"Blood On Their Hands: The Racist History of Modern Police Unions"

[Dawson Leery]

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17520/police_unions_racist

"Outraged by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s statements concerning the killing of Eric Garner, Patrick Lynch, the longtime leader of the New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA), the NYPD’s officers union, recently made the outrageous assertion that the Mayor had “blood on his hands” for the murder of the two NYPD officers.

In Milwaukee this past fall, the Police Association called for, and obtained, a vote of no confidence in MPD Chief Ed Flynn after he fired the officer who shot and killed Dontre Hamilton, an unarmed African American; subsequently, the union’s leader, Mike Crivello, praised the District Attorney when he announced that he would not bring charges against the officer.

In Chicago, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a longtime supporter of racist police torturer Jon Burge, is now seeking to circumvent court orders that preserve and make public the police misconduct files of repeater cops such as Burge, by seeking to enforce a police contract provision that calls for the destruction of the files after seven years. And in a show of solidarity with the killer of Michael Brown, Chicago’s FOP is soliciting contributions to the Darren Wilson defense fund on its website."

[tonyt53]

1. While the FOP is union associated, they rarely ever recognize another union.

No problems in crossing picket lines or arresting picketers. The FOP is more of an association. Many states do not recognize unions of public employees. The cops pay dues for the protection of the association, and if were to be called a union outright, many would refuse to pay those dues, particularly in right-to-work states.

[hedda_foil]

2. Chicago FOP held a celebratory reunion of the cops who rioted at the 1968 Dem Convention.

From your link:

Handmaiden to the rioting cops who indiscriminately and brutally beat demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Convention, the FOP held a reunion of their 1968 troops in 2009 at the FOP Lodge. They proudly displayed pictures of some of the wanton police brutality on their website and, in an attempt to rewrite history (and the Walker Report's findings of a “police riot”), trumpeted that “the time has come that the Chicago Police be honored and recognized for their contributions to maintaining law and order—and for taking a stand against Anarchy. … The Democratic National Convention was about to start and the only thing that stood between Marxist street thugs and public order was a thin blue line of dedicated, tough Chicago police officers.”