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I think every criminal, no matter how blatantly obvious their crimes, deserves a fair trial, including competent representation at their trial. I think the Offi

by lmkg 13y ago

I think every criminal, no matter how blatantly obvious their crimes, deserves a fair trial, including competent representation at their trial. I think the Officers' Guild's obligations to their members works along similar lines. Keep in mind, the alternative is that the Guild gets to choose (to a degree) which members to defend and which to hang out to dry. Such a situation leads to a whole host of perverse incentives. The Guild could effectively abandon whistleblowers; the Guild could collude or otherwise be influenced by the Police Department; interpersonal conflicts between officers and Guild leadership/administrators could influence their decisions; etc. The Guild is a constructed entity whose sole purpose is to serve its members, by providing an organizational counterweight against the Police Department. Several of its obligations to its members ought to be treated as non-voluntary properties of its existence, in the same way that fiduciary duty is a non-voluntary obligation of a corporation to its shareholders, in order to lessen one potential avenue for corruption.

ItendToDisagree 13y ago
I'm more talking about a system where a (frequent) repeat offender is no longer defensible as a candidate for being reinstated in this sort of job. I'm not talking about a trial in a criminal sense, I more mean the union pushing back to get someone rehired, when that person seems to continue to disregard the rules applied to their occupation. For instance if you have approximately 120 allegations against him and 21 cases of sustained misconduct Should you get a 121st (or 142nd/22nd however you count) chance? I wouldn't say this is so much the guild exercising a choice, to defend or not, as them giving up on a 'habitual line stepper'. A whistle blower usually only gets 1 chance to blow the whistle (rather than 20-30) so I'd imagine that's a totally different situation for a number of reasons. Idealistic sidenote: Being that the Guild is for Police Officers, who's main purpose is to protect the public and stop crime (Ok yes the supreme court said that police are not there to 'protect and serve' but to 'enforce') shouldn't the fact that one of their members seems to be continually in trouble with the public at large concern them rather than be something they blindly have to dispute? /idealism

by lmkg 13y ago

ItendToDisagree 13y ago

I'm more talking about a system where a (frequent) repeat offender is no longer defensible as a candidate for being reinstated in this sort of job. I'm not talking about a trial in a criminal sense, I more mean the union pushing back to get someone rehired, when that person seems to continue to disregard the rules applied to their occupation. For instance if you have approximately 120 allegations against him and 21 cases of sustained misconduct Should you get a 121st (or 142nd/22nd however you count) chance? I wouldn't say this is so much the guild exercising a choice, to defend or not, as them giving up on a 'habitual line stepper'. A whistle blower usually only gets 1 chance to blow the whistle (rather than 20-30) so I'd imagine that's a totally different situation for a number of reasons. Idealistic sidenote: Being that the Guild is for Police Officers, who's main purpose is to protect the public and stop crime (Ok yes the supreme court said that police are not there to 'protect and serve' but to 'enforce') shouldn't the fact that one of their members seems to be continually in trouble with the public at large concern them rather than be something they blindly have to dispute? /idealism