What to Read This Week
1. “Minneapolis Police Union Boss Barred From Employment In 3 Counties.”
Bob Kroll, former head of the Minneapolis Police union, agreed to a decade-long ban on employment as a police officer in the greater Minneapolis area—Hennepin, Ramsey and Anoka counties. As the Associated Press reported, the terms are “part of a settlement filed over police treatment of protesters after the death of George Floyd. Kroll also agreed that he wouldn’t serve on the state board that oversees police licensing[.]”
The complaint filed in the underlying lawsuit paints a disturbing picture of the disregard and intolerance that Kroll exuded. For example, as citizens took to the streets in Minneapolis to protest George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derrick Chauvin, Kroll—then a high-ranking Lieutenant in the department—characterized this activity as “the largest scale riot Minneapolis has ever seen,” “a record breaking riot,” and a “terrorist movement.”
Kroll also sent the following note to Minneapolis police officers amidst the protests: “I commend you for the excellent police work you are doing in keeping your coworkers and others safe during what everyone except us refuses to call a riot . . . . The politicians are to blame and you are the scapegoats.”
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Kroll also amassed at least twenty internal affairs investigations aimed at him during his tenure at the Minneapolis Police Department. In one instance, after a random person insulted him on the internet, Kroll replied in writing: “Keep spewing uninformed shit from your computer in your mom’s basement, loser … If you hate me so much, why don’t you stop by and beat the shit out of me? My bet is it won’t happen, because you are a cowardly cunt.”
And, in an older racial discrimination lawsuit against the Minneapolis Police Department, filed by the now Minneapolis Police Chief, Kroll is alleged to “wear a motorcycle jacket with a ‘White Power’ badge sewn onto it.” He also called now-Minneapolis Attorney General and then “United States Congressman Keith Ellison, who is a Muslim and black, a terrorist [and] made discriminatory comments against a homosexual aide to [the] Minneapolis Mayor[.]”
2. Police Unions Go Scorched-Earth Against Minor Reforms.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, waves of police chiefs responded with announcements of sweeping changes to use-of-force policies, including bans on chokeholds. The creation of civilian oversight boards of police departments also ballooned—71 of the top 100 most populous cities now have a civilian board. In fact, civilian oversight boards have become “almost universal” in the country’s largest cities, and even among the smallest cities, nearly half of them have oversight boards, researchers found. There are also strong majorities of Democratic, Republican, and Independent voters in support of chokehold bans and civilian oversight boards. Still, police unions around the country are waging war against these popular and commonplace policy shifts. Here are just four recent examples:
Buffalo. Writing for The Buffalo News, Deidre Williams describes the push for a civilian oversight effort as “one of the bigger changes pushed for” following the police killing of George Floyd. Yet, three years later, Buffalo still does not have a civilian oversight board in place. Why not? Police union President John Evans offered a clue: “If the city were to attempt to give a board disciplinary powers, Buffalo's police union would stand against it… We would exhaust every resource to fight it…”
San Antonio. For the San Antonio Report, Iris Dimmick reports that the San Antonio police union is hold-my-beering the Buffalo police union’s threat to “exhaust every resource” by spending $878,754—with just over 98% of its contributions coming from the union itself—to fight a ballot measure that would (among other issues) ban chokeholds and restrict use of no-knock warrants.
Nashville. Writing for The Nashville Scene, Steven Hale details how the Nashville police union literally exhausted every legal resource to fight against civilian oversight of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, which voters “passed decisively [in 2018] with 58 percent of the vote.” Hale explains that before being turned away by the Tennessee Supreme Court, “Nashville's police union had already lost at the ballot box, the election commission, and two lower courts...”
Saint Louis. The same court drama that played out in Tennessee seems to be playing out right now in Missouri. As Taylor Tiamoyo Harris reported for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “a Circuit Court judge this week dismissed a lawsuit by St. Louis police officer unions that sought to block a civilian oversight bill supported by Mayor Tishaura O. Jones.” The unions are particularly upset over a provision in the oversight bill that grants “the power to subpoena members of law enforcement amidst claims of misconduct.” Yet, as Mayor Jones put the point following the court’s dismissal of the police union’s claim—“Accountability builds community trust, which is necessary to improve public safety.”
3. Chicago’s Police Union Boss Waged A Bitter Political Battle—And Lost. Now What?
“Eleven Days To Save The City,” John Cataranza, the President of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police, wrote in the days leading up to the city’s mayoral election: “If we do not get Paul Vallas elected, there WILL be a major exodus [of police officers] who will not work for a bigger anti-police mayor than the current one, [which] will absolutely translate to more crime, violence and blood on the streets of this great city because there will be so few police.”
So, what’s the exodus–inducing agenda that mayor-elect Brandon Johnson plans to implement?
Thus far, he’s said he will:
Appoint a police superintendent “who’s compassionate, collaborative, competent, has the trust and the voices of the rank and file members [, and] obviously understands the value and importance of constitutional policing”;
“Invest in promoting 200 more detectives to focus on solving crimes”;
These priorities aren’t exactly radiating police abolitionist vibes.
Perhaps that’s why, earlier this week, former Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said that he believed the mayor-elect to be “very reasonable, willing to listen and I can tell that he absolutely wants to bring the city back together.” Even Paul Vallas, the beneficiary of Cataranza’s fear-stoking hyperbole, was quick to criticize him: “I condemn his comments. I think his comments are absolutely irresponsible. Period. They’re absolutely irresponsible and they have no place in this campaign.”
Bob Bartlett, a long-time detective within the Chicago Police Department, told the Chicago Sun Times that Cataranza “has eroded every group of people he is involved with … Our state legislators. People at City Hall. City Council. Yelling at aldermen who are our friends. It’s gotten so bad that legislators won’t work with him to get stuff done in Springfield.” Cataranza even “threatened to expel a Black officer from the union for kneeling with protesters after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.”
If, as Bartlett claims, Cataranza’s behavior is costing him political capital with friends of the FOP, then what is his nuclear rhetoric doing to harm relationships with lawmakers who Cataranza targets? It seems unlikely that Cataranza’s hostility is helping to paint the Chicago Police Department in the best light for lawmakers or helping rank and file officers secure a pay raise or a better pension.
This tension used to go unnoticed because union-supported candidates for major offices, like mayor or District Attorney, customarily won their races. That’s changing. Call it the diminished power of police unions, or chalk it up to an increasing chasm between candidates that voters support and candidates that police unions favor. The bottom-line is that an endorsement from a police union doesn’t carry the same heft these days.