There are many protests in the United States right now due to the police killing George Floyd during an arrest. Many of these protesters are rightfully angry at police for racism and too much violence. However, protestors proposal to defund police is not the right course. What needs to happen instead is that police unions need to lose their certification and rights to negotiation. No public employee should be allowed to unionize. They have no counterparty to negotiate against. The politicians always take the sides of the union and give them everything they want. The taxpayer and citizen get screwed.
Police departments need to be properly funded, not overfunded or underfunded. We all want to be safe from criminals. What I’m afraid might happen with this big push to defund police departments is that the police will just throw up their hands and say watch what happens when the Purge comes to America. If crime rises and people become afraid, the police will be more powerful and entrenched than ever before.
Police unions have become so entrenched that it is impossible to get justice when a police officer does wrong. Banning police unions and discarding all of the contracts they have pursued will be what brings the police back under control of the American taxpayer. Doing this will make it much easier to prosecute and imprison the bad police officers out there.
I know of many police officers here in California who are able to retire with six-figure pensions for life. That is absolutely insane, there is no private organization that does anything remotely close to that. It’s just the police unions that have taken advantage of the taxpayer. They used fear for many years to say, “if you don’t give us what we want, then we won’t protect you.”
Police unions also hurt the good police officers. Instead of having promotions based on performance and the accomplishments of the police officer, promotions are based on tenure. So basically whoever sticks around the longest moves up the highest regardless of whether they’re any good or not.
This is our opportunity as taxpayers to harness the rightful anger about the abuse of police to break their unions up.
Police unions are the source of all of their political power. Police unions are what keep police officers who commit crimes from being prosecuted.
End police tyranny by breaking their unions.