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Oct 11, 20205 min read

How have police unions affected the progress of criminal justice reform?

By: Lakshmi Sunder


Labor unions have been a critical aspect of many industries in the United States by allowing workers to vy for higher wages, security, better working conditions, and much more from their employers. Some of the most prominent labor unions exist in the policy industry, where an estimated 75-80% of American police officers are in unions as of 2017. With the recent upsurge in activism for criminal justice system reform, it’s imperative that we more closely scrutinize these unions. Are they truly meant to keep the careers of police officers secure, or do they feed into a larger unjust system?


Police unions may have been started for similar reasons as most other labor unions such as demanding higher wages and the betterment of working conditions. However, since then, their goals have shifted. These days, police unions are more concerned with immunity for their officers - reducing disciplinary consequences for those that have used excessive force.


How are police unions different from other unions?


Police unions are fundamentally different from other unions. This is because police officers have inherent legal power over the general public. They have been given permission by the state to use force and violence whenever they see fit, armed with both lethal and non-lethal weapons. Thus, they are anomalies in the working world. Most workers in other industries do not have that level of power and immunity.


Police unions are heavily intertwined with politics, more so than in other unions. While most unions advocate for other worker unions, the ones in the police sector are known to advocate for politicians, private businesses and property, and lobbyists that suit their needs. Police have enforced laws that are seen as anti-union to other trade unions, and because of this, there is a divide between police unions and other unions. The AFL-CIO (the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) is the largest federation of trade unions in the country. Save for the IUPA, no police unions are part of the organization, and the IUPA makes up only 2.7% of American officers. The AFL-CIO themselves have condemned police unions for their contribution to police brutality.


Furthermore, records show that a large portion of police unions’ spending has contributed to this lobbying; for example, Los Angeles police unions have spent at least 64.8 million dollars, New York City police unions have spent 19.2 million dollars, and Chicago police unions have spent 3.5 million dollars. According to Maplight data and US Senate and House records, at a federal level, police unions have spent at least 47.3 million dollars in funding for campaigns and lobbying.


Police unions also have different political affiliations than most other unions. In 2019, the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA) had already stated that it supported Trump’s reelection, the first and only union to do so. In 2016, the Fraternal Order of Police, the country’s largest police union, and the National Border Patrol Council endorsed Trump - his only union endorsements. Every other union which made an endorsement in the 2016 election supported Clinton. Most worker unions are generally more liberal than conservative, but police unions are an exception.


How do police unions inhibit criminal justice reform?


The AFL-CIO has valid reasons to condemn police unions. That is because one of their main purposes is to limit disciplinary action against cops. Police officers already have an abnormal level of immunity in society, with concepts such as qualified immunity and the process by which those accused of excessive force or violence against are assessed and, much more often than not, unpunished. Police unions have overturned the discharge of police officers, opposed the use of body cameras on the job, and have been lobbying to keep their members’ disciplinary histories unexposed. This creates a culture of unaccountability in the police department, a career that needs more accountability than most others considering lives are directly at risk. If officers think they are immune because of unions that promote those interests, then they can be excessively forceful without fear of losing their jobs.


Police unions correlate with increased police brutality and racism because officers do not think they will be held accountable for their actions. A research paper found that after police officers formed unions between the 1950s and 1980s, there was a substantial increase in the deaths of black and brown people in the United States at the hands of police officers. Collective bargaining, a concept in labor unions in which an organized group of employees bargain with their employers for things like higher wages, has allowed for this to happen. Within a decade of gaining collective bargaining rights, officers killed 60 to 70 more civilians of all races per year collectively compared with previous years. After gaining collective bargaining rights in 2003, a working paper from the University of Chicago found that complaints of violent misconduct by Florida sheriffs’ offices went up to 40 percent. A University of Oxford study in 2018 of the 100 largest American cities found that the size of protections in police contracts was directly and positively correlated with police violence and other abuses against citizens.

Police unions are gaining more members each year. The more members unions have, the more money they can contribute towards campaigns and lawsuits that block reform - they have increased funding for practices such as lobbying. Police unions intensely protect the rights of officers accused of excessive force or misconduct, often in arbitration hearings that the unions struggle to hide from the public. Though generally more right-wing, police unions have bipartisan support because they often fund campaigns on both sides. Even liberal politicians are afraid to repel police unions because they don’t want to seem “soft on crime”. For example, in California, all but two California lawmakers received campaign donations from police unions and associations between 2011 and 2017, according to a study by Sinyangwe. Unions are less against Democrats who oppose police reform bills. In that way, police unions have political immunity, allowing them to further inhibit system change and greater accountability of officers


In the Minneapolis police department, Bob Kroll is the head of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey has stated that Kroll’s union has created a “nearly impenetrable barrier” to reform, as they do not like to see their officers held accountable. In St. Louis, a lawyer for a police union in the city legally fought to limit the prosecutor’s ability to investigate police misconduct. A leader of the police union said that prosecutor Kim Gardner should be removed either “by force or by choice”.


In recent months, police unions have been getting more negative attention than ever before. Advocates of black and brown lives are recognizing the inherent injustice in these groups, and acknowledge their restraints and retrogressions when it comes to criminal justice reform.


Discussion Questions:

  • Is it possible to curtail police unions without harming the labor union movement as a whole?

  • Is the recent upsurge in advocacy for criminal justice reform enough to challenge police unions?

  • How can we prevent police unions from lobbying and funding campaigns excessively?

  • Are police unions essential to an extent? Does the automatic immunity that police officers have mean that unions aren’t necessary?

  • How can we encourage politicians to change the culture in the police industry so that officers are held accountable for their actions?


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