Police unions are the final boss of the law enforcement abolition movement

Over the past few weeks, calls to abolish police departments and dramatically rethink what community law enforcement might look like have been vaulted from a niche — albeit longstanding — issue within progressive circles, and into the raging mainstream debate about race, justice, and equality, after white police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, a Black man, on the streets of Minneapolis in late May.

Police abolitionism, like all seismic social re-imaginings, is not a monolithic movement. Questions about tactics, priorities, and even terminology have punctuated conversations about how best to work toward a police-less society in recent days. But for all the disagreement about what defunding and dismantling police departments looks like, there remains a steady sense that convincing communities of the virtue of abolition is only one part of the equation. Another, perhaps even more intractable obstacle to radical change in this arena are police unions.

Conflict between a progressive movement and groups that frame themselves as — and currently sit alongside other — labor unions might seem at first like an unusual dynamic between camps that are frequently seen as being natural allies. But despite the similar nomenclature, police unions operate very differently from their ostensible peers. Continue reading.

Despite Trump Administration Fearmongering, 2017 Is Among Safest Years Ever For Police

The following article by Nick Wing was posted on the Huffington Post website December 28, 2017:

A closer look at the data calls into question the effort to politicize attacks on law enforcement.

Credit: kconnors via Moguefile

After a presidential campaign in which Donald Trump and his surrogates regularly claimed law enforcement was under assault from an increasingly lawless public, the first year of Trump’s presidency is shaping up to be among the safest ever for police.

A total of 45 officers have been feloniously killed in the line of duty in 2017, according to unofficial FBI data updated earlier this month. That number tracks closely to other counts from independent sites and marks a significant downturn from 2016, when a total of 66 officers were feloniously killed. Barring a catastrophe in the final days of the year, the annual total will be well below the average seen over the last 20 years.

Continue reading “Despite Trump Administration Fearmongering, 2017 Is Among Safest Years Ever For Police”