Breaking Rank (48 page)

There are many other examples of union leaders (presidents and treasurers lead the pack) who steal from their brothers and sisters in blue, or from the families of fallen officers. But there are other reasons, nearer and dearer to my heart as a former police chief, to question the principles, priorities, and values of police unions throughout the land.

       
•
  
In 1993 the FBI informed the police commissioner in Buffalo, New York, that one of his narcotics officers was passing confidential information to drug dealers. Apart from the obvious moral and criminal indiscretions, this guy was endangering the lives of fellow cops. You'd think that on any of these grounds the Police Benevolent Association would support the commissioner's decision to transfer the narc (you'd also wonder why the hell the commish didn't fire the bastard). But, no. The PBA fought the decision—and won. The cop was reinstated to narcotics and awarded $18,438 in overtime he would have earned had he been allowed to remain a narc. Seven years later the cop was busted and charged with taking bribes, passing on
information on upcoming police raids, investing his own “hard-earned” cash in dope deals, stealing drugs, and setting up his son in the drug biz.

       
•
  
In the early 2000s in Boston, union leaders decided to play hardball—with their own members. In a recent round of contract negotiations they imposed a requirement on their members to picket the mayor's public appearances: five to seven hours every other month or face the loss of union-covered life insurance and dental plans, as well as scholarships, legal services, and voting rights.

       
•
  
In Los Angeles, the Oscar Joel Bryant Foundation, a five hundred-member African-American officers' group, filed suit against the Police Protective League, calling the union a “bastion of white supremacy” and alleging discrimination in training and promotions. That same union supported Mark Fuhrman, financially and emotionally, even with his virulent racism firmly established.

       
•
  
In New York City, twenty-three African-American cops have been shot and eighteen others assaulted by white officers in cases of “mistaken identity.” Not one white cop has ever been shot by a black cop. The PBA, while bemoaning these “tragic incidents,” has done nothing to help remedy the problem.

       
•
  
Pat Frantz, president of the Tacoma police officers' guild, blamed a reporter for pushing his boss (and former guild president), Chief David Brame, over the edge. Days before Brame shot and killed his wife and then himself, John Hathaway, the muckraking publisher of
The New Takhoman,
had exposed Brame's abuses. Frantz sent Hathaway an e-mail: “If you want to throw stones you had better live in a bulletproof glass house.” (He later apologized.) (See
chapter 1
.)

       
•
  
Throughout the country, including Seattle, police unions have fought citizen review panels—in any form. Where they have been established, several unions (Philadelphia, Oakland, New York, and others) have instructed their members not to cooperate, or have otherwise dragged their feet.

The river of police union duplicity and hypocrisy runs deep. Police unions rail nonstop about laws and court decisions that afford criminal defendants their constitutional guarantees of due process; yet they lobbied for, and now enjoy (throughout most of the country), various versions of
the “Police Officers Bill of Rights,” a supplementary collection of due process privileges exclusively for cops, some provisions of which have seriously handcuffed internal investigations of alleged police misconduct. State and local laws, the direct product of police union influence, bar the release of names of officers involved in misconduct and/or the outcome of internal police discipline.

I support full due process rights for all public employees, including police officers. But I can't help but choke on certain
extra
privileges: A cop suspected of wrongdoing may not be required to give IA investigators a statement for up to a week after an incident (Delaware); he or she may have the right not to be interviewed at all but instead to supply a written statement to written questions (Seattle); he or she must be informed in writing of the nature of an internal investigation prior to being questioned (almost everywhere). Try conducting a garden-variety
criminal
investigation under these procedural burdens.

The Mollen Commission, the latest in a long series of blue-ribbon groups empowered to investigate and study police corruption in New York City, noted that “police unions and fraternal organizations can do much to increase professionalism of our police officers. . . . Unfortunately, based on our observations and on information received from prosecutors, corruption investigators, and high-ranking police officials, police unions sometimes fuel the insularity that characterizes police culture.”

