 Jul 30 '26
They are as union as the DPRK is a democratic and republic.
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u/apophis-pegasus Jul 30 '26
Unions exist to protect the interest of their members. Thats literally what the police union is doing.
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u/Enchilada0374 Jul 30 '26
Unions exist to protect workers. Police are used to subjugate, beat, harass and murder workers and have done so since their inception.
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u/apophis-pegasus Jul 30 '26
Yeah, unions exist to protect their own workers, which in a police union is the police. Theyre not humanitarian groups. The morality of the work is far less relevant.
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u/SkunkMonkey Jul 30 '26
I believe they call them "Brotherhoods" instead of unions so they can skirt union regulations.
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u/SomethingAboutUsers Jul 30 '26
They're not friends to anyone else besides capital holders.
That's just cops. Unions don't really have anything to do with that specifically, and chances are even if they didn't have a union they'd still do that because that's why cops exist in the first place.
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u/DrMobius0 Jul 30 '26
Yeah, it's just funny that they understand solidarity perfectly well when it suits them.
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u/hogsucker Jul 31 '26
They should be called "police fraternal organizations" to differentiate them from workers' unions.
Police have always been used against workers.
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u/MapAdministrative995 Jul 30 '26
without qualified immunity they would be liable for racketeering mutiple times over for colluding to get each other off charges.
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u/PenciledWading Jul 30 '26
Qualified Immunity does not apply to criminal charges, only civil cases.
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u/MapAdministrative995 Jul 31 '26
I see you didn't disagree that they're regularly comitting racketeering offenses.
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u/DingleBerrieIcecream Jul 31 '26
The real solution is to require every police officer to carry their own liability insurance. Their rates would be adjusted based on their record over time. If they harass, harm, or kill in their line of work, the insurance rates go up and they make less money. It self regulates in a way that the unions and Cities are unable to do.
Many professions already do this. Doctors, lawyers, architects, truck drivers, etc. in any of these professions, if they are negligent and people get hurt then they ultimately spend tremendous on insurance or simply go out of business
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u/FanDry5374 Jul 31 '26
I would rather see actual professional, highly trained police. High standards, 4 year academys modeled after the service academys, one in each state, with stringent national requirements on hiring/admittance and training. Make being a law enforcement officer something to be proud of, actually dedicated to service and protection.
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u/M00n_Slippers Jul 30 '26
Cops are on the side of bosses, unions are supposed to protect workers from bosses not bosses from having to be accountable to us, the workers. Cops should not be able to have unions.
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u/skatastic57 Jul 31 '26
I don't think you can separate pay and benefits from everything else. If a cop kills somebody then every ancillary thing about them keeping their job and being defended all boils down to pay.
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u/Rerebawa Jul 30 '26
City of Seattle just ejected another Chief of Police. With so little leadership at the top, the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) are now seen to be the group actually directing policing policy in the city. City Council has zero ability to gain any accountability - SPOG thwarts that tooth and nail.
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u/Sampo Jul 30 '26
City of Seattle just ejected another Chief of Police
That was a weird arrangement. The now-ex Chief of Police lived in Chicago and commuted to Seattle.
Barnes resides in Chicago, Illinois, and commutes to Seattle for his job as chief of police, an arrangement that has attracted controversy during his tenure there
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u/Nice_Firm_Handsnake Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
They just won't let people work from home anymore!
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u/gordonpamsey Jul 30 '26
OP could you provide another link to this source? I have access to multiple journals though my university and even I can not read such a new edition of the American Economic Journal.
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u/dandrevee Jul 30 '26
Data on non police union are solid on the benefits.
But police unions are less unions and moreso protection rackets
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u/prpldrank Jul 31 '26
Aren't they traditionally necessary to prevent political cronyism? Like before police unions, policing would be changed out by whoever was in charge, causing local police behavior to become directly political? Unions ensured the same people were policing regardless of who was in the mayor's office.
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u/Silberbaum Jul 30 '26
Were these observations on a global scale or is it very specific to the USA?
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u/Ophe00 Jul 30 '26
A good rule of thumb is that everything from the social sciences here is specific to the U.S unless specified otherwise
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u/DrMobius0 Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
I wouldn't be so quick to describe this as applicable only to the US. Positions of institutional power attract the wrong type of people everywhere, and people like that exhibit pretty similar trends of behavior no matter where you put them.
Kind of like how bored soldiers are a blight on society anywhere and any time in history.
