Posts Tagged ‘police unions’

Great moments in public sector arbitration

“A police lieutenant, fired for covering up a hit and run crash involving a fellow officer [she] was involved in a relationship with, has been reinstated following an arbitration decision that chastised the city’s Police Commission.” Christine Burns also got six months back pay. The arbitrator found that Burns’s boyfriend had been treated leniently, drawing only a one-year unpaid suspension despite serious misconduct, which in turn deprived her of her right to be treated “evenhandedly and without discrimination.” [Connecticut Post]

And while we’re at it: Police union defends Denver cop fired for driving drunk at 143 mph [Tina Korbe, Hot Air; The Truth About Cars]

Update roundup

Further on stories we’ve noted in the past:

Great moments in public sector unionism

“U Raise ‘Em/We Cage ‘Em” t-shirts from a California law enforcement union [Radley Balko] From the same source, “NYPD cops demand the right to be corrupt.” And on Friday at Cato at Liberty, I gave my take on Ohio’s vote today on whether to approve a package of laws reining in public employee unionism.

More on Ohio’s S.B. 5, including political post-mortem: Michael Barone, Mark Steyn, Ted Frank, Mickey Kaus, Mytheos Holt. Philip K. Howard points out in the WSJ that the LIRR’s disability epidemic is “hardly unique – 82% of senior California state troopers are ‘disabled’ in their last year before retirement” [WSJ; more on LIRR, Nicole Gelinas] Radley Balko has another revealing police union vignette, this time from an incident in which an off-duty cop led another cop on a high-speed chase. And from Brian Strow [Western Kentucky], “Stop, Drop, and Roll: The Privileged Economic Position of Firefighters” [Library of Economics and Liberty]

Wall Street protests roundup

With some help from Cato colleagues:

New at Cato: public employee binding arbitration

I’ve got a new blog post up at Cato on the article in yesterday’s New York Times tracing how unsustainable police and fire contracts — the product, more specifically, of a pro-union state law imposing binding arbitration on municipalities — have driven the city of Central Falls to the brink of bankruptcy. Read it here. Matt Welch discusses the same article at Reason “Hit and Run.”

Great moments in public-sector unionism

In Scranton, Pennsylvania, the police union has filed a grievance with the state collective bargaining board over a drug arrest made by police chief Dan Duffy in March, “because the chief is not a member of the collective bargaining unit and was ‘off duty’ when the March 20 arrest was made. ‘I think it’s absurd. I’m not going to turn my head on crime that takes place,’ Chief Duffy said. ‘I took the same oath (as a police officer) that everyone else took.'” [Times-Tribune via Taranto]

BoingBoing applauds cops’ lawlessness

Sure. What could go wrong with that? Relatedly, Ann Althouse wonders how we’ll all react next year when Group X demands the right to occupy the Wisconsin capitol for 10+ days. Consistently? (& welcome Instapundit readers).

More: “Did Wisconsin Police Violate the First Amendment through Selective Enforcement of Limits on Protests?” [Hans Bader]

Beer lobby fighting California pot initiative

The California Beer & Beverage Distributors has contributed money to defeat the marijuana-legalization measure, as have police groups. One consideration that might shed light on the latter stance: “Police forces are entitled to keep property seized as part of drug raids and the revenue stream that comes from waging the drug war has become a significant source of support for local law enforcement.” Surprisingly, the politically active prison-guards union has not (yet) thrown its weight onto the “no” side, though prison supervisors have. [Ryan Grim, HuffPo via Tabarrok]

July 28 roundup

Wounded in shootout, sheriff’s deputies sue widow

Last year in Shingle Springs, Calif., a schizophrenic 34-year-old named Eddie Mies gunned down his father and then engaged in a shootout with sheriff’s deputies which resulted in his own death and the wounding of three deputies. Now two of the deputies have sued Karen Mies, mother of the slain gunman and widow of his slain father, as well as her late husband’s estate and surviving son for a combined $8 million for “for emotional distress, medical expenses, loss of earning capacity, and punitive damages.” They claim the family should have controlled Eddie better, and say the deputies “suffered anxiety and humiliation” in addition to their physical injuries.

Attorney Phillip Mastagni of Sacramento, “whose family law firm works for police unions across Northern California”, is representing the two deputies, Jon Yaws and Greg Murphy, in the suit filed in El Dorado County. Mastagni says he is confident that the suit will overcome the “firefighters’ rule”, a doctrine that historically has barred lawsuits by public safety officers against those whose negligence has allegedly led to emergencies. The rule has decayed considerably in recent years in some jurisdictions, and suits by firefighters, police, paramedics and other rescuers have multiplied.

The defendant, Mrs. Mies, a hospice nurse, had this to say:

“June 5 was a tragic day for me and my family, and it was a tragic day for the deputies who were injured,” Karen Mies said. “We were all victims that day. But this lawsuit is victimizing our family again. What do they want? My husband’s dead, my son’s dead. Do they want my house and my 10-year-old car?”

(Dorothy Korber, “Son battled officers; now mom fights suit”, Sacramento Bee, Aug. 10). Smallest Minority (Aug. 20) is particularly intrigued by allegations of “bunkers and tunnels” supposedly maintained by the younger Mies.

Public criticism that followed initial reports of the lawsuit doesn’t seem to have softened Yaws and Murphy any: per one later account (AR15.com Forums, scroll to update at end of first entry, source not identified) they’ve upped their demand to $38.4 million. What are said to be excerpts of other recent local coverage can be found on page 6 of the same extensive comments section. And the name of the third injured deputy, the one who did not sue, deserves to be recorded in this place as well: it is Melissa Meekma. More: Pro Libertate.