The Boston Teachers Union drew fire from the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association in February over their support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We can’t both stand with a police system that’s set up to hurt our black community and stand up for our people of color who are oppressed by police,” a representative of a member SEIU Healthcare union explained.
And as outrage grows at the way police seem to be able to kill black people with impunity ¾ with officers rarely charged and almost never convicted ¾ attention is turning increasingly from individual officers to law enforcement unions.
While on the one hand racial justice advocates and progressive politicians are calling for curbs on police unions to hold violent cops accountable, some right-leaning commentators are seizing the moment to suggest that the problem lies not with police unions, but with collective bargaining in general, thus widening the spotlight to other public sector unions.
In a recent forum, “Police Unions in the House of Labor,” hosted by the UMass Labor Extension, panelists wrestled with the difficult question of “how we engage with police as an institution or with the police officers who are also our members.”