Who runs local government? The voters and their elected officials – or somebody else? That is the question that came to mind when I saw this article in last Saturday’s Chicago Tribune (here are the first four paragraphs):
“The union that represents rank-and-file Chicago police officers has filed a complaint with the Illinois Labor Relations Board alleging the Police Department violated its collective bargaining agreement by implementing changes to its use-of-force policy without union approval.
In its petition, the Fraternal Order of Police said this marks the latest in a pattern by city officials to make changes to Police Department policies on their own without negotiating them through the collective bargaining process. The two sides are in the midst of contract negotiations.
The changes to the use-of-force policy are intended to cut back on questionable shootings and are part of the reform effort for a department upended nearly 20 months ago by the release of video of an officer shooting teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.
In one key change, the policy holds that an officer can't shoot a fleeing person unless that person presents an imminent threat to police or others. The new policy also calls on officers to use their new de-escalation training to try to defuse incidents.”
Obviously, at this point, the union has merely filed a complaint with the Illinois Labor Relations Board. The Board has not said that the Chicago Police Department, i.e., the City of Chicago, has to negotiate with the union over changes to its use-of-force policy. Still, the union thought it had a good enough argument that it could file a complaint about it. Or they are using the complaint to harass the City of Chicago on something else. In either case, it gets to my point:
I do not understand how a union can have any rights or say on this question. The use of force, how force is to be used and when it is to be used, is the ultimate government power. How can a police department’s, i.e., the government’s, policy on the use of force be something that can only be changed if a union representing police officers agrees? For that matter, how could any governmental body agree to allow a union to have a veto power on how government uses force? And even if some government official tried to give such a power to a union, how can that agreement be binding? Our elected public officials, not the head of some public employees union, are the only ones who can make the decisions on how the government uses or doesn’t use force. This power is not something that can be given to, or even shared with, some third party.
Even though they don’t like to admit it, public employee unions are different from unions in the private sector. There are some things that public employee don’t get to bargain about because the subject is the essence of what government is about. The use of force, i.e., the power to kill people, is one of those subjects. Public employee unions do not get to bargain over this policy. Somebody needs to tell them that. And somebody needs to remind our elected officials of that, too.
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