TV COPS UNION DENOUNCES POLICE UNIONS

SAG-AFTRA Leaders Call On Police Unions To Change “Or Lose All Support”

David Robb
Deadline June 11, 2020


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SAG-AFTRA leaders today called upon police unions to change with the times “or lose all support from their fellow labor organizations and the public at large.”

In a joint statement, SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris and national executive director David White said: “We support convening a meeting of affiliate unions, including law enforcement unions, to discuss police reforms and necessary systemic change. We support working directly with affiliated police unions to achieve meaningful changes to the law enforcement culture of discrimination and brutality.”
Many critics believe that police union rules often prevent bad cops from being fired, and Carteris, who is a vice president of the AFL-CIO, said she presented several recommendations to its committees last week They include an expression of support for Black Lives Matter; a call for “all affiliate members of the AFL-CIO to explicitly and loudly demand that police unions disavow those officers who target black people”; and convening “all parts of the labor movement, including non-affiliated unions, to issue a public statement condemning racial injustice.”

Carteris and White stopped short of joining the WGA East in calling for the AFL-CIO to disaffiliate with the International Union of Police Associations, a labor organization that represents more than 100,000 police officers around the country.

WGA East Calls On AFL-CIO To Give Police Union The Boot

In their statement, Carteris and White also urged police unions to “dismantle the structures they have erected that have been used to protect officers who engage in racially targeted violence, racial profiling, and other racist and unlawful conduct towards Black and other citizens of this country. This includes all steps necessary to change collective bargaining agreement provisions, and other practices and protocols that stand in the way of police departments being strong defenders of all people as opposed to tools of oppression against Black people.”

They also noted that “As a labor union representing members and staff who have been personally and directly affected by police violence, we recognize the simplicity and simultaneous complexity of the challenges facing police unions at this time in our nation’s history.”
Here is the full statement from SAG-AFTRA’s Carteris and White:

As a labor union representing members and staff who have been personally and directly affected by police violence, we recognize the simplicity and simultaneous complexity of the challenges facing police unions at this time in our nation’s history. Accordingly, we assert the following:

Black Lives Matter.

We reject and denounce police brutality and the corrupt systems that for decades supported a culture of racism, injustice and brutality. We stand in solidarity with all who have experienced injustice and violence at the hands of law enforcement. Police organizations must change.

Real change is more than just talk. It is action. We call for real change and we are willing to work for it and fight for it.

Police Unions Must Confront Those Structures that Facilitate Racist, Unlawful Misconduct.

Last week, President Carteris, who is also a vice president of the AFL-CIO, presented several recommendations to its committees.

President Carteris’ recommendations were: 1) express public support for Black Lives Matter, 2) call upon all affiliate members of the AFL-CIO to explicitly and loudly demand that police unions disavow those officers who target Black people, and 3) bring together all parts of the labor movement, including non-affiliated unions, to issue a public statement condemning racial injustice.

To these recommendations we now add a fourth: police unions must dismantle the structures they have erected that have been used to protect officers who engage in racially targeted violence, racial profiling, and other racist and unlawful conduct towards Black and other citizens of this country. This includes all steps necessary to change collective bargaining agreement provisions, and other practices and protocols that stand in the way of police departments being strong defenders of all people as opposed to tools of oppression against Black people.

We Support Policing with Integrity. These Concepts are Not Inconsistent.

e recognize those brothers and sisters who are police officers and who work lawfully and tirelessly to serve us and protect us from harm. We do not believe that this demand for change in unions is inconsistent with celebrating police officers who do their work with integrity. We know from experience that unions do, and must, confront their problems, learn from their mistakes and evolve into better organizations and representatives of working people.

We believe that we have an opportunity to make tomorrow better than today. We call upon police unions to seize this opportunity and reform their culture and practice. Black lives matter and our police must support this truth in all ways.

Tomorrow Can Be Better Than Today. We are Prepared to Participate.

We support convening a meeting of affiliate unions, including law enforcement unions, to discuss police reforms and necessary systemic change. We support working directly with affiliated police unions to achieve meaningful changes to the law enforcement culture of discrimination and brutality.

We call on police unions to seize this opportunity. They must rise to the occasion or lose all support from their fellow labor organizations and the public at large.

Police Unions are Losing the War on Criminal Justice Reform

Law enforcement organizations have long treated mass incarceration as a job creation program. In 2020, the tide began turning against them.

November 11, 2020 Jay Willis THE APPEAL 


Law enforcement organizations have long treated mass incarceration as a job creation program. In 2020, the tide began turning against them.

This commentary is part of The Appeal’s collection of opinion and analysis.

Law enforcement unions are maybe the most powerful force in politics that most voters never think twice about. By quietly dumping millions of dollars in key prosecutor elections and ballot initiative fights, these organizations manage to affect everything in the criminal legal system’s orbit, usually while flying well beneath the political radar. Police unions are sort of like gravity, if gravity played a significant role in enabling agents of the state to systematically terrorize communities of color without facing meaningful consequences.

In races that take place outside the quadrennial spending bonanzas for control of the White House, these strategic allocations of time and outlays of resources can be decisive in elections, especially since no cohesive pro-reform interest group exists to counteract their influence. (Tight-knit, well-organized police unions can coordinate in ways that the larger but more heterogenous and dispersed coalition of people who favor criminal justice reform cannot.) One recent study found that law enforcement groups have spent about $87 million in local and state elections over the past 20 years, including almost $65 million in Los Angeles alone. At the federal level, their recent campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures approach $50 million, according to The Guardian.

Such expenditures are savvy investments for police unions, who keenly understand the value of having sympathetic friends in high places. Because prosecutors work so closely with police, they have a strong incentive to develop a friendly relationship with rank-and-file officers, even if earning that trust comes at the price of turning a blind eye to abuse: It is not a coincidence that researchers have tracked the rise of police unions to an increase in on-the-job police killings. In a country where law-and-order rhetoric is deeply embedded in the cultural zeitgeist, if you’re a prosecutor intent on keeping your job, filing charges against the badge-wearing hand that feeds might not feel worth the retaliatory smear campaign that will inevitably follow.

In recent years, however—and especially as a result of the sustained protests of police violence in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis—people have grown more attuned to how these organizations bend the criminal legal system to their will and stymie efforts to reform it. A growing number of elected officials have pledged to refuse the support of law enforcement organizations; in California, a coalition of reform-minded prosecutors has been lobbying for a state bar ethics rule that would prohibit DAs from accepting donations from these sources altogether, arguing that prosecutors cannot ethically prosecute police officers if they are receiving the support of their unions.

