4 ms·

> That's the thing I don't get and that is the most upsetting thing to me about this situation: why aren't police officers speaking out more against each other?

• jahaja 6y ago
  Loyalty rather.
  • Kalium 6y ago
    I'm sorry to say, I chose that word quite specifically. I don't mean loyalty. I mean solidarity.
    • jahaja 6y ago
      If so, it seems to me to be a perversion of solidarity to be loyal to blatant injustice.
      • Kalium 6y ago
        They don't see it as injustice. They see it as protecting workers against management, as solidarity between one another. The rest of us just happen to call that accountability.
• heavyset_go 6y ago
  Other professional groups that practice solidarity often have review and ethics boards that are, in general, quick to denounce bad actors and strip them of their ability to continue harming others. I can't remember the last time that a doctor or lawyer blatantly murdered someone on tape and had their peers go up to bat for them about how they're actually the victim and did nothing wrong. When it comes to law enforcement and correctional officers, I can find a dozen of such instances from the last 12 months alone.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Other professional groups that practice solidarity often have review and ethics boards that are, in general, quick to denounce bad actors and strip them of their continue harming others. While professional groups are often mistakenly analogized to labor unions, they aren't and have very different functions. Professionals in organized professions like law or medicine may also be in labor unions (this is unusual in the US outside of the public sector), but the labor union and the professional organizations aren't interchangeable.
    • heavyset_go 6y ago
      When was the last time a union carpenter, welder, electrician, or engineer was caught on camera murdering someone, and their peers went up to bat for them explaining how they were really the victim, and they did nothing wrong? When an engineer's structure causes injury or loss of life, it is studied and taken very seriously. Liability falls on both the engineer and their employer, if there is one. Blatant negligence means the removal of licenses or the ability to practice in the field they're licensed in, along with civil lawsuits or even criminal charges. When a cop causes injury or loss of life, the entire system tries to brush it under the rug completely, and learn nothing from it. Then their peers go up to bat for them explaining how they're being unfairly persecuted and that they did nothing wrong. Cops are often shielded from civil and criminal liability for abuses that other professionals would end up in prison for. Trying to place the blame on unions is pretty far-fetched, and you're speaking to someone who is against the idea of police unions in particular.
      • Kalium 6y ago
        It may be worth bearing in mind that one thing police union contracts can and do win as a concession is cities taking on civil liability and paying for legal defenses. The whole system is set up to dismiss and ignore poor behavior because those are the grievance-handling processes designed by police and enshrined in union contracts to serve that purpose. Police unions have played a major role in protecting union members from management. Or as we call it elsewhere in politics, accountability. I'm not saying solidarity is bad. I'm saying it's a tool that police unions have weaponized against the general public.