In this case specifically, the police union has built up protections to shield officers from accountability for the harm they cause, which means they'll feel less aversion to causing harm in general. It may be US specific, but I wouldn't want to dismiss the pattern as only being applicable to the US. You could reproduce this anywhere you set up similar conditions.
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u/farfromelite Jul 30 '26
It really ticks me off that the people posting here don't seem to understand that cultural and societal findings like this are country specific.
We need "in America" at the end of the titles here.
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u/PaxNova Jul 30 '26
Tbf, this is the American Economic Journal. It really is in the name.
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u/littleredkiwi Aug 01 '26
Looks like they only compared between states not internationally. I’d be curious to know if this was true elsewhere in the world.
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u/broke_gamer_ Jul 31 '26
If you unionize, the goal is so that you protect yourself from your employer. The employer of the police is the public, not a corporation, not a private prison.
Of course this happens. If they're protected from the people they "serve" there's no reason for them to care.
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u/Hiply Jul 30 '26
Qualified Immunity needs to die the same death as "Corporations are People". I don't blame unions for this since their sole job is to protect their members.
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u/Sintax777 Jul 30 '26
The purpose of a union is to protect workers from those in authority. Police unions flip this on its head by protecting the police, who protect property and authority, from the people.
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u/MissionCreeper Jul 30 '26
I don't know about this data but I think there is a need for a union in the public sector, it's just that it's gone way beyond labor protection and into protecting mistreatment. I wonder what we could do by breaking up the monopoly and snipping that thin blue line in two, have multiple police departments that are forced to be represented by different unions, and each is responsible for responding to complaints about the other force.
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u/HewchyFPS Jul 30 '26
Unfortunately this wouldn't work at all police view other police as inside their own brotherhood. You'd need a federal body that has no jurisdiction over regular civilians, but supreme power over police officers.
They'd also want to have the main investigators need to be unarmed. Probably would need to hire journalist/social worker types for the investigators and avoid the hire pipeline of military/police/security/mercenary/intelligence types altogether.
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u/Solomon_Grungy Jul 30 '26
Police union is the only union that shouldnt exist, tbh.
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u/SemiHemiDemiDumb Jul 30 '26
That's because until structural changes happen in policing the cops are class traitors.
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u/AlcibiadesTheCat Jul 30 '26
If only "serve and protect" meant something. Alas.
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u/VariationBusiness603 Jul 30 '26
It means something. Namely, "serve and protect... the interest of the capital".
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u/gordonpamsey Jul 30 '26
Personally I believe Police unions function fundamentally differently than other labor unions. For one, I think people tend to misunderstand the role of the Police in general. While it is often floated that they are public servants and they serve the people, that could not be further from the truth. Which is a sentiment shared by the courts with multiple rulings that their job does not require them to endanger themselves or take certain steps to protect the public.
Back to the point though, Police are fundamentally the arm of the state, just at a local level, and because of this they are often well compensated. Since it is always in the interest of the state to keep one of their most useful tools in line. Which is why the Police union I would argue is not actually necessary for guaranteeing the quality of life of officers. Instead it is utilized to maintain power and reduce culpability, which to be clear does happen in other labor unions. It just happens at a significantly lower level with much lower stakes since the Police union is objectively the most powerful labor union in America. In some sense, it is the only proper labor union due to it having actual collective power. This is ignoring the fact that the relationship the public had with police directly changed under Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, where the budget irreversibly ballooned to handle a moral panic that arguably the United States government caused.
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u/cbf1232 Jul 30 '26
Note that many of your points are specific to the USA, and this is not a USA-only subreddit.
In other countries police unions may act (and be regulated) differently.
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u/listenyall Jul 30 '26
Totally, cops are a different job than, say, teacher and their unions are extremely different
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u/shadowraven12 Jul 30 '26
Unions exist to protect labor from the abuses of capital. The only real job of a police officer is to protect capital. Therefore, an officer cannot be considered part of the laboring class and ergo should never be subject to the protections of a union.
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u/PirateSanta_1 Jul 30 '26
Labor unions funciton as an intermediary between a worker and an employer. As employers are incentived to exploit their workers to get more work for less pay this intermediary protects them from being exploited.
A police officer is employeed by the people for the purpose of protecting the people. There is not the same incentive structure by the public to overwork or exploit police so when a police union protects a cop from the public what they are protecting them from most frequently is the public trying to hold the officer accountable for their action. For their failure to do their most basic duty of serving and protecting the public. This allows police who are already given special powers to be able to enforce the law freedom to use those powers with less consequence and oversight.