“The ties that bind elected officials to police unions must be broken,” the Los Angeles Times editorial board wrote in June. “An elected official considering whether to prosecute officers should not be, in essence, on the political payroll of the agency defending the very same people.”

On Election Day 2020 in California, voters delivered police unions a series of resounding defeats that threaten to flip this time-honored paradigm on its head.

In the race for Los Angeles County District Attorney, reform-oriented challenger George Gascón ousted incumbent Jackie Lacey, earning control of a sprawling office that employs nearly 1,000 line prosecutors and retains jurisdiction over more than 10 million people. Lacey was the clear favorite of law enforcement organizations, who spent some $5 million boosting her candidacy and attacking her opponent’s. And for good reason: During Lacey’s eight years on the job, she reviewed more than 250 fatal shootings by on-duty law enforcement officers. She filed charges in one of them.

Occasionally, Lacey’s penchant for lenience extended beyond even that of high-profile police officials. None other than then-LAPD chief Charlie Beck called on Lacey to charge one of his officers, Clifford Proctor, in the 2015 killing of Brendon Glenn, an unarmed, homeless Black man. Lacey declined. “As independent prosecutors, we’re supposed to look at the evidence and the law,” she said. “And that’s what we did.” When the time came for Lacey to seek re-election, it seems that grateful police unions did not forget her choice.

Gascón’s résumé is one that might seem as if it would appeal to law enforcement types: A former LAPD patrol officer who rose to the rank of assistant chief, he also served as police chief in San Francisco and Mesa, Arizona, and as district attorney in San Francisco, before returning to run for DA in the city where he grew up. But Gascón is among the group of prosecutors who have disclaimed the support of police unions, and his campaign pledges include reducing the population of the county’s chronically overcrowded jail system, reopening investigations of high-profile police shootings that Lacey had closed, and declining to seek the death penalty altogether. For the unions, loyalty apparently extends only so far as it will allow their members to evade accountability.

Their efforts echoed those of the San Francisco Police Officers Association during last year’s DA election, when it spent some $650,000 on, among other things, mailers that declared progressive DA candidate Chesa Boudin to be “the #1 choice of criminals and gang members.” These scaremongering predictions were insufficient to prevent the city’s voters from electing Boudin—also a member of the no-money-from-cop-unions coalition—as Gascón’s successor.

Further down the ballot in 2020, California voters rejected Proposition 20, which would have reclassified certain misdemeanor theft offenses as felonies and reduced the availability of parole. (Incidentally, this would have rolled back the reforms of Proposition 47, a successful 2014 referendum co-authored by Gascón.) In other words, Proposition 20 would have resulted in more incarceration for more people for longer periods of time, which is why law enforcement organizations contributed roughly $2 million to the campaign to pass it.

Police unions also opposed San Francisco’s Proposition E, which eliminated the city’s minimum police staffing requirement, and Los Angeles’s Measure J, which earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars in public resources for non-police community investment. The Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association, which represents sheriff’s deputies, claimed that Measure J would “cripple public safety,” and local law enforcement organizations combined to spend more than $3.5 million fighting it. Both measures nonetheless passed with overwhelming support.

Law enforcement unions reliably oppose criminal justice reform for the simple reason that any attempts to reduce the criminal justice system’s footprint will make police less relevant. (Over the years, they have opposedeverything from body camera mandates to the simple requirement that officers wear nametags.) For them, mass incarceration is the world’s most lucrative job creation machine. To justify their lavish spending habits and the generous rules that apply to their conduct, police always frame themselves as a mere half-step ahead of staving off mass chaos, warning that any abrogation of their authority by naive do-gooders will put everyone in danger.

What this year’s election results demonstrate is that people understand the lies that infuse this narrative, which conspicuously omits from the ledger the staggering human costs that policing imposes on the communities it purports to keep safe. These losses won’t put an end to incidents of police brutality, or any other strain of rot that pervades the American criminal justice system. But they do signal that police unions are likelier to have to answer for their myriad failures, instead of relying on beneficiaries of their largesse to pretend that these failures do not exist.

Jay Willis is a senior contributor at The Appeal.

 Local Unions Defy AFL-CIO in Push to Oust Police Unions

Several local unions have moved to oust police unions, despite the federation's approach that collective bargaining can be used for police reform.

June 30, 2020 Rebecca Rainey and Holly Otterbein POLTICO

Chicago police officers face off with protesters. 

Natasha Moustache/Getty Images

The nation’s labor movement is splitting over police reform in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

Local unions are defying leaders of the AFL-CIO, who have rejected calls to cut ties with the labor federation's law enforcement arm and stressed the importance of collective bargaining instead to counter the use of excessive force. Several local unions, including those affiliated with the AFL-CIO, have moved to oust police unions within their locals and remove officers from schools and other workplaces. They argue that police have used their bargaining power to resist reform and protect those who have killed unarmed African Americans.

The vastly different approaches to solving what has become a major election year issue have not only exposed the rift within the labor movement but also threaten to diminish law enforcement unions in liberal cities and could even affect the behind-the-scenes race to succeed AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

“There are a lot of unions that are very concerned about police brutality,” said Lowell Peterson, executive director of Writers Guild of America-East, which adopted a resolution calling on the AFL-CIO to disassociate itself from the International Union of Police Associations, the federation’s police union affiliate. “There’s definitely a lot of talk in the labor movement about, ‘Why is this happening and what can we as unions do about it?’”

The nation’s second-largest teachers’ union, United Teachers Los Angeles, last week voted to eliminate police in Los Angeles public schools and “redirect funding to mental health and counseling” for students. The Chicago school board voted down a similar measure to cancel a $33 million contract with city police that was backed by the Chicago Teachers’ Union in protests and rallies throughout the week.

The Martin Luther King County Labor Council, a body of labor organizations representing more than 100,000 workers in the Seattle area, voted to expel the Seattle Police Officers Guild earlier this month. The Association of Flight Attendants, which sits on the AFL-CIO’s executive council, passed a resolution demanding that police unions embrace change “or be removed from the labor movement.”

Even the leader of the Service Employees International Union, the second largest union in the country, which itself represents some law enforcement employees, has expressed openness to the idea of ejecting police unions from the movement, though she has stopped short of endorsing the move.

