Blood On Their Hands: The Racist History of Police Unions
Flint Taylor
January 14, 2015
Working In These Times
The NYPD police officers union's outrageous assertion that New York
Mayor Bill de Blasio had “blood on his hands” in the murder of the two
NYPD officers, is consistent with the reactionary role of police unions,
which came to prominence in the wake of the civil rights movement.
Police unions have played a powerful role in resisting all manner of
police reforms, and in defending police officers, no matter how
outrageous and racist their actions.
Police unions have always played a powerful role in defending cops—no
matter how brutal and racist their actions. , Ben Musseig / Flickr ,
Outraged by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s statements concerning
the killing of Eric Garner, Patrick Lynch, the longtime leader of the
New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA), the NYPD’s
officers union, recently made the outrageous assertion that the Mayor
had “blood on his hands” for the murder of the two NYPD officers.
In Milwaukee this past fall, the Police Association called for, and
obtained, a vote of no confidence in MPD Chief Ed Flynn after he fired
the officer who shot and killed Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed African
American; subsequently, the union’s leader, Mike Crivello, praised the
District Attorney when he announced that he would not bring charges
against the officer.
In Chicago, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a longtime supporter of
racist police torturer Jon Burge, is now seeking to circumvent court
orders that preserve and make public the police misconduct files of
repeater cops such as Burge, by seeking to enforce a police contract
provision that calls for the destruction of the files after seven years.
And in a show of solidarity with the killer of Michael Brown,
Chicago’s FOP is soliciting contributions to the Darren Wilson defense
fund on its website.
Such reactionary actions by police unions are not new, but are a
fundamental component of their history, particularly since they came to
prominence in the wake of the civil rights movement. These organizations
have played a powerful role in defending the police, no matter how
outrageous and racist their actions, and in resisting all manner of
police reforms.
New York
In June 1966, New York City Mayor John Lindsay, responding to widespread
complaints of police brutality, called for a civilian review board.
Five thousand off duty NYPD cops rallied at City Hall in opposition, and
the head of the PBA, leading the campaign against civilian review,
intoned that “I am sick and tired of giving in to minority groups, with
their whims and their gripes and shouting. Any review board with
civilians on it is detrimental to the operations of the police
department.” Invoking the specter of increased crime, the PBA mounted a
massive public relations campaign against the measure, and it was
defeated in a referendum that year.
In 1975, in response to proposed budget cuts that included police
layoffs, the PBA ordered a rampage through the city’s black and Puerto
Rican communities, with thousands of off duty cops waving their guns,
banging on trash cans, and blowing whistles for several nights until
Mayor Abe Beame obtained a restraining order.
Ten years later, after Mayor Ed Koch revived the issue of civilian
review in the wake of a white cop killing Eleanor Bumpurs, an elderly
and mentally ill black woman, the PBA again condemned the idea, staged a
work slowdown in response to the attempted prosecution of the officer,
Stephen Sullivan, and pressured Koch into reinstating Sullivan even
though he had been criminally charged with the killing.
In 1992, when David Dinkins, the first (and only) African-American Mayor
of New York City sought to implement a civilian review agency to
investigate allegations of police misconduct, the PBA organized another
City Hall rally in protest. This time, the crowd of officers numbered
10,000, with PBA members hurtling barricades, jumping on cars, blocking
the Brooklyn Bridge and kicking a reporter. Some of the rally’s
participants carried signs showing Dinkins with a bushy Afro haircut and
swollen lips, with racist slogans, including ones that ridiculed him as
a “washroom attendant.”
In the mid-1990s, the independent Mollen Commission, appointed by Mayor
Dinkins to investigate police corruption, documented widespread police
perjury, brutality, drug dealing and theft in the NYPD, and found that
“by advising its members against cooperating with law-enforcement
authorities, the P.B.A. often acts as a shelter for and protector of the
corrupt cop." These findings were seconded by senior NYPD officials and
prosecutors who were quoted by the New York Times as saying that they
would continue to “have trouble rooting out substantial numbers of
corrupt officers as long as the P.B.A. resists them."
The Times further quoted these officials as complaining that the PBA,
“fortified with millions of dollars in annual dues collections . . . is
one of the most powerful unions in the city. As an active lobbyist in
Albany and as a contributor to political campaigns, the P.B.A. has
enormous influence over the department and is typically brought in for
consultations before important management decisions are made."
In the Abner Louima case, the PBA’s role extended beyond reactionary
advocacy and agitation to active participation in a conspiracy to
cover-up the brutal crimes of its members. In 1997, an NYPD officer
sexually assaulted Louima in a Precinct Station bathroom by violently
shoving a broken broomstick into his rectum. His attacker and three of
his police accomplices were charged with criminal civil rights offenses.
