![]() It makes it very difficult to fire or discipline officers who engage in misconduct Carl Takeiġ84 jurisdictions allow officers to review evidence against them before being interrogated.Ĥ7 agencies require expungement of police misconduct records, in some cases after as little as two years. Louisiana’s bill of rights grants officers 30 days, while Chicago officers are provided 48 hours. Nearly 90% of contracts at 178 midsize-to-large departments have at least one “problematic provision” that “could thwart legitimate disciplinary actions against officers engaged in misconduct,” Loyola policing scholar Stephen Rushin wrote in a 2017 study of contracts and police bills of rights.Īmong police-friendly provisions that Rushin and Campaign Zero, an activist group that tracks police union contracts, identified in separate analyses of over 650 departments:ġ37 police agencies prohibit investigators from interrogating officers immediately after an incident. The protections’ impact on officer accountability is documented in a growing body of empirical studies and analyses. “It makes it very difficult to fire or discipline officers who engage in misconduct.” “These tie the hands of police chiefs and others who are trying to hold police officers accountable,” said Carl Takei, an ACLU senior staff attorney focused on police practices. That then encourages the police violence that sparked the massive nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by a white police officer in Minneapolis. It all builds up to form a picture of how police contracts – which, like other labor contracts, govern the working conditions under which officers operate – have rendered police departments’ disciplinary and oversight processes ineffective as officers are rarely held accountable for wrongdoing. Those are accompanied by a startling array of other complex protections that shield officers accused of often violent misconduct from accountability. About 475 police union contracts at the nation’s largest departments hold similar arbitration provisions, according to a 2019 Loyola University study. Such protections for officers who commit crimes are not unique to Washington. A provision in the police union’s contract allowed him to appeal against the decision to a union-selected arbitrator who reversed the department’s firing and reinstated him – with back pay. But, six years later, Sugg-Edwards was back on the force. ![]()
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