“That's an option,” said SEIU President Mary Kay Henry of the Seattle federation’s decision to oust the police union. "I think another option is to use the union structure and leadership to educate and engage every member” in “re-imagining policing and criminal justice."

That would have been unheard of just months ago — and demonstrates how much has changed since Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis cop sparked nationwide protests against police brutality.

While labor activists say it is unlikely that Trumka would ever support efforts to expel law enforcement unions from the labor movement, the push from locals and some national unions to ostracize the police, as well as the larger Black Lives Matter movement, could drive more modest change.

Police unions have fought back, saying that no one forced local governments to sign collective bargaining agreements that contain provisions protecting police and warning that attacks on law enforcement unions are part of a pattern of going after organized labor.

“No contract is rammed down the throat of a city or jurisdiction. They signed it, they negotiated it, they agreed to it,” said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police.

Sam Cabral, the president of the International Union of Police Associations, slammed Trumka’s response to the unrest, writing in a June 12 letter that the federation's comments regarding America’s “history of racism and police violence against black people” were “inflammatory and patently false.” Cabral said he wouldn’t be willing to sit down with those who “have already indicted” law enforcement “based on one horrible incident.”

California’s largest police unions ran an ad in the Washington Post earlier this month calling for a national use of force standard, misconduct registry and “ongoing and frequent” training. Trumka also wrote in a recent op-ed that the labor movement is calling on Congress to adopt reforms including a chokehold ban and demilitarization.

Still, AFL-CIO leaders have maintained that the best way for the group to address the issue of police brutality is to “engage” its affiliates “rather than isolate them.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, an affiliate of the federation, said many members of the movement believe it’s important to have a conversation with police unions, “to the extent that they were willing to have it, for them to change and for us to change the criminal justice system.”

At the same time, the AFT recently passed a resolution calling to remove police from schools and instead train security personnel as “peace officers.”

Part of the solution, SEIU’s Henry suggested, is changing police collective bargaining practices.

“The role of the labor movement is to be a vehicle for the structural change that the Movement for Black Lives is demanding in policing and criminal justice all over this country,” she said.

Some progressives say those collective bargaining agreements often help shield officers accused of misconduct.

Dozens of city police departments, including in Minneapolis, have added provisions to their contracts that delay officer interrogations after suspected misconduct, according to a 2017 study. Agreements with police agencies in Austin, Baltimore, Chicago and Washington, D.C., have included language that mandated the removal of disciplinary records from personnel files over time.

As more local unions choose to step away or distance themselves from the police, the pressure to break with law enforcement unions has generated an internal debate over the issue within the AFL-CIO executive council itself in recent weeks.

Color of Change, a racial justice organization, said it has discussed the possibility of ejecting police unions with at least five labor groups in the AFL-CIO.

Weingarten said “a couple members of the council raised it” during a three-day meeting in June. In a call earlier this month, American Postal Workers Union leader Mark Dimondstein brought up the matter, according to a person on the line.

The federation’s general board released several recommendations on June 9 for affiliate unions to address police violence but declined to drop the International Union of Police Associations as requested by the WGAE.

The debate could affect the quiet race to succeed Trumka, who is expected to step aside. The election won’t be held until the federation’s convention in October 2021, but Flight Attendants union president Sara Nelson, whose organization has taken one of the most progressive stands on the question, and AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Liz Shuler are both rumored to be interested in taking the role.

In June, Nelson publicly accused AFL-CIO leadership of misleadingly attributing a statement opposing the ouster of the IUPA to the entire general board.

“To be clear, this issue was not discussed by the General Board today and there was no vote on the resolution put forward by WGAE,” she tweeted. “Also, collective bargaining empowers workers; it is not a means to oppress workers’ rights.

Tim Schlittner, the AFL-CIO's communications director, disputed the claim. He said Trumka referred to the WGA-East’s resolution but that no one offered a motion on it.

The labor movement has successfully ousted unions in the past that didn’t abide by its principles. The Congress of Industrial Organizations expelled 11 member unions around 1950 due to their alleged links to the Community Party. The AFL-CIO also cut ties with three unions in 1957 over corrupt behavior. And throughout the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s, the AFT moved to expel local unions that were racially segregated.

Police unions, meanwhile, insist that any efforts to oust them will blow back on all of labor.

“Those who are looking to kick police officers out of the union movement should be very careful," said Patrick Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association of New York. "The rhetoric that they are using now is the same rhetoric that has been used to strip union protections from teachers, bus drivers, nurses and other civil servants across this country."

Some police unions acknowledging call for reform, while others resistTODAY

© Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York President Pat Lynch and representatives from other NYPD and law enforcement unions holds a news conference on June 9, 2020, in New York.

Police unions are the one of the most important guardians of law enforcement in the United States -- negotiating salary, benefits and most importantly protections for their members.

But that urge to protect also has another side in some cases -- a resistance to reforms that they see as a potential threat to the safety of their officers or policing, especially in this time of great unrest.

From mandatory body cameras and reports anytime an officer has used their weapon to the expansion of civilian complaint boards, some union leaders have pushed back on proposed changes -- for decades in some instances, according to Jack McDevitt, the director of Northeastern University's Institute on Race and Justice.

"Some of the older unions, like ones in places like Boston and New York, have a lot invested in embracing the system that is in place," he told ABC News.

© Damian Dovarganes/AP Jamie McBride, leader of Los Angeles Police Protective League, LAPPL, the union that represents Los Angeles Police Department officers, speaks at a news conference, June 5, 2020, at the LAPPL offices in Los Angeles.

Now, following the large-scale protests and calls for action following George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police, some unions are expressing openness to change. The National Fraternal Order of Police, which has over 346,000 members, issued a statement this week in favor of Congress's police reform legislation.MORE: Cities across US announce police reform following mass protests against brutality

"When our citizens do not feel safe in the presence of police, that’s a problem—and the FOP intends to be part of the solution," the union said in its statement.

While McDevitt and other experts say those groups cannot ultimately ignore the calls from the citizens they protect or the need to bring in new voices into their ranks, some are continuing to resist changes that they see as potentially injurious to their members.

They also remain deeply concerned about the crimes committed in cities around the country in conjunction with peaceful protests, including attacks on police officers.

This week, the unions representing several New York City police departments, such as the Police Benevolent Association, and other unions representing law enforcement in the state issued a letter condemning the state's legislature for its newly passed police reform bills.

While the group acknowledged that "we share the universal desire for healing and positive change," it decried the "push for passage of legislation and the adoption of policies that reflect only one perspective" without bringing unions to the table.

