Vanity Fair September 2020 pp130-133 & 144 “BLUE BLOODS” “POLICE UNIONS are more fraternal brotherhood than labor group-which puts them squarely at odds with solidarity” by Eve L. Ewing
John Evans. Photo from moveon.org
Summary
Police unions are a topic that those of us outside law enforcement seldom ponder. Most of us, of earlier generations-boomers and before, have some recollection of unions-pickets, scabs-those crossing work-stoppage picket lines and police enforcing at least right-of-way or more in these encounters. Workers getting clubbed etc.
Today, we are probably more familiar with teacher’s unions, resisting changes to public school operations and administration, than either old-time workers unions or police “unions.” The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), 330,000 members strong within 2,100 lodges, point-of-view is that police enforce right-to-work and as such police can’t be part of a union. Having said that, police nonetheless seek the benefits of collective bargaining and more. Like unions, the FOP and related groups, strive to protect police officers from any real or perceived mistreatment in the line-of-duty. Further, they explicitly demand they can only enforce laws given immunity from prosecution. If they violate laws, rules and regulations in the line-of-duty so be it.
United we stand, divide we fall. According to John Evans (President of the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association), “This is a brotherhood. It abides no law but its own. It scorns the personhood of all but its own brethren. It derides all creatures outside of its own clan.”
Unions by contrast seek solidarity “to protect the rights, and the labor movement is supposed to protect the rights, of all working people…and the point is lifting up all working people” notes Sheri Davis-Faulkner (Center for Innovation in Worker Organization in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University).
Delving into the origins of American policing, some believe that policing stems back to slave patrols that worked to ensure that emancipated slaves were still tied to white employers. Davis-Faulkner adds that police unions don’t promote solidarity “because doing so would require then to confront ‘the infrastructure built for them to be policing Black bodies and protecting White communities'.”
With this brotherhood or clan in mind, it’s easier to understand their willingness to readily articulate an alternate reality. Remember the 75 YO-male DC protestor that was pushed to the ground by the police (BTW a police unit from Buffalo NY). The early police reports were "he tripped and fell" but video released-later clearly-showed an officer pushing this elderly man into a subsequent fall. Some, like philosopher Jason Stanley, see beyond even this simple side-stepping of reality. Stanley opines “Part of what fascist politics does is get people to disassociate from reality”. “In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt argues that such politics craft an alternate universe-an unreality.” The author of this article, Eve L. Ewing concludes, …”the brotherhood has a fidelity only for itself. This is the unreality of the brotherhood, And, as long as police are endowed with near-absolute state-sanctioned power, it is our unreality, We live behind its gates.”