Breaking Rank (49 page)

It's not hard to understand why so many police union officials view “labor relations” as a struggle for supremacy, why every disagreement feels to them like a fight to the death. It can be an awfully lonely and thankless job—rank-and-file cops are quick to attack their union leaders for selling them out, for sleeping with the brass if they get the slightest whiff that their interests are not being protected by their union reps.

But when police unions refuse to join management in efforts to upgrade the force or improve its standing in the community, they give the impression they don't care about professionalism, that they'd rather protect than prevent dirty cops.

New York City's Mollen Commission took note of this trend, one I would argue is national in scope, and growing by the day: “[B]y advising its members against cooperating with law enforcement authorities [such as the FBI or one's own Internal Affairs bureau] the PBA often acts as a shelter and protector of the corrupt cop rather than as a guardian of the interests of the vast majority of its membership, who are honest police officers . . .
the [union] does a great disservice to the vast majority of its members who would be happy to see corrupt cops prosecuted for their crimes and removed from their jobs
.” [Emphasis added.]

So, how do we counter the power, the
misused
power of police unions? Through political and legal action. In Seattle, the American Civil Liberties
Union has filed suit to cause the city and the police guild to make transparent the union's push to gut the city's “civilian review” process, a process so weak to begin with that it makes the whole drama somewhat laughable. But, it is a start.

People who've been mistreated by cops only to see their complaints whitewashed, and people who want their local police department to behave competently, inclusively, and accountably need to become active. Find out what kind of citizen review, if any, exists in your city. Determine how much codified authority and political power your local police union wields. Insist on transparency. Agitate for responsible collective bargaining (on both sides of the table). Demand answers from the chief, the union president, the mayor and city council. Police union leaders are, in one important respect, no different from the managers they regularly do battle with—they're
political
animals, subject to the pressures of the press and of the people.

Most important to reform are changes in labor law. Local and state officials must become emboldened if they're to curtail the excessive sanctioned power of police unions—and of the bodies that oversee labor relations and which issue judgments on individual “unfair labor practices” complaints.

Legislative and leadership failures are also endemic both within the police unions and among the unions of different public emergency services. In one example, the Seattle police guild has been at war with the firefighters' union for years over jurisdiction of their respective “dive teams.”

In August 2003, a boat overturned on Bitter Lake in the northern part of the city. A fire department diver went into the water just as police divers arrived. Moments later, firefighters on shore were instructed by a police commander (adhering to protocols virtually written by the police guild): “You do not have authorization to splash divers. You are not authorized to splash divers. We are incident command on this situation.” Thankfully, the boat had been abandoned so the incident resulted in neither a rescue nor a body recovery.

But police officers and firefighters fighting over who “splashes” into which bodies of water to save a life? Unseemly, unspeakable. Picture it. A
witness spots a victim gasping for breath, going down for the third time. The witness calls 911. Cops and firefighters respond with lights and sirens. Witnesses, including family members, are greatly relieved to see emergency personnel pull up. But instead of rescuing the victim our public safety heroes stand on the shore, squabbling over jurisdiction, over who gets to claim this “body of work.”
*

The mayor ordered his police chief and fire chief to get their heads together and come up a new protocol, one that would sensibly allow whichever department arrived first to “splash” its divers. But, like the two mayors before him, he was talking to the wrong guys. He actually believed he and his department heads could make such decisions. He had not reckoned with the power, pettiness, and self-absorption of the police guild.

In his December 2003 column in
The Guardian
, guild president Ken Saucier had this to say about his firefighter brother in safety: “If the donkey from the movie
Shrek
and the Energizer bunny's crack-addicted little sister had a drunken but fruitful tryst, and then the offspring from that liaison was dropped on its head, you'd have a smarter, more subdued version of the President of Local 27, the fire union.” (This is the same police union president who, grousing about the city's financial commitment to social programs, also wrote in
The Guardian
, “We still have the Sex Changes for Dwarf Junkies program and Internet access for the homeless. Never know when a good deal on a shopping cart is going to come up on eBay.”)
**

So the mayor, the city council, the police chief, and the fire chief are essentially powerless to make and enforce sensible public safety policies. And who's responsible for that sorry mess? Well, you can blame the unions, of course. But you can also finger those arbitrary and capricious government officials of yesteryear.

In part to punish management Neanderthals, but mostly to set and enforce rules of fairness in management-labor relations, the state legislature in 1975 created “PERC,” the Public Employment Relations Commission.