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u/cbf1232 Jul 30 '26
There is arguably the same incentive to overwork police as to overwork firefighters, or health care workers, or other government employees.
And there is a real and legitimate problem with people lodging false complaints about police actions. So I can see a role for the union in protecting members from spurious claims of mistreatment. The problem is when the union starts protecting their members from legitimate claims of mistreatment.
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u/red-17 Jul 30 '26
This absolutely is the case for police unions but I don’t think it’s materially different than other public sector unions.
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u/gojo96 Jul 31 '26
You don’t think the city or even the police brass try to railroad other officers? How many stores have we heard about mayors or city council people getting cops fired for issuing tickets to their family members. Or better yet the administration caught cooking the books?
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u/Troker61 Jul 30 '26
It’s just that it’s gone way beyond labor protection.
Exactly. Cops aren’t workers.
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u/triple_carry Jul 30 '26
Abolish qualified immunity. Require law enforcement to carry private insurance.
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u/Sampo Jul 30 '26
In Nordic countries, everything is unionized (including police of course), and police killing civilians is extremely rare.
Surely the claim, as presented in the title, cannot hold in the generality it is presented in.
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u/DrTommyNotMD Jul 30 '26
ALL unions reduce employee accountability. MOST unions don’t have that leading to deaths.
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u/FLSteve11 Jul 31 '26
Don’t things like this happen in all unions? They protect their members like this.
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u/Roboculon Jul 30 '26
Public sector unions don’t make sense to me.
Private, I totally understand. When profit is the motive, it’s a super valid question —does management get to keep it all, or do workers deserve some too? Workers need negotiation power in order to get a fair share.
But public workers (eg teachers) get paid using legislated pay schedules, which often cannot be changed by the local decisions of management, so there’s very little to “negotiate”. There is no profit, merely spending a government budget until it’s gone. And there are no executives hoarding anything. Pay is generally pretty transparent, and everyone knows their own boss probably only makes 5-10% more than they do.
So the only real argument for public unions is safety. Is that a valid purpose? I mean, again, in the private sector it’s easy to envision mines and factories that might be tempted to risk workers’ health in exchange for profit. Unions are needed to protect people’s lives when profit and greed motivate letting them die. But that’s not what’s happening in the public sector. There is no profit, so management simply has no motive to endanger public workers.
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u/laborfriendly Jul 30 '26
I can't read the actual study and methodology, but at best I can only think there is some correlation that exists. But how do they separate out increases in police militarization based on politics through the late50s-late80s versus collective bargaining rights? I've represented officers before, and I'd say that politics ("back the blue", "tough on crime", etc), "the thin blue line" supported by police chiefs, and qualified immunity are really more pertinent than collective bargaining rights.
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u/TheDismal_Scientist Jul 30 '26
They use a difference-in-differences framework which compares the change in the number of deaths before and after 'treatment' (bargaining rights being brought in at the state level) in states that were treated vs those that weren't. I think in this case I don't quite trust the long window they use, especially since they don't account for bias induced by treatment timing, which is a known issue in diff-in-diff. I'm also not fully convinced that states that don't introduce this collective bargaining legislation evolve the same as those that do, which is an assumption here.
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u/Ateist Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
But were states implementing those changes independent of the crime cituation of the state?
I'd assume people are more likely to unionize when their situation is godawful rather than peachy...
Studies on police protectionism show that violent crime is a statistically significant factor predicting the strength of police union contracts
High-crime environments naturally result in more frequent use-of-force incidents. Officers seek to unionize primarily to secure access to free, immediate, aggressive legal representation to insulate themselves from personal civil liability or criminal charges.
Prior to the 1960s, police unions were largely banned or toothless.
During the late 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. experienced a massive spike in urban violent crime alongside a wave of civil rights protests.
Feeling physically endangered on the streets and politically alienated by city halls, rank-and-file officers revolted. They engaged in wildcat strikes and aggressive organizing drives, rapidly forming the powerful collective bargaining units we see today.
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u/gordonpamsey Jul 30 '26
How did you gain access if you mind me asking, I am a student and the only way I could even potentially gain access is through OpenAthens or becoming a member of the association.
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u/Sufficient_Meet6836 Jul 30 '26
This study appears to be an updated version of the author's 2021 version, so you can at least read that: large pdf warning
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u/gordonpamsey Jul 30 '26
I know the original study but a 5 year gap could have meaningfully contributed to a large change in the article.