One of the measures being considered for repeal is Civil Rights Law 50-A, which blocked departments from disclosing records related to officer evaluations. Unions contended the release of the complaints would jeopardize officer’s reputation and safety.

"These types of claims are not reliable or fair indicators of an officer’s conduct, and would not be used to impugn any other person," the unions said in the letter.

© Sue Ogrocki/AP John George, President, Fraternal Order of Police, Oklahoma City, gestures as he speaks in support of Oklahoma City Police Chief Wade Gourley, June 2, 2020, in Oklahoma City.

The Denver Police Protective Association, on the other hand, had a more subdued response to the protests and talked about the efforts it has taken over the years to reform their department, such as more training on cultural diversity and a ban on chokeholds.

"There is always room for conversation; there is always room for more improvement benefiting both the officer and the community," the union said in a statement.
MORE: 'Stop the pain': George Floyd's brother testifies on policing reform

"I think some unions are seeing this an opportunity to step up and say how we can make policing better," McDevitt said.

For the unions that are not endorsing reforms, the professor said those groups see these changes as hampering their power to protect their members’ working rights, particularly when it comes to collective bargaining agreements for their members.

“They think is there are collective bargaining changes, that they will lose their rights in negotiating salaries or other benefits for their officers if the reforms go through," McDevitt said. "They come from a place where if management doesn’t want it, then they have to fight it."

At the same time, some unions have used their power to put elected officials in the defensive. The group representing members of the Columbus Police Department, for instance, negotiated language in their 2017-2020 contract that limited the use of civilian complaints to a timetable as low as 60 days.

McDevitt added that the unions that are more open to the reforms acknowledge that they do come with data proven results that, ultimately, do protect officers.

"With body cameras, for example, a lot of time police officers have been reluctant to approve them," he explained. "In more cases, the cameras tend to show in allegations of police misconduct that were proven false."MORE: Congressional Black Caucus to propose policing reforms after George Floyd's death

One problem that does need to be addressed in unions is diversity, according to McDevitt. The professor said this stems from a larger problem over the lack of diversity in police forces nationally, but it is critical that unions put more women and people of color in their leadership roles.

While the racial makeup of police largely mirrors the overall population, people of color are underrepresented in leadership roles, especially in smaller police departments, according to data from the Department of Justice.

New York police unions received criticism this week after a press conference denouncing proposed legislative action and decrying the treatment of their members during the protests in which many in attendance were white males.

Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that the group "does not look representative of the NYPD at all," tweeting a video of New York State Association of PBAs president Mike O'Meara speaking.

O'Meara, whose group represents unions in the New York City metropolitan area and elsewhere in New York State, spoke out against Floyd's killing, but railed against the treatment of officers as a result.

PBA president Pat Lynch was also present at the press conference and denounced the "murder of an innocent person," referring to Floyd. "That's what happened. Let us be unequivocal."

But he also took issue with legislators who "demonize" police officers "as if we're the problem."

The PBA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.

"The union has to see if they don’t represent the community they won’t have legitimacy in negotiating table," McDevitt said.

Scott Wolfe, an Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, said the response to police misconduct over the last few weeks have shown that police officers are showing more openness to accountability. Although unions may differ on their stance for reform, a majority have admitted that what happened to Floyd was wrong, which has been a departure from previous controversial police killings, according to Wolfe.

© Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images, FILE In this May 30, 2020, file photo, police officers stand in a line next to the Colorado State Capitol as protests against the death of George Floyd continue in Denver.  
THE DEBRIS ON THE GROUND ARE TEAR GAS CANISTERS, RUBBER BULLET CANISTERS, PEPPER BALL ROUNDS WHICH OUTNUMBER THE WATER BOTTLES THAT THEY WERE SO AFRAID OF 


"There is virtually no disagreement that George Floyd was murdered and it can’t happen again," he told ABC News.

Wolfe said that this common ground could be the place where police reform activists and unions can come together to achieve the same goal.

McDevitt, agreed, and said that the best way to increase their bargaining power is to listen to the public's concerns and

"Unions do not have a straight line of responsibility to the public. They answer to their members," he said. "But when a strong aspect of the public says they’re not doing their job fairly, they have to listen."

ABC News' Luke Barr contributed to this report.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=FOP

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=POLICE+UNIONS

CANADA TOO 

‘Blue solidarity’ represses social justice movements, contributes to anti-Black racism, paper says

Brian Hill GLOBAL NEWS JUNE 23, 2020

© Youtube / Islam Muslim Ottawa police Const. Daniel Montsion is facing criminal charges in the death of Abdirahman Abdi, a 37-year-old Somali-Canadian man who died after a confrontation with officers in 2016. Montsion's trial is expected to begin Feb. 4, 2019.

Amid ongoing protests about the use of excessive and deadly force by police against Black and Indigenous peoples, questions have been raised about the role police and their union leaders play in exacerbating anti-Black racism in North America.

Solidarity among police officers serves to “repress social justice movements that challenge police authority” and supports tactics that discriminate against racialized communities, argue York University professors Mark Thomas and Steven Tufts in a recent study.

“The repressive role of policing is revealed in instances of mass protests, whereby police forces often implement highly militarized tactics and severely constrain the civil liberties of demonstrators,” the study said.

READ MORE: ‘Cogs in the colonial wheel’: Why racism in Canada’s police force is as old as policing

Since the death of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis police custody, there have been protests in the United States, Canada and around the world calling for changes to how police use force, especially deadly force.

These calls are the latest in a movement to end anti-Black racism — a movement Tufts said has been hindered by police and their union leaders, especially in the United States, who have spoken out against demonstrators and blocked efforts to create stronger police oversight.

In some cases, Tufts said, police have argued they are victims of hate crimes, while successfully lobbying governments to pass legislation that shields officers from prosecution or financial responsibility for their actions while on duty.

In Canada — including Toronto, where Black residents are 20 times more likely to die from police use of force than white residents — the “blue solidarity” movement is less overt than in the U.S. but still concerning, Tufts said.

“I don’t buy the argument that we’re so different in Toronto or Canada,” he said.

READ MORE: What it’s like to police in marginalized communities amid George Floyd protests

Both the Toronto Police Association and the Canadian Police Association reject Tufts’ arguments, saying it's unreasonable to compare what’s happening in the U.S. with the Canadian experience.

