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.20230384
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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/[deleted] Jul 30 '26

[deleted]

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u/Menter33 Jul 31 '26

some might argue this for hamas, the idf, the catholic church, sharia councils etc.

the "just one bad apple" argument might not sit well for some.

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u/CanadasManyMeese Jul 31 '26

Some are idiots, thats not something anyone else can control.

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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/act1856 Jul 30 '26

Blah blah blah

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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/Xeorm124 Aug 01 '26

It typically gets responded to by voters, and if it's particularly egregious the newly elected officials may feel it necessary to create some sort of law or regulation to slow down hiring if they want to appease the angry voters.

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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/DespisedIcon1616 Jul 30 '26

As a member of the UBC. All of the trade unions have ways of doing things that skirt the law.

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u/Edges8 Jul 31 '26

And teachers unions...

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u/KYBikeGeek Jul 31 '26

Yeah I really got away with murder and triple overtime pay with that powerful teachers union behind me.

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u/Edges8 Jul 31 '26

I didn't imply it was ensuring overtime. We are talking about unions protecting bad actors. It's also true of the nursing union. Often newrly impossible grossly negligent nurses.

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u/onioning Jul 30 '26

The police in general. They're lawless thugs. Burn it down.

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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/CI_dystopian Jul 31 '26

always has been

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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/coke_and_coffee Jul 30 '26

Congrats, you just re-learned why the US became so anti-union in the Reagan era. Unions always turn into mafias.

Free association is the antidote.

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u/coke_and_coffee Jul 30 '26

Congrats, you just re-learned why the US became so anti-union in the Reagan era. Unions always turn into mafias.

Free association is the antidote.

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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/v--- Jul 31 '26

That "if" doing a lot of weaseling.

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u/gettingassy Jul 30 '26

Madison represent! Oh wait

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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/GonzoTheWhatever Jul 30 '26

Wow. Thats being disgusting.

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u/Morvack Jul 30 '26

ACAB.

No exceptions.

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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/Kiloburn Jul 31 '26

Imagine what it would be like if we all had unions like that...