When it's a police union, apparently.
I mean, any other public employee union that refused to do any more than the "necessary" minimum at their job, openly disrespected their elected boss, all while conveniently being involved in contract negotiations, would find itself the target of GOP ire of the highest caliber. Heck, Reagan fired the air traffic controllers for less.
But the "law and order is the most important" meme apparently still carries more weight than the "unions, especially public employee unions, are evil" meme, in some quarters.
And, yes, I, too, am amazed by the lack of comment over the idea that the police are now, at the behest of their union, only arresting people "when absolutely necessary." The implication being that people were being arrested when not necessary, which says something right there.
Interesting times.
Originally shared by +Yonatan Zunger:
Several people have latched on the NYPD's recent conduct at police funerals, and their work stoppage afterwards, to political ends. This article does an excellent job of analyzing why this is in fact a terrible thing for all concerned, something that both the Left and the Right should oppose.
I would also note that the NYPD's work slowdown in the aftermath, really more of a stoppage at this point, has led to a precipitous decline in arrests: as the New York Post reports (http://nypost.com/2014/12/29/arrests-plummet-following-execution-of-two-cops/), overall arrests are down 66%, traffic citations 94%, and likewise summons for low-level offenses like public drinking and urination. Drug arrests are down 84%. The consequences of this are going to be very interesting to watch, because it essentially runs an experiment which would never be politically viable to run in ordinary circumstances: What happens if you essentially stop arresting people for low-level offenses?
The revenue consequence for the city will certainly be significant, as fines and fees (court fees can often exceed the fines themselves by an order of magnitude) are a major source of income. But this puts a lot of "broken windows" theories to a direct test. (Not, you may note, the original "broken windows" theory, which was really about what happens when the population is invested in keeping everything in the society running smoothly, so that even a single broken window is promptly fixed, but rather the version of it which was promulgated by Giuliani, where aggressive policing of minor infractions was supposed to reduce major ones)
The strangest thing about this, though, is that the police union, in its call for a slowdown, instructed its members not to make arrests "unless absolutely necessary," and that police say now that they are only arresting people "when they have to." This phrasing does rather raise an eyebrow — are they saying that they ordinarily arrest people when they don't have to?
(Alas, the answer to this is "yes." Thanks to the Atwater (2001) Supreme Court decision, the law of the land is that the police may arrest anyone who has committed any crime, no matter how minor. They may be strip-searched (Florence, 2012), assessed fees easily ten times greater than any fines possible, and get various ancillary consequences, like the loss of their job due to the arrest, impoundment of their vehicle as it was "abandoned" when they were taken away, and so forth. This is a significant deviation from early American law, where arrests required either a felony or an arrest warrant signed by a magistrate, but essentially codifies a practice which started in the post-Civil War period and which has become de rigeur for police today. In the original Atwater case, for example, the offense in question was a seat belt violation, and it was very clear from the record that the main reason for the arrest was that the police officer in question knew and disliked Atwater. However, the Court ruled 5-4 that this was legal. You can read an overview of this at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atwater_v._Lago_Vista
If you want to learn more about the law of search, seizure, and arrest, as usual the best source is Burney's law comic, in particular this section:
The NYPD’s Insubordination—and Why the Right Should Oppose It
The virtual work stoppage unfolding in New York City illustrates one of several ways that powerful police unions can threaten public safety as they seek political leverage.