The two associations also reject the idea that police unions in Canada repress democratic movements, including Black Lives Matter. They also say that they do not shield officers from accountability and that their role is mostly limited to negotiating better wages, safer working conditions and making sure due process is followed whenever officers are investigated.
Racism in policing

The discussion of racism in policing is not new in Canada. As APTN reported, a 1989 royal commission into the wrongful conviction of a Mi’kmaw man in Nova Scotia made 82 recommendations on how to reform policing in the province, including mandatory racial education for cadets and recruiting more minority officers.

There have since been dozens of reports that make similar recommendations on how to improve policing in racialized communities, including a 2019 report by an expert panel that looked at the future of policing in Indigenous communities.

“Living in peace, harmony, and well-being is something that most people enjoy, expect, and consider as part of their human rights in Canada. However, this has not been the experience of Indigenous Peoples,” wrote panel chair Kimberly Murray, a Mohawk of Kanehsatake and the former executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

READ MORE: March for Black lives planned for Ottawa’s Elgin Street on Saturday

Calvin Lawrence, a retired RCMP officer and former instructor on use of force techniques, said he experienced racism on an almost daily basis during his 30-year career — both from fellow officers and the public.

Lawrence said unions and other police officers speak out in defence of officers accused of serious wrongdoing, including excessive force, when they should instead remain silent.

The case of Ottawa police officer Daniel Montsion is an example of this type of behaviour, Lawrence said. Montsion is currently on trial after pleading not guilty to several criminal charges, including manslaughter, in connection with the 2016 arrest of Abdirahman Abdi, who died while in police custody.

When Montsion was first charged, CBC reported that Ottawa police officers began wearing black-and-blue rubber wristbands that said “united we stand” with Montsion’s badge number. The bracelets were reportedly being sold for $2 each, with all proceeds going to the police union’s benevolence fund, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

READ MORE: Ottawa police bought ‘assault gloves’ officer wore during Abdi’s arrest: defence

While officers were told by the police chief they could not wear the bracelets on duty, because they are not part of the official police uniform, they were not restricted from wearing them when off duty.

Officers were also told they could attend Montsion’s trial so long as they wore civilian clothing, coordinated their attendance with the union, and refrained from wearing the bracelets at the courthouse, the Citizen reported.

“Police officers are supposed to maintain neutrality and this is not maintaining neutrality,” Lawrence said. “To the average citizen, this is mob rule.”

Lawrence also said what a lot of people don’t understand is that while white members of the community may look at the bracelets and say “this is wrong,” Black men will look at the bracelets and say, “that could be me.”

“I think that if this person is charged, they should keep quiet about it and just go out and do their jobs,” he said.
Due process or lack of accountability?

While Lawrence thinks police unions need to take a more active role in improving officers’ ability to de-escalate volatile situations, he also believes unions are necessary for protecting workers’ rights and preventing abuse within police forces.

Lawrence said the absence of organized labour during his 30-year RCMP career contributed toward inequalities and racial injustices within the force.

On one occasion, when he brought forward a complaint, Lawrence said he was told not to make it a “racial issue” unless he wanted it to go nowhere.

Meanwhile, a younger generation of Black organizers has begun arguing for governments to defund the police.

READ MORE: ‘They’re targeting us’: Why some advocates want to defund Canadian police

Sandy Hudson, a founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto and a UCLA law student, says police unions have been “instrumental” in ensuring police officers are not required to cooperate with civilian investigations that look into police use of force.

She said unions have argued and governments have agreed, including in Ontario, that officers can decide whether to participate in these investigations, even when the use of force results in serious injury or death.

Hudson cites the recent shooting of D’Andre Campbell by a Peel Regional Police officer as an example of this: provincial legislation has allowed the officer to refuse to participate in the investigation into his alleged actions.

This, Hudson said, impacts the public’s ability to determine what happened and to hold police officers accountable.

“These unions aren't really acting like unions in the traditional sense. They are protecting police officers from being held accountable when they consistently target, kill and harm Black and Indigenous communities. And that shouldn’t be allowed to stand,” she said.

READ MORE: D’Andre Campbell fatally shot by police in Brampton home after calling for help, family says

Both Mike McCormack, president of the Toronto Police Association, and Tom Stamatakis, former president of the Vancouver Police Union and current president of the Canadian Police Association, reject claims that police unions shield officers from civilian oversight.

They say police unions, like other labour organizations, have a duty to defend their members against charges or allegations resulting from their service, and that ensuring due process is followed is a priority in any workplace investigation.

“We are here to protect the members rights and to ensure due process is done. We are not here to support racism, systemic racism or anything like that,” McCormack said.

Stamatakis also said timeliness of investigations, such as those conducted by civilian oversight bodies like Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU), is critical to providing justice and making sure any officers involved are treated fairly — something Ontario’s current government agreed with when it imposed time restrictions on SIU investigations and overturned legislation from the previous government, which it called the “most anti-police legislation in Canadian history.”

“We are one of the most regulated groups in the world in policing,” McCormack said.

“We're here to ensure that there is accountability, transparency and that our members’ rights are respected.”
‘Blue solidarity’ in Canada

One of Tufts’ main arguments is that “blue solidarity” movements in the U.S. and Canada have portrayed police as victims in response to Black Lives Matter.

Tufts pointed to McCormack’s call to cancel a $260,000 city grant to Toronto’s Pride parade after organizers banned uniformed police officers from attending the parade following demands made by Black Lives Matter.

He argues the union made it seem like officers were marginalized by not being allowed to participate in the parade, while Black Lives Matter organizers said the presence of uniformed officers at the parade discourages racialized people from participating.

READ MORE: Ontario’s police watchdog examining fatal officer-involved shooting of man in Mississauga

McCormack said he stands by his past comments on the issue, adding that he was speaking on behalf of LGBTQ2 police officers who were disappointed they could not march in the parade.

He also said participating in the parade is a chance for the Toronto Police Service to mend its relationship with the LGBTQ2 community, a relationship he acknowledges has been “rife” with stress and conflict.

“Many of my members (are) part of that community” McCormack said. “We have been working tirelessly, diligently to break down those barriers, to break down those walls.”

But Hudson disagrees with how the association leaders characterize Canadian police involvement in cross-border solidarity movements, such as Blue Lives Matter and the Thin Blue Line.

She also said if blue solidarity wasn’t an issue in Canada, she would expect more officers to speak out against colleagues who use excessive force or when issues of systemic discrimination are brought to public attention.

