Police officers are supposed to protect us, yet why is this not the case for every citizen? By examining the evident double standards, unethical consequences, and a broken policing system, it will become clear that police unions are doing more harm than good in the existing conditions.

Police unions, like all other unions, were created with the intent of protecting workers. The main purpose of labor unions is to give workers the power to negotiate for more favorable working conditions and other benefits through collective bargaining. Although this type of insurance is important, we must ask ourselves what are we really protecting these officers from? In the tragic case of Freddie Gray, a 25 year old African American man died in the custody of police, while being detained for possession of a (legal) knife. The police officer in charge of this brutal detention was aquitted, eye witnesses were dismissed, and the investigation was rigorously monitored under Baltimore city’s strict police union contract, (McDonell-Parry & Barron, 2017). In this unfortunate yet frequent scenario, it seems the only thing that was being protected were the rights of a guilty officer. Police union contracts have the authority to limit not only how officers are disciplined, but also how they are investigated. Officers are often given days before making public appearances after an incident like Gray’s occurs, and end up shielded from consequences of their unjust actions. As author and state prosecutor Paul Butler writes, “In a democracy an accused ‘thug’ should not get more rights just because he wears a badge and a gun.” If this statement is correct, why are we holding these officers to such an extreme double standard?

Something alarming we must take into account is the fact that a lack of pertinent consequences actually incentivizes police officers to get away with even more misconduct, by giving the officers the notion that they can get away with whatever they want. This is inevitably going to increase police brutality, and other forms of unethical law enforcement against civilians. This type of unlawful behavior has already been exhibited in Florida, when officers unionized and violent incident claims increased by 45%. (Mary Fan, The Power of Police Unions). Furthermore, due to America’s systemically racist climate, racist profiling, and offensive police training techniques, we can’t ignore the immense impact this wrongful behavior has preeminently on communities of colour and/or low socio-economic status. This constitutes a severe divide between law enforcers and citizens - which is particularly problematic when you consider the fact that impoverished and urban communities are often at the front end of violent crimes (as examined in the American Psychological Association). In areas where help from officers is vital, we can see that relationships are being critically strained. Police unions are currently incentivizing and providing an avenue for racially targeted offences, no doubtably adding to the modern-day-slavery equivalent that mass incarceration of people of colour has come to.

This article isn’t anti union, but rather, anti union in a climate that isn’t able to afford the risks of protecting guilty officers. You see, police unions simply do not work with the way police officers are currently trained. According to the 2015 Police Executive Research Forum, The San Diego police departments spent over 100 hours teaching weapon handling, but only 8 hours of conflict de-escalation. This type of offensive training is one of the biggest reasons as to why we see so many innocent people being killed, and as long as unions are protecting this behavior, there will never be justice. We cannot negate the underlying fact that in order for police unions to ever be effective and beneficial to society, there would have to be a completely different set of ways officers police and are trained. Presently, police unions don’t work in their climate, and are simply highlighting the faults of the American justice system, further proving the dire state America is in for reform. Until that is reached, police unions will continue to divide communities, and “Innocent Teenager Fatally Shot” will be nothing more than a regular Sunday paper headline.