In order to understand how police unions foster such insularity, thus defeating organizational effectiveness and accountability to the public, it's useful to understand the unique features of the police culture itself.
*

Jerome Skolnick, author of the classic
Justice Without Trial
(1966), argues that cops become insulated from the communities they serve because of
their unique work, which consists of exercising
authority
in the face of
danger
against a backdrop of organizational “
efficiency
” (i.e., demands for the production of traffic citations, field interrogations, and arrests, and the prompt handling of 911 calls). These conditions inevitably produce
social isolation
and
in-group solidarity.
Which gives rise to a powerful, insular culture of policing. A world of
us
versus
them.

In a sense, police unions become the surrogate family for their members, with union leaders acting as Daddy. (I've never met, or even heard of, a female president of a police union, although I understand a woman constable filled in for her president while he was on annual leave from his job—in Wollongong, New South Wales.)

Insulation, isolation, alienation. It's no wonder most union leaders can't stand being questioned. They develop a pattern of brittle defensiveness, and snarky offensiveness against their “enemies,” attacking honest efforts, internal or external, to make policing more accountable to the citizens it serves. It doesn't have to be that way.

It's 1998. I've just finished fielding questions at a roll call at Seattle's South Precinct. One of the patrol officers intercepts me as I head for my car. “I don't know how you stand it, Chief.”

“What's that?”

“All that bitching and whining back there.” I have to smile.

“Have you ever known cops not to bitch and whine?”

“Yeah, yeah. But don't you get
tired
of it? And all that garbage in
The Guardian
?” I tell him I stopped reading the union's newspaper long ago. Month after month of articles and editorials about my positions on discipline, promotions, affirmative action, community policing, internal investigations—full of factual errors, mind-reading assertions about my “motives,” and endless innuendos. I used to read it as entertainment, some of it being so over-the-top malicious or juvenile it was downright funny. But the “humor” wore thin.

“Tell me, how many of the officers agree with those articles in
The Guardian
?”

“Honestly? I'd say maybe twenty percent. Depends on the issue, of course. If you're talking promotions, where a white male gets passed over?” He shakes his head, grimaces. “I'd say just about everybody is with the Guild on that one. Hell, I'm with the Guild on that one.”

“What about community policing?”

“We're with you there, Chief. We need to be better partners with the community, more open and so forth. And community policing really works. I think the majority of the cops are with you on just about everything you do. I really do.”

“What about discipline?”

“Sore subject with me. The Guild bends over backwards to protect assholes who should not even be wearing this uniform.”

“Aren't they just trying to protect the rights of
all
officers, you included?”

“Yeah, sure. But they carry it too far. They don't appreciate what it's like to work around a thief or even someone who's just basically a moron, you know, rude—the guys that are always picking fights. They . . . Look, you want to know why these guys get elected to the Guild board in the first place?”

“Sure.”

“To do our dirty work. We all want more money, right? More this, more that? So who do we look to, to get it for us? Guys that'll stick it to the city, that won't back down. They may be obnoxious but they'll get in there and scrap for better pay, better benefits. I'll tell you, if it looks like we're fixing to get screwed by the city on medical benefits you don't want some Mr. Goody Two Shoes on your side of the table. I mean we're talking about my family here.” He raises his eyebrows, and exhales audibly. “Shit. I guess
I'm
one of those guys that want these obnoxious assholes bargaining for us. Trouble is, it's these same guys who are dissing you and your programs.”

Trouble is? The trouble is that my ally in blue was unable to picture union leaders who could be tough, persistent, effective—and respectful. They had to be “obnoxious” to get the job done. And I, as their chief, according to his
theory, had to bear the brunt of any “spillover” effect of their take-no-prisoners belligerence.

I worked with a union president in Seattle who spent his days marinating in a stew of mistrust. He pouted, he sued, he wrote nasty columns in the union rag, he refused to meet with my African-American community advisory panel, and he resisted numerous collaborative overtures, including an open invitation for him—or any member of his board—to actually
join
my senior leadership team. I guess he was afraid of being co-opted.

If I were representing the rank and file on labor issues I'd have
jumped
at the chance to meet every morning with senior members of the department, participate in discussions of issues of mutual interest—and for the benefit of the working cop. (If nothing else, I'd have seized the opportunity to gather intelligence about what the brass was thinking, and the actions it might be contemplating.)