Stamatakis, meanwhile, said that while there are informal relationships between police officers in the two countries, no Canadian police association or police force has taken up these causes in any significant way.

READ MORE: George Floyd death: Use of police weaponry scrutinized after injuries at protests

He also criticizes the study done by Thomas and Tufts, saying it doesn’t make sense to consider the U.S. and Canada together.

“That's one of the shortcomings of the research; where they sort of lump the Canadian experience in with the American experience,” he said.

Still, Stamatakis said, if members of the Black community feel their interactions with police are racialized, or if they believe they’re being targeted, then police must find a way of improving this relationship.

“When we have people in our community that are saying they're concerned about how their interactions with the police are occurring, then we need to be listening to that,” he said.
Police use of force

There are examples of police unions in Canada directly opposing legitimate forms of public scrutiny, Tufts said.

In 2013, McCormack opposed an investigation by former Ontario ombudsman André Marin into police use of force tactics following the shooting death of Sammy Yatim by Toronto police officer James Forcillo earlier that year.

At the time, McCormack said Marin, a former director of the SIU, was “grandstanding” by announcing he would look into how police in Ontario use force before an investigation into whether Forcillo had acted improperly was complete.

“I'm a little bit shocked that somebody such as the ombudsman would not be respecting due process and waiting until he got all the facts and information and I think that the optics are terrible in the sense that his comments clearly do not indicate confidence in the SIU or the Toronto police or the investigative process," McCormack said, according to a 2013 Globe and Mail article.

However, the Globe also reported that neither the SIU nor the government were opposed to Marin’s investigation.

Both McCormack and Stamatakis said that it is exceptionally rare for an officer to use force, with deadly force being even rarer, and that the work police officers do is dangerous, involves a lot of unknown factors, mental illness and armed individuals.

A report published by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police research foundation said use of force occurs in less than 0.1 per cent of police-public interactions. However, the report also said the total number of people exposed to these kinds of tactics remains high because of how often police interact with the public.

Hudson, meanwhile, cites a 2018 Ontario Human Rights Commission report that found Black residents in Toronto are 20 times more likely to be killed by police than white residents.

She also said if nearly everything the police do doesn’t require force, then perhaps front-line officers in Canada shouldn’t be armed, such as in the U.K., where police routinely do not carry guns.

“If so many of the cases they respond to don't require that sort of response, they shouldn't have those things at all,” she said.

Unions split on vaccine mandates, complicating Biden push

BIGGEST PUSH BACK IS FROM POLICE UNIONS

By NICHOLAS RICCARD

President Joe Biden speaks in the State Dining Room at the White House, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021, in Washington. Labor unions are divided over vaccine mandates. The split has become more significant after Biden announced his plan to require federal workers get inoculated and private companies with more than 100 employees get vaccinated. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)


The National Nurses Union applauded President Joe Biden’s proposal to require that companies with more than 100 employees vaccinate their work force. The American Federation of Teachers once said vaccine mandates weren’t necessary, but now embraces them. In Oregon, police and firefighter unions are suing to block a mask mandate for state workers.

The labor movement is torn over vaccine requirements — much like the country as a whole — wanting to both support its political ally in Biden and protect its members against infection but also not wanting to trample their workers’ rights.

“Labor unions are a microcosm of the society we live in,” said Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of Cornell University’s The Worker Institute. “The same political divide we have right now exists within the rank and file of unions.”

That divide complicates matters for Biden as he tries to get the delta variant under control. Unions are a key part of the Democratic Party, and Biden has embraced them to burnish his blue-collar, middle-class image. Dissent in Biden’s own coalition may make it especially hard for him to implement new vaccination requirements. Some unions representing federal workers already objected to his push for inoculation among the U.S. government workforce, saying such matters involving new workplace requirements and discipline need to be negotiated at the bargaining table.

In a sign of the importance of the issue to the Biden administration, the White House reached out to union presidents before Biden announced his new policy Thursday and will continue to check in with labor leaders, said an administration official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss forthcoming plans.

Biden will require companies with more than 100 workers to give their employees shots or test them weekly. He will also mandate shots for executive branch workers and federal contractors with no testing opt-out. The new requirements could cover 100 million Americans.

Momentum seems to be on the side of mandates. The AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization over much of the country’s unions, praised mandates and Biden’s plan in a statement released Friday. “The resurgence of COVID-19 requires swift and immediate action, and we commend President Biden for taking additional steps to help put an end to this crisis. Everyone should be vaccinated — as one step in stopping the pandemic,” the organization’s president, Liz Shuler, said in the statement.

The AFT two weeks ago mandated that its employees in its offices be vaccinated and has become a strong advocate of workplaces requiring vaccinations. “Safety and health have been our north star since the beginning of the pandemic,” said Randi Weingarten, the union’s president. The union’s support for mandates, she added, “creates great cheer among two-thirds of our people and will create agita in one-third of the people.”

Still, many labor leaders are hesitant to wade into the mandate issue. Many of the employers of the workers of the Laborer’s District Council of Western Pennsylvania, like hospitals, have begun requiring vaccinations. Whenever members complain, the council’s business manager, Phillip Ameris, tells them it’s not the union’s call.

“What we have said is, ‘we encourage our members to the get the vaccine,’ but what we’re telling everyone to do is to go to your physician,” Ameris said. “We’re trying to keep it nonpolitical. ... Go to your doctor and ask your doctor what is best for you.”

THESE ARE NOT UNIONS, THEY ARE WHITE FRATERNAL ORDERS.
Some of the most heated opposition has come from law enforcement unions. In Newark on Thursday, police and fire unions from across New Jersey protested against the mayor’s vaccine mandate outside city hall. Police unions from Chicago to Richmond have pushed back against mandates in their cities. In Portland, Oregon, the local police union got its members exempted from the city’s vaccine order and a group of police and firefighter unions are suing Gov. Kate Brown to block the state’s vaccine requirement for its workers.

Simon Haeder, a political scientist who studies vaccine mandates at Penn State University, said it makes sense that the strongest resistance has come from police and firefighters. “The more conservative side of the labor movement, in terms of politics, are going to be the police and firefighter unions,” he said, noting that response to the coronavirus has become highly polarized. “Yes, you’re a union person and yes, you want the workplace to get back to normal, but the identity of being a Republican outweighs a lot of those things.”

Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said police officers are reacting like most Americans. “You’ve got, like in the rest of the country, really strong feelings on both sides,” Johnson said.