Evidence in the criminal proceedings revealed that a PBA official had
chaired an early meeting with the implicated officers, one of whom was a
PBA delegate, at which they fabricated a false story designed to
exonerate one of the conspirators. Even after the officers were
convicted, the PBA continued to defend the officers, both publicly and
with financial support, and to advocate for them with their fabricated
version of events—with none other than Patrick Lynch claiming that
“people with a political agenda have fanned the flames of this
incident,” leading to an “innocent man . . . being punished beyond
belief.”
More recently, Lynch and the PBA, together with the NYPD sergeants and
captains associations, after condemning Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin’s
order that sharply limited the NYPD’s discriminatory stop and frisk
policies, unsuccessfully sought to appeal her order after Mayor de
Blasio made good on his campaign promise not to appeal.
And this past year, confronted with another indefensible case of NYPD
violence, PBA President Lynch again went on the offensive. In August,
after the medical examiner determined that Eric Garner’s death at the
hands of officer Daniel Pantaleo was a homicide by means of a chokehold,
Lynch declared that the examiner was “mistaken” in finding that the
death was a homicide, and that he had “never seen a document that was
more political than that press release by the [medical examiner].”
In a classic case of doubletalk, he further asserted that it was “not a
chokehold. It was bringing a person to the ground the way we're trained
to do to place him under arrest." He chastised Mayor de Blasio for not
“support[ing] New York City police officers unequivocally.”
In December, Lynch praised the Staten Island Grand Jury’s decision not
to charge Panteleo, while accusing Garner of resisting arrest, brushing
off two police misconduct lawsuits—one for sexual assault during a
search— brought against Panteleo and idolizing him as “literally an
Eagle Scout,” a “model” cop, and “mature, mature” officer.
And once again, the PBA unleashed a work slowdown in further protest of Mayor de Blasio that lasted several weeks.
Chicago
In Chicago, the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents CPD patrol officers, has a similarly notorious history.
Handmaiden to the rioting cops who indiscriminately and brutally beat
demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention, the FOP held a reunion
of their 1968 troops in 2009 at the FOP Lodge. They proudly displayed
pictures of some of the wanton police brutality on their website and, in
an attempt to rewrite history (and the Walker Report's findings of a
“police riot”), trumpeted that “the time has come that the Chicago
Police be honored and recognized for their contributions to maintaining
law and order—and for taking a stand against Anarchy. … The Democratic
National Convention was about to start and the only thing that stood
between Marxist street thugs and public order was a thin blue line of
dedicated, tough Chicago police officers.”
In the 1970s and 1980s, the FOP, demonstrating its reactionary and
racist essence within its own ranks, aligned itself against the forces
that were fighting to bring affirmative action to the CPD. The Afro
American Patrolman’s League led the battle and was confronted in their
legal struggle at every turn by disgruntled white officers and the FOP.
In 1990, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution that declared
December 4
“Fred Hampton Day.” On December 4, 1969, Hampton, a dynamic young Black
Panther Party leader, was slain in his bed by Chicago police in what,
by 1990, had been documented and widely accepted in the African-American
community as a politically motivated murder. Surprisingly, Mayor
Richard M. Daley did not oppose the resolution. But the FOP most
certainly did.
FOP President John Dineen launched a lobbying campaign to repeal the
resolution, publicly belittled the BPP’s service programs and slandered
Hampton, who was considered to be a martyr by many African Americans and
activists, as a person who "dedicated his life to killing the pigs."
History repeated itself in 2006 when, after the City Council unanimously
voted to rename the block where Hampton was murdered “Chairman Fred
Hampton Way,” FOP President Mark Donahue organized the families of slain
CPD officers to lobby for its rescission, while publicly voicing his
cop membership’s “outrage” and “disbelief” at the decision.
In the early 1990s, the FOP began its campaign— which it continues to
pursue to this day—of defending Jon Burge and his fellow police
torturers. In November 1991, the emerging evidence of a pattern of
police torture by Burge and his cadre of all-too-willing enforcers
compelled the City of Chicago to initiate administrative proceedings
before the Chicago Police Board in order to fire Burge and two of his
co-conspirators for the brutal electric shock torture of Andrew Wilson.
Since the city was no longer financing the torturers’ defense, as it had
in the civil rights damages case brought by Wilson, the FOP stepped up
and gladly assumed responsibility.
The FOP and its spin-off organization, the Burge-O’Hara-Yucaitis Family
Fund Committee (BOY), then set out on a campaign that sought not only to
raise money for the defense, but also to viciously attack Burge’s
victims and the lawyers from the People’s Law Office, (including myself)
who had brought much of the damning evidence to light. They falsely
accused us of fabricating the evidence of systemic torture and of making
millions from exposing the scandal. They also organized a raucous
fundraiser at a local union hall where Burge was lionized by thousands
of cops and prosecutors.
