A Lives Matter

Private trainers across the country host seminars, frequently at taxpayer expense, teaching “killology” and pushing the notion that if officers aren’t willing to “snuff out a life” then they should “consider another line of work.” Frey explained that this type of training — which has accompanied the increasing militarization of the police over the last few decades — undermined the community-based policing he wanted the city to adopt after a string of high-profile killings in the region.

But then the police union stepped in.

In Albuquerque, where officers have been monitored by the federal government under what’s called a consent decree after a yearslong pattern of killing its own citizens, the police union had been paying $500 to officers who’d killed someone in the line of duty.

Police unions have made important strides like raising pay, improving working conditions and instituting due process procedures. Officers in unions make almost 40% more than their nonunionized colleagues. Some unions, particularly those representing black and brown officers, have backed reforms and spoken out against what they view as bad practices. Yet a University of Chicago study found that between 1996 and 2015, newly unionized law enforcement agencies saw a 27% uptick in misconduct complaints — a phenomenon the researchers tied largely to protections afforded by union contracts.

The FOP, one of the nation’s largest police unions, swelled to 341,946 at the end of 2019, its highest total in a decade.

#alllivesmatters

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