Still, police unions can see the writing on the wall — and want any mandates to be negotiated through the collective bargaining process, Johnson said. “There’s a sense from the union perspective that vaccination policy is pretty much going to be mandated,” he said. “We want a place at the table when we discuss implementation.”

Campos-Medina said mandatory vaccination is such an obviously important public health policy that she expects unions to ultimately accept it. She compared it to bans on indoor smoking, which rankled some unions years ago but is a subject which hardly ever comes up at the bargaining table today. “We will get there,” she said.

Weingarten’s union had initially, like Biden, opposed vaccine mandates and said persuading workers to get their shots was a better approach. But after the delta variant kicked caseloads higher this summer and filled up hospital beds, AFT reconsidered.

She, too, thinks unions will almost all ultimately coalesce behind a pro-mandate position. But, she notes, it will take time.

“The leadership in unions I talk to know that vaccines are really important,” Weingarten said. “What they’re trying to do is balance between all these different services and responsibilities we have to our members.”

__

Associated Press writers Josh Boak in Washington and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

AFL-CIO SUPPORTS BLACK LIVES MATTER!

BANNERS ON HQ UP THE STREET FROM WHITE HOUSE

AFTER BEING VANDALIZED AND SET ON FIRE 

THE NIGHT THE WHITE HOUSE CAUSED A POST PROTEST RIOT

Left to right, Clearance Thompson, Jendaya Heredia, and London Williams, pose for a photo at Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House in Washington, DC on Thursday, June 25, 2020. Protests continue around the country over the deaths of African Americans while in police custody. Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI - Permalink

People walk through and sit near tents at Black Lives Matter Plaza on Saturday, July 4, 2020 in Washington, DC. On the evening of July 3, activists set up tents and plan to occupy the Plaza. Photo by Leigh Vogel/UPI

Labor Leaders Call For Police Reform Even As Police Unions Face Growing Criticism

June 10, 2020 DON GONYEA NPR

Signs outside the boarded-up entrance to AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C., read "AFL-CIO Supports Black Lives Matter" and "Criminal Justice Reform Now!"Patrick Semansky/AP

A loud and longtime complaint of civil rights activists and police reform advocates is that police unions are part of the problem of police brutality. Unions are designed to protect their members, and when it comes to officers charged with wrongdoing or excessive force, that means police unions are too often protecting bad cops and saving their jobs.

Richard Trumka, who heads the nation's largest federation of labor organizations, announced Tuesday night that the board of the AFL-CIO has adopted a set of recommendations aimed at addressing "America's long history of racism and police violence against black people."

In a statement, the AFL-CIO called for the resignations of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for their participation last week in a presidential photo-op in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. The park was cleared of peaceful protesters by the U.S. Park Police and other federal forces, including military, who used rubber projectiles and gas as well as riot shields, batons and horses.


The labor federation also said the local police union president in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, should be forced to resign. Further, the AFL-CIO said its own 2013 findings must be acted upon, which the statement said could allow for a crackdown on such brutality while protecting due process rights of all public service workers. Specifically, the statement called for banning chokeholds, expanding use of body cameras, ending racial profiling, demilitarizing police forces or limiting no-knock warrants, and creating a more community-centric policing culture.

Last week, the AFL-CIO headquarters — located on 16th Street NW at what is now known as Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington — suffered some fire damage and had sidewalk-level plate glass windows smashed during a night of massive protests near the White House.


The AFL-CIO building was damaged last week during protests in Washington.Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Today, those windows are boarded up. And large black posters affixed to the building read "AFL-CIO Supports Black Lives Matter" in bold white letters on a black background. Someone, however, affixed smaller white signs next to such proclamations of support that say, "Hey AFL-CIO, The Posters Are Nice, But If You Believed It You Would Kick The Police Unions Out."

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Protesters added a sign on the AFL-CIO building wall saying, "Hey AFL-CIO, The Posters Are Nice, But If You Believed It You Would Kick The Police Unions Out."Don Gonyea/NPR

That sign singles out the International Union of Police Associations. In its statement, the AFL-CIO responded that it will not cut ties with that union, one of a dozen within the federation that counts law enforcement workers as members. The AFL-CIO said those members are officers of "every color, background and stripe in America." It went on to say that they deserve the right to collective bargaining, and that the best way to influence the issue of police brutality is to "engage unions rather than isolate them."

One of those unions that represents police officers is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. AFSCME President Lee Saunders wrote in an op-ed this week in USA Today, "No union contract is or should be construed as a shield for misconduct or criminal behavior." Saunders, who is African American, also condemned the actions of the Minneapolis police officers in the Floyd case as "heinous," saying there is no justification for what they did.


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Police unions often wield considerable political clout in many communities. Their endorsements are much sought after by candidates for office up and down the ballot.

The Fraternal Order of Police is the largest single law enforcement organization in the United States. Its president, Patrick Yoes, told NPR's Morning Edition that he agrees that police reforms are needed.

"We welcome the opportunity to sit down and have some meaningful fact-based discussions on ways to improve the law enforcement community," Yoes said.

He said there are police departments across the U.S. that have fine records when it comes to community relations. According to Yoes, they can learn from them and by creating a national standard for all communities to follow. "The last thing we want to do is have bad cops on the street," he said. "We want to correct this."

Such statements from the national head of the Fraternal Order of Police don't necessarily reflect those of local police union leaders in any given community. In Buffalo, New York, this past week, two police officers on the site of a protest were charged with assault after an elderly protester they pushed suffered a head injury when he fell backward to the pavement. In response, more than 50 officers backed their suspended colleagues by resigning en masse from the department's emergency response team.

The head of the local union — the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association — praised the resignations and told local TV station WGRZ that the accused officers were simply executing orders. President Trump also weighed in on Twitter, posting a conspiracy theory that the injured activist was working for antifa and had set up the entire incident. The White House has stood by that tweet.

That episode underscores just how polarized and partisan the debate over police reforms has become. And that only increased the difficulty of what already promised to be a complicated process.

Off-duty officers were part of the Capitol mob. Now police unions face a dilemma.

THEY ARE WHITE FRATERNAL ORDERS NOT UNIONS

FOP OUT OF AFL/CIO

Janelle Griffith

Thu, January 21, 2021, 5:42 PM

After an FBI and Houston Police Department investigation determined that veteran Officer Tam Pham had participated in the deadly breach at the U.S. Capitol this month, his departure from the department was swift.