After a six-week evidentiary hearing, the Police Board fired Burge and
suspended one of the other charged officers. Dineen called the decision a
“travesty of justice,” and only weeks later the FOP announced that it
intended to enter a float honoring Burge and his compatriots in the
annual South Side Irish Parade—a parade in which Chicago Mayors and
numerous other politicians regularly marched. The public outrage and
cries of racism that followed the FOP’s announcement were swift and
strong, and the FOP was forced to withdraw the float.
A few years later a federal judge, quoting Martin Luther King’s “Letter
from a Birmingham Jail,” ordered that a number of police files that
documented the systemic nature of the torture “with all its pus flowing
ugliness” be released “to the natural medicines of air and light.” The
FOP intervened in the suit, seeking to overturn the order, and continued
to pursue its battle to suppress the files with an unsuccessful appeal.
In 2008, the FOP again became actively involved in defending Burge after
he was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice for lying under
oath about whether he tortured African-American suspects. The FOP Board,
without putting it to a vote of its membership, pushed through a
resolution to pay for Burge’s lawyers in the criminal case.
Defending its decision, FOP President Mark Donahue asserted that Burge,
despite the more than 100 documented cases of torture that had been
amassed against him over the years, had been unfairly tarnished by
allegations from criminals, and that politicians and lawyers for Burge’s
victims had fueled a media hysteria which "caused Jon Burge to be the
'poster child' of alleged police torture in this city for an entire
generation." Invoking what can be described as the FOP’s unrepentant
motto, Donahue vowed that it "will stand with the police officer every
time." A group of African-American officers unsuccessfully challenged
the decision in Court, stating, “We do not support torture. We do not
condone torture. We do not embrace torture. We will never support that
type of behavior on the department.”
In 2011, Burge, despite his high-priced FOP-financed defense, was
convicted of three felonies and sentenced to four-and-a-half years in
federal prison. Nonetheless, the Police Pension Board, which was
comprised of four former or present CPD officers and four civilians,
voted 4-4 on the question of whether Burge should be stripped of his
pension, which he had been receiving since 1997. By law, the tie was
resolved in pensioner Burge’s favor.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed suit, seeking to reverse
the decision, and the FOP defended the ruling, with an FOP-financed
private lawyer arguing on behalf of Burge. The case was appealed all the
way to the Illinois Supreme Court, which, in a 4-3 decision this past
summer, ruled in favor of Burge and the Pension Board.
This appalling history is not limited to New York, Chicago or Milwaukee
by any means. Other notable examples include Detroit in the mid-1970s,
where the Detroit Police Officers Association challenged police reforms
and affirmative action initiatives which sought to stem rampant police
brutality against African Americans with a lawsuit; after it lost its
case, it orchestrated a police riot.
In Los Angeles in the early 1990s, African-American Mayor Tom Bradley
condemned the state court jury verdict which absolved LAPD officers of
criminal charges for brutally beating Rodney King, by stating that the
verdict “will never blind us to what we saw on that videotape,” and
further stated that “the men who beat Rodney King do not deserve to wear
the uniform of the LAPD.” In response, the L.A. Police Protective
League reacted with a vengeance that, according to Police Chief Richard
Riordan, lasted for years.
And more recently, in Seattle, the Police Officers’ Guild mounted a
verbal attack on then-Mayor Michael McGinn after he stated, in response
to the shooting of a Native American word-carver, that the Seattle
police force had no place for officers who did not share his commitment
to racial justice.
Whether unions which represent police officers, correctional guards and
other law enforcement officers are the same kind of workers’
organizations as other unions, which can potentially be used to further
the interests of the working class as a whole, has been vigorously
contested by many progressives and leftists over the years. But the
disturbing history of these powerful organizations makes it very clear
that they mirror and reinforce the most racist, brutal and reactionary
elements within the departments they claim to represent and actively
encourage the code of silence within those departments. They are far
from democratic, with officers of color and women having little or no
influence.
In truth, police unions further the-all-too-accurate conception that the
police are an occupying force in poor communities of color, and are
antithetical in principle and action to the progressive principles of
the labor movement.
[Flint Taylor is a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in
Chicago. He is one of the lawyers for the families of slain Black
Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and together with his law
partner Jeffrey Haas was trial counsel in the marathon 1976 civil trial.
He has also represented many survivors of Chicago police torture, and
has done battle with the Chicago Police Department—and the Fraternal
Order of Police—on numerous occasions over his 45 year career as a
people’s lawyer.]
http://portside.org/2015-01-17/blood-their-hands-racist-history-police-unions
of students by excessively using mace and pepper spray as a form of
discipline. According to Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Ebony
Howard, about 300 high school students have been sprayed with harmful
chemicals since 2006. Howard told The Huffington Post at least 1,250
students were likely indirectly exposed to these chemicals over the
years.