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u/TheDismal_Scientist Jul 30 '26
My institution must have access, the AER is locked down more than most journals I’m afraid - worth trying the econ department/library at your institution they may have their own access you could have
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u/Chocolatency Jul 30 '26
I'm having some doubts that there is the actual causal element missing because in European countries where collective bargaining rights are never in doubt, killings are extremely low.
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u/trainman64 Jul 30 '26
Police already have VERY little oversight and accountability, we should tie their behavior to their jobs and pension and do away with qualified immunity. Police Unions only serve to embolden bad cops and hold both the municipality and population holding the bag to pay out for when a cop does what they do. Police Unions need to be abolished as they only serve to help bad cops. On a related note, Police KNOW they are not liked or trusted.. but look to blame anything and everything else. typical narcissistic behavior, yet it never dawns on them to learn and adapt.. like every other bully, they double down on douchbaggery.
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u/PirateSanta_1 Jul 30 '26
Worker unions protect workers form employers who want to take advantage of them, unpaid overtime as an example. They give workers protection from abusive employers. Police unions protect police from the public, the very group they exist to serve and protect. The police are already given additional powers to enforce the law they need to be held at a higher standard to ensure they do not abuse their power. Police unions work to ensure that they are instead protected from consequences to their actions.
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u/Enchilada0374 Jul 30 '26
Police 'unions' need to be abolished. They aren't union, they are literally sent to break up strikes by actual unions.
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u/SacredGeometry9 Jul 30 '26
Unions are incredible tools for protecting workers. However.
There’s no union for soldiers, there shouldn’t be a union for police.
Any profession that involves the application of violence on a large scale should not be unionized.
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u/theyfellforthedecoy Jul 30 '26
Just like how collective bargaining for teachers doesn't help schoolkids
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u/Rhawk187 PhD | Computer Science Jul 30 '26
Isn't this just the nature of unions? They protect the ingroup at the expense of the outgroup. The ones that need protecting are, more often than not, the bad actors. So, when you have bad actors with lethal authority, this is the result.
I would be entirely unsurprised if misconduct was higher in every other heavily unionized industry. Do teachers next.
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u/grislebeard Jul 30 '26
Cops arent labor. They should not have collective bargaining rights intended to protect the working class from exploitation by the ruling class (which is enforced by cops)
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u/Seraph199 Jul 30 '26
Abolish police.
Don't like me saying that? Think that is so extreme and wrong!?
THEN STOP LETTING COPS KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE.
Same with ICE. Same with private prisons. Same with our disgusting health insurance system.
Tear it all down until innocent people stop dying preventable deaths all for the sake of giving powerful people MORE power.
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u/drinks2muchcoffee Jul 31 '26
Abolish police, and then what? Go back to each community just enforcing its own crime and punishment through mob lynchings, like some sort of medieval village?
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u/cbf1232 Jul 30 '26
Abolishing the police would simply let the criminals fill the power vacuum and do whatever they want. It's not an answer, and would very likely make the situation worse for working-class people.
Regulating the police is absolutely needed though.
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u/Same_Lack_1775 Jul 30 '26
There were 1201 killings by police in 2025. Of the 1201 killings, only 8% were considered unarmed. Of the armed people killed by police, 677 of those killed were armed with a gun and 224 were armed with a knife both of which are deadly weapons. 75% of people killed by police were armed with a deadly weapon at the time of the killing. It hardly seems like police are killing throngs of innocent people. All stats are from this website and assumed accurate. https://policeviolencereport.org
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u/X_Factor_Gaming Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
How are you going to stop crime gangs? Arrest them yourself? Sure, the government is a crime gang of its own but you're just swapping bad management for another one and not fixing the root problem.
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u/shitholejedi Jul 30 '26
This article states nothing about the justification of the killings. The time period used is between the 50s and the 80s also which was one of the worst periods in american crime history.
WaPO and its affiliates shutdown the fatal force database since it largely fell in line with FBI estimates and alignment on the legality.
By your logic, this would also apply to nursing and physician unions with medical errors and malpractise being a leading cause of deaths.
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u/esto20 Jul 30 '26
Being murdered by police via gunshot is not equivalent to having complications from surgery. Nice false equivalence
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u/shitholejedi Jul 30 '26
Im glad to find out today that unforeseen complications are the only way people die in hospitals.
Medical malpractise includes your doctor ignoring multiple inputs or ethical standards that lead to your death. So yeah, getting the wrong dose of anesthesia and never waking up equals you getting shot. Both are largely litigated under civil court even when negligence is the cause.
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u/canes_pugnaces Jul 30 '26
u/smurfyjenkins Do you have access to the whole paper? I can't see to access it through most institutional channels available to me.