He was placed on administrative leave and resigned, with no pushback from the group that would usually advocate on behalf of an officer accused of wrongdoing.

The Houston Police Officers' Union has fiercely defended its officers, even in cases that call officer conduct into question — including one last year when officers shot and killed a man with a history of mental health issues who was on his knees.

The president of the union at the time called the firings of four officers in September "unjust and deplorable" and said the organization would represent them at their arbitration hearings.

The union's response has been markedly different in the case of Pham, who faces two federal misdemeanor charges related to entering the Capitol.

Anyone who breached the Capitol "should be charged and receive whatever punishment is assigned to that," said Douglas Griffith, who is now the union president. "No matter if they're a police officer or not."

Pham has not yet entered a plea. His attorney said Pham "is deeply saddened to be associated with the domestic terrorists who attacked our Capitol" and "believes strongly in the rule of law."

Griffith said that what separates what Pham is accused of from the charges other officers have faced in unrelated incidents is that the Capitol riot "was an attack on our democracy" that led to the death of an officer and to others' being seriously injured. Five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died in events related to the attack.

IMAGE: Houston police Officer Tam Dinh Pham in the Capitol on Jan. 6 (FBI)

"As an officer, I would expect, if I saw some officers being attacked, I'd be stepping in between them," Griffith said in an interview. "I wouldn't be participating in that kind of activity."

Police departments in New York City, Seattle and Virginia are investigating whether their officers participated in the pro-Trump riot. As they do, police unions are confronting the dilemma of whether or not to defend officers who took part.

In Chicago, for example, the union president initially defended the mob before backing down. And in Seattle, the union head is under administrative investigation after he falsely claimed that Black Lives Matter was responsible.

Kalfani Ture, a former police officer in Georgia who is an assistant professor of criminal justice and policing at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, said the growing number of off-duty police officers who are suspected of having taken part in the riot creates an interesting paradox for police unions, which have largely shielded bad cops from accountability.

"When we see an officer lose his life, when we see other officers injured, when you see these figures attacking other police officers, how do you justify that?" Ture asked.

Ture said police unions are breaking from their own because of the Capitol Police officer's death and the injuries sustained by dozens of other officers.

"If it wasn't for the optics, if it wasn't for the loss of life, if it wasn't for 50 police officers, both Capitol Police officers and Metropolitan Police, being injured — severely injured — to the extent that it removed them from duty, if it wasn't for all of that, I wouldn't be surprised if the various police unions" said: "No one was really hurt. It was just an exercise of their First Amendment rights that essentially got out of hand.

John Catanzara, the president of Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police lodge, initially defended the mob that stormed the Capitol at President Donald Trump's behest.

"There was no arson. There was no burning of anything. There was no looting. There was very little destruction of property," Catanzara told WBEZ, Chicago's main public radio station, in an interview the evening of Jan. 6. "It was a bunch of pissed-off people that feel an election was stolen, somehow, some way."

Photos and video of the incident show that the rioters overwhelmed police, smashed windows of the Capitol, overturned tables and ransacked offices. A 19th-century marble bust of President Zachary Taylor was defaced with what appeared to be blood. Residue of pepper sprays, tear gas and fire extinguishers — deployed by both rioters and law enforcement officers — was also evident in the aftermath.

Catanzara, a staunch supporter of Trump, told WBEZ that he believed, as Trump has falsely claimed repeatedly, that the election was stolen, but he admitted that there is no proof. Catanzara said what rioters did was "very different than what happened all across this country all summer long in Democratic-ran cities, and nobody had a problem with that."

After it was announced that a Capitol Police officer had died, Catanzara apologized, saying he had "showed a lapse in judgment" in the WBEZ interview.

"I certainly would never justify any attacks on citizens, democracy or law enforcement," he wrote in a statement posted on Facebook.

He did not mention the officer's death, but he said that he was sorry and that "after seeing more video and the full aftermath, my comments would have been different." Catanzara, who faces calls to resign, declined a request for an interview, but he told NBC News on Thursday that he does not plan to step down.

His comments drew harsh criticism from Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Patrick Yoes, president of the National Fraternal Order of Police, who said Catanzara's remarks do no represent the opinions of its 356,000 members.

"There is no question that, in addition to the tragic loss of life, these criminals left a wide swath of damage, in the building that is the heart of our democracy and threatened our elected officials, Congressional staff as well as our brother and sister officers," Yoes said in a strongly worded statement that mentioned Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after he was hit in the head by a rioter wielding a fire extinguisher.

"The National FOP rejects this gross mischaracterization and sees the incident for what it was — a violent mob of looters and vandals, visiting fear and destruction on one of our nation's most sacred spaces," Yoes wrote.

Officer Mike Solan, president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, faces increasing calls for his resignation from the union and the police department after he falsely suggested that Black Lives Matter activists played a role in the violence at the Capitol. At least five Seattle police officers are being investigated for possible involvement.

Mayor Jenny Durkan and former Police Chief Carmen Best have called for Solan to retract his words and apologize or resign. Solan did not respond to requests for comment.

Seattle's Office of Police Accountability is investigating Solan's tweets, including one on Jan. 8 saying the "far right and far left are responsible for that sad day," to determine whether they violated department policy.

The New York City Police Benevolent Association has decried the riot as a "despicable attack," which an unidentified officer is alleged to have participated in.

Jack Glaser, a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, said the pro-Trump rioters "undermined or really laid bare the reality of most of these groups, which is really not about law and order but more about racial hegemony."

The union, which represents about 24,000 rank-and-file officers, endorsed Trump for re-election last year. The union did not return multiple requests for comment.

Glaser said he suspects that the rioters' "violation of basic democratic principles is enough that the unions feel like they cannot back that up."

"I think what we see here is that the violence on the part of the rioters, of the insurrectionists, in the name of the thin blue line — some of them carrying the modified American flag with the blue lines — I think that that was an offense to policing professionals and what had been seen as a supportive alliance," Glaser said. "This really stripped away the pretense of those symbols."

Ture agreed, citing the "profoundly great" contradiction between the espoused support for law enforcement and the actions at the Capitol.

He added that unions that defended officers involved in the attack would struggle to sever themselves from the images of people bearing Confederate flags and other racist insignia associated with white supremacists.

"If you had taken part in this campaign," he said, referring to the attack, "you cannot easily disassociate yourself with that type of bigoted prejudice, that evil terrorism."

Off-duty officers were part of the Capitol mob. Now police unions face a dilemma. (yahoo.com)