But analyzing their collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) shows that police unions are not normal & their contracts are antithetical to justice & even reasonable expectations in the realm of labor relations. Removing repeat offenders is really nearly impossible

One report found that between 1985 and 1990, the San Diego County’s district attorney’s office absolved all police officers of criminal liability in all 190 police-involved shootings

Since its founding in 2007, Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority has investigated 400 police shootings of civilians. In that time, the Authority only found one shooting to be unjustified.

In Philadelphia, a Police Advisory Commission inquiry found that in twenty-six cases of discharged police officers between 2008 and 2013, nineteen had been reinstated after arbitration, including the case of an officer who had been caught on video striking a woman during a parade

In Oakland, in a particularly egregious example, a police offer who had been involved in two shootings of unarmed civilians during a seven-month period was reinstated with back pay by an arbitrator. Many other examples exist from other cities

Police unions have bargained for provisions in their contracts that suppress information that could aid dismissals & prosecutions for use of force, insert significant procedural delays into investigations, & make terminations of bad actors exceedingly expensive & time-consuming

I looked at Chicago and NY's police contracts. Chicago’s contract runs one-hundred and seventy-eight pages cover to cover, while New York’s is a mere thirty-nine. Part of that is Chicago union's power. But officials in NY are also not interested in prosecuting.

Chicago's union contract is a veritable goodie bag of unimaginable privileges that immunize police from any accountability at all

Police discipline can't be bargained over under NY state law so police actually have little in the contract giving them special protections. Their power is mostly political, supported by police officials, feckless politicians, & the exclusion of communities from decision-making

The differences in Chicago & NY suggest contracts need to be changed but also the entire structure around policing. Police unions' political power, more than their contracts, control the discourse & inability to hold them accountable. Clearly, the protests show us this.

The NY vs Chicago comparison also reminds us that taking power away from unions alone won't improve the situation. Police managers & local governments are principally interested in controlling communities & maintaining discretion over policies, rather than containing abuse

Civilian review boards don't pursue cases aggressively & commissioners stand by & reinstate disciplined police, failing to use their power to alter the terms of the bargaining relationship. No amount of lip service changes the situation. The whole system is rotten.

All parties (police, chiefs, politicians) also benefit from vagueness of standards of force. No one can be accused or convicted if there is no clear standard for where force is used illegitimately, or if the standard is ever laxer as the ruling class sees itself under siege

On the fiscal side, police violence is expensive and it's a worsening problem. WSJ reported that in '14 the cities w/ the 10 largest police depts paid $248.7 mi compared to $168.3 million in '10. New York alone paid $601.3 million from 2010 to 2014 for police misconduct

The Better Government Association found that Chicago paid $521.3 million to settle misconduct lawsuits from 2004 to 2014, while the city has faced severe budgetary shortfalls that has led to school closures and labor unrest.

All that said, the problem of police unions shouldn't be an invitation to attack public sector unions. Police unions are special. On the whole, public unions help create stable, more qualified workforces that better serve the public. See @CharlotteGarden http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/friedrichs-state/424434/

Ultimately, the interests of victims of police brutality and over-policed communities militate strongly in favor of curtailing immunity & "enhanced" due process for law enforcement. Police union contracts must ideally be nothing more than a wage scale & limitation on all force

But most importantly, as so many people have pointed out, until now the police have been politically unassailable. This is the moment to attack their political power, strip them of funding and voice in the political process.

TL:DR: At the level of CBAs, the most important reform needed is to make removal of repeat offenders as easy as possible. At the larger societal level, reducing the ranks of the police & putting communities in charge of policing are clearly needed to improve safety & services