The Democrats are using the George Floyd protests to remake America.
This fight is coming to a head but Democrats have a major problem on their hands.
Nancy Pelosi could be completely destroyed by one mistake from her past.
Most cops are good cops and work hard every day to protect the American people, but there are some bad ones and it’s important to be able to weed them out.
While Democrats are not fond of the police unions, police unions are one of the main obstacles for cities to be able to keep officers accountable.
“During recessions [the city] would give the union management rights in lieu of money,” Robert Olson, chief inspector of the Garda Síochána Inspectorate in Ireland and former chief of police in Minneapolis told Reuters in 2017. “And when that happens, that’s when trouble starts.”
Olson added that the union powers had slowly grown over time.
“We’re not talking about just one union contract,” he continued. “We’re talking about incremental changes in contracts over years that cumulatively, suddenly, there’s all of these hoops, which makes it far more difficult for chiefs to sustain discipline.”
A lot of police chiefs would love to fire the cops that make trouble but union contracts make it difficult and they have an incredible amount of power.
Reuters found “A majority of the contracts call for departments to erase disciplinary records, some after just six months, making it difficult to fire officers with a history of abuses.”
In 2014, San Antonio City Manager Sheryl Sculley wanted to change the police union contract so that misconduct complaints no longer disappeared after a short amount of time, and in response she was met with an estimated $1 million dollar ad campaign targeting her reform from the union.
Police unions shield bad officers from being held accountable and weeded out even when they have numerous allegations against them.
Nancy Pelosi had been planning to pass a bill strengthening police unions. Unions give large donations to Democrats.
“House Democrats are shelving bill H.R. 1154 that would have allowed all public safety workers, including police, to collectively bargain with the government over the terms of their employment, according to Axios. The bill was introduced by Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and co-sponsored by 225 other lawmakers, 206 of whom are Democrats.” The Daily Wire reported.
Now Democrats are quickly trying to change their tune and claim that police unions are really supported by Republicans.
“Police unions are very different. They’re very conservative, a lot of them are even Republican,” a House Democratic leadership aide told Axios. “They don’t have the same progressive beliefs.”
The member of Congress who has received the most from police unions is Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. who is a Democrat and co-chair of the House Law Enforcement Caucus. He has gotten $43,000 from police unions since 2004.
Amy Klobuchar, a Senator from Minnesota who is one of Biden’s top picks for vice president, received the second highest amount of contributions from law enforcement PACs among senators.
Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday to Time Magazine that she doesn’t think police unions have to be “reined in” because they’ve been very constructive in helping implement change.
She’ll soon be back to helping police unions strengthen their power.