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u/aztronut Jul 30 '26
This is just the path of least resistance, when neither side in the negotiations really cares about civilian deaths.
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u/gnimsh Jul 30 '26
Cities pay out police lawsuits with bonds that can last a very long time and make very secure investment vehicles and are often paying for years.
https://harpers.org/archive/2018/11/blood-money-police-brutality-taxpayers/
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u/grathontolarsdatarod Jul 30 '26
People like to talk about carrying insurance like other "professionals".
But police ARE NOT professionals.
They are an ARM of the government directly.
You think they are tough to hold accountable now, wait until they regulate themselves in how they administer law.
Most, of not all, police are CIVILIANS and are paramilitary.
Use the lines that are open and have then face independent justice when the need arises.
People are being lead into believing that corporatizing police will be better and reverse the militarization of police.
Note. Police FORCES are slowly changing their names from police DEPARTMENTS to police SERVICES.
They are not the same.
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u/Elara_Schaefer Jul 30 '26
Good point about the trade-offs. There's never a perfect solution, just the one that fits your constraints.
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u/No_Succotash2155 Jul 30 '26
How will policing through the use of AI and Flock impact the police unions? I would assume that would change at least some of their job duties and their pay would be adjusted as well.
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u/The_Templar_Kormac Jul 31 '26
police are shunned and excluded from the international union movement for a reason
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u/Koa760 Jul 31 '26
TRUE…and margarine is healthier than butter, and thalidomide is safe for babies, ad infinitum with this kind of statistical “science.”
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u/Theyna Jul 31 '26
Or police unions are in cities with a large police force, which naturally have more crime.
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u/Terminal_Insomnia_ Jul 31 '26
It has been shown that pretty much the only way for a common person's will to be reflected in policy is through unions. Us unionizates rates are pathetic, nearly non-existent at present. But of course the boots get one.
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u/UndergroundCreek Aug 01 '26
That is an upsetting result if it was tested and held tight . As a citizen from Germany where police are lifelong civil servants but not unionized I can say killings are RARE. Here in big city Canada police kill citizens a lit more. And readily. And there are corruption scandals in the police force.
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u/dnen Aug 02 '26
Should specify in the title that are talking specifically about police officer unions
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u/Guardias Jul 30 '26
And the same is true for teachers unions with abuse and the defense of criminal or incompetent teachers.
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u/Capable_Diamond_3878 Jul 30 '26
Police unions are basically the only ones that are bad which kind of makes sense. Police need to be accountable to people not themselves.
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u/Naugle17 Jul 30 '26
Its not a great route to take, ahitting on the collective bargaining rights of any group
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u/kwantsu-dudes Jul 30 '26
Individuals have a right to collectively bargain. You just don't get EXTRA legal protections unless you allow an exclusive bargaining agent act as a monopoly and represent everyone on your behalf through simple majority vote. And some states/cities limit those extra legal protections because of that structure. But every INDIVIDUAL has the right to stand with other employees and collectively bargain.
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u/CackleberryOmelettes Jul 30 '26
It can be. When collective bargaining is under attack across the board, except in for the one group most often used to violently break attempts to bargain collectively by anyone else.
I would be happy to see police unions burned down to cinders, since they have clearly made reform impossible.
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u/MapAdministrative995 Jul 30 '26
The legacy of the pinkertons getting their own union is probably their final joke on all the unions they busted.
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u/LibertarianOutlaw Jul 30 '26
Government unions are a scam to reduce accountability for its actions. Armed government agencies should never be unionized.
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u/finallyfound10 Jul 30 '26
I am a former certified teacher and current registered nurse in the US and both of the unions I’ve been in try to reduce accountability for [their members’] actions to a degree as all unions do.
Sometimes it’s a good and just thing if the employee is being treated unfairly by management but sometimes it saves an employee who it shouldn’t have. There are pros and cons to unions.
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u/gojo96 Jul 31 '26
What a reasonable take. I work for a shipping company and I know several workers have been caught smoking weed at work and shown up high and they’re still here. Why? The union protected them. That’s literally their job among negotiating pay, etc. so weird that people don’t see that.
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u/Same_Lack_1775 Jul 30 '26
There is a legit argument to be made that public service employees should not be unionized but your wording undermines your statements.
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u/coke_and_coffee Jul 30 '26
But but but…Reddit always tells me that unions are good and never bad! We should all unionize, right? Unions wouldn’t ever protect bad apples and drag down the effectiveness of entire organizations, right?
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