Every state has a PERC, whatever its name, whatever its powers. The Washington State commission is charged with providing “uniform and impartial . . . efficient and expert administration of state collective bargaining laws to ensure the public of quality public services.” To carry out this mission, PERC engages in mediation, fact-finding, interest arbitration (for public safety employees in cities with populations over 10,000), and grievance hearings. PERC, headquartered in Olympia, is the eight hundred-pound gorilla at the center of local labor relations.

What did PERC decide when the police guild went crying to them about the firefighters' Local 27 “incursion” into their bailiwick? They declared the mayor's common-sense protocol null and void. He'd failed to bargain with the guild. Given that this jurisdictional battle has been going on for at least a decade, it's not hard to understand why the mayor would have little confidence that “bargaining” would resolve the issue.

Local 27, incidentally, is hardly a paragon of maturity and social responsibility. For years they've fought to keep the police department's harbor patrol boat from fighting boat and wharf fires—even though it's equipped to do so. Even when their own boats are miles away. Even when the freaking fire threatens to burn down half the town.

State and city legislators, in Seattle and in other cities, have got to end ridiculous incidents like these. If they don't, it's time for the taxpaying public to demand legislative changes.

Exceptional police union leaders are worth recognizing, including former union president Mike Petchel of the Phoenix Police Department, former Police Officers' Association presidents Jack Pearson, Ron Newman, and current president Bill Farrar of SDPD, and Dr. Ted Hunt, president of the LAPD Protective League. These leaders, past and present, are obviously committed to improved “hours, wages, terms and conditions of
employment” for their members. But they're also dedicated to the advancement of police professionalism, and to improved relations with the community.

Petchel, now retired, sponsored joint labor-management retreats that focused on trust-building. He was highly regarded throughout Arizona, and the country, for his political acumen, his inclusive, conciliatory approach to “the opposition”—from police brass to community critics. Farrar writes a monthly column for San Diego Police Officers' Association's newsletter,
The Informant.
While you'd never mistake its (justifiable) labor bias and its decidedly conservative bent, the message is consistently informative—and remarkably free of rancor and petulance. Hunt, with a Ph.D. in public administration, has been as assiduous as his department bosses in LAPD's struggle to understand and prevent another “Rampart scandal.”
*
A senior fellow (on professional police practices) with the prestigious Institute for Developing Police Leaders (IDPL), Hunt believes, “Education is key to everything. It's the key to success, to understanding and tolerance.”

Union leaders like these need to be supported and encouraged. They prove that police union leadership need not be corrupt or malicious or ill-tempered or defensive. They demonstrate that unions can actually help rather than hinder the cause of police professionalism and accountability.

*
In 2000, facing the greatest scandal in LAPD history, and seeking to send a message of no confidence in their chief, the 9,500-member union called for an independent panel of citizens to provide oversight to internal investigations into police corruption and brutality.

*
If I were still Seattle's chief and Mike Edwards still its union president, I'd get an earful from him on this particular topic. Questioning my use of the term, he claimed, preposterously, that there was no such thing as a “cop culture.” Which made me think of that remark by Hanns Johst, often attributed to Hermann Goering, “When I hear the word ‘culture'. . . I reach for my pistol.” Hmm.

*
The police guild contended that the fire union was making a grab for jobs reserved for police officers. “Body of work” is not an unimportant issue to unions, whether in the public or private sector. It means jobs. And it means strength in numbers at bargaining time.

**
Ken Saucier was killed in an automobile crash in July 2004. He was returning to Seattle from Idaho, where, as one of the best shooters in SPD history, he'd participated in a pistol competition. Soft-spoken, always respectful in face-to-face communication, he was a fierce promoter and protector of officer safety and well-being. Something I greatly admired about him. I never understood the Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation that took place, however, when he put pen to paper.

*
The scandal ignited in 1999 when officer Rafael Perez of the LAPD Rampart Station was caught stealing cocaine from an evidence locker, blew the whistle on widespread planting of guns and drugs, perjury, and the imprisoning and even shooting of innocent people. Ultimately dozens of officers were implicated and hundreds of convictions overturned.

CHAPTER 23

LIVING WITH KILLING

P
ICTURE THE END OF
your life. See it not as a natural death, the kind where your body slows down, its plumbing occluding, its vision dimming, its skin spotting and stippling, its frame shrinking and stooping. Imagine your death instead as something sudden, unexpected, and violent. One moment you're an emoting, interdependent being with obligations and aspirations, the next you're gone. No chance to make amends to your spouse, your kids, your parents, your lover, your friends. No time to finish reading or writing that novel, talk to your God, gas the car, pull up your pants. No opportunity to say good-bye.

That's how homicide is. I know this because of the hundreds of homicide scenes I visited as a cop. And because of the one I committed.