Want to Stop the Shooting of Innocent Police Officers? Rein In Police Unions
They insulate the worst offenders from accountability, breeding frustration and resentment
Whether the spate of acquittals of police officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray – the Baltimore kid who was killed during what seems to the naked eye like a "rough ride" in a police van –
are justified may be debatable. But what is not debatable is the awesome powers of police unions that make such acquittals, even of guilty officers, more likely.
Indeed, in the last two weeks, the country has been wreaked in a horrific cycle of violence with police officers shooting innocent black men in Louisiana and Minnesota and black men shooting innocent police officers in Dallas and Louisiana.
President Obama blames this spiral on everything under the sun from excessive guns to underinvestment in minority schools. Donald Trump, a master of tautology, blames it on the breakdown of "law and order" in inner cities.
Both are evading one of the main causes: "Hidebound police unions that block elementary transparency and public accountability at every level," I note this morning in The Week. "Yet it is inconceivable that any profession that has managed to so insulate itself from elementary checks and balances isn't rife with abuse. And if that's the case, then it would be a miracle for the most vulnerable communities to not be disproportionately affected. That is just how the world works."
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