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I'm old enough and fortunate enough that the first time I had occasion to consider the police as an institution was when the creator of the great WKRP in Cincinnati shot the movie Police Academy in my hometown of Toronto. Described by the New York Times as “Animal House redecorated as a school for police officers… in a large U.S. city situated somewhere in Canada,” Police Academy was the box office surprise of 1984. The film’s success stemmed less from what may be the finest work of that great thespian Steve Guttenberg than a collection of comic characters as his cadet colleagues. Foremost among them was Cadet Larvell Jones played by Michael Winslow a.k.a. the Man of 10,000 Sound Effects, a human beatbox who could produce incredibly accurate sounds like flat tires, metal detectors, cash registers, Space Invaders, and badly-dubbed martial arts movies. Cadet Jones’ clever sounds never failed to trick antagonists and always struck me as a more effective policing tactic than Cadet Tackleberry’s assault weapons. If it weren’t already obvious, it’s now clear to the world that American policing needs more Joneses and fewer Tackleberrys.
What passed for plot in Police Academy was driven by tensions among City Hall, the Police Department, and the Academy itself. The Police Union didn't make an appearance, perhaps because more tragic than comic. Police unions are rightly being blamed for military equipment and unnecessarily aggressive policing on our streets. According to the New York Times, unions “aggressively protect the rights of members accused of misconduct… and… have been remarkably effective at fending off broader change, using their political clout and influence to derail efforts to increase accountability.” Research from University of Chicago Law School correlated unionization of sheriff’s offices in Florida with a 40% increase of incidents of violent misconduct. In Philadelphia, Police Staff Inspector Joseph Bologna wielded his baton to hit a Temple student in the head and also attacked a protester who dared touch his bike. In response to his suspension, the union began selling “Bologna Strong” T-shirts.
I’ve benefited from unions for most of my life. My mother – a community college professor – was a union member for nearly 40 years. My wife is an uncharacteristically militant member of the Writers Guild of America West which provides health coverage for our family. So I know that unions fight hard on behalf of their members for fair wages, benefits, and workplace safety. And unions have been instrumental in the Covid crisis; when tens of thousands of Las Vegas hotel and casino workers lost their jobs in March, the Culinary Workers Union negotiated exit packages, provided health insurance, and helped workers file for unemployment insurance.
But as I learn more about police unions, I bet I’m not the only education denizen who feels like he’s seen this movie before. While teachers unions haven’t been accused of fomenting violence, education reformers have tarred teachers unions for decades with a dog’s breakfast of misdeeds. Contracts negotiated by teachers unions protect teachers accused of misconduct or – more likely – bad teaching. They also prioritize seniority and allow the most experienced teachers to exit at-risk schools, relegating the least advantaged students to the least effective teachers.
What teachers and police unions have in common is commitment bordering on groveling fealty to current members, and to hell with everyone else. There is no accountability to the broader community – not only students, parents, and those of us who want law and order without violence or abuse, but also community members desperate for the socioeconomic boost that comes from entering the profession. Teachers unions have been notoriously resistant to alternative certification programs that provide faster + cheaper pathways to careers in classrooms, and a more plausible path for talented candidates (e.g., STEM subject matter experts) who didn’t have the foresight to take the requisite teacher education courses in college, or who couldn’t afford to complete college in the first place. The union impulse has been to keep a tight grip on the door to teaching; opening it any wider could flood the market with new talent, reduce salaries, and weaken the union.
Similarly, some police unions may pay lip service to community-based policing, but none play a role in establishing pathways to the profession in disadvantaged communities. Because it’s hard to envision an effective community-based policing strategy that doesn’t source talent in a representative way from the community, by failing to do so, police unions have created a self-serving, but very vicious circle: contributing to a lack of economic opportunity and social frustration that – until now – has allowed them to defend the militaristic tactics that kill 1,000 Americans each year.
As America bounces back hard from Trump and heads for a more communitarian era in which unions are poised to play a much bigger role, one pressing question raised by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery is whether unions will continue to serve parochial interests only, or will they be required to serve the broader community?
One important way to serve the community is to establish and manage pathways to entry-level jobs in their professions. Pre-Covid, America urgently needed faster + cheaper pathways to good jobs. Colleges and universities weren’t providing them. Employers weren’t providing them. The result was widespread underemployment and a sense that the American Dream was slipping away. With tens of millions of newly unemployed workers, Covid has transformed an absent dream into a nightmare. So it’s imperative that new intermediaries bridge the gap between education and employment. Many unions are in the best position to do so for their professions. Trade unions already do this in the form of apprenticeship programs; nearly 70% of U.S. registered apprentices are in the construction industry, and approximately 80% of these apprentices are in labor union-affiliated programs.
Fortunately, we already have one promising example beyond the building trades. SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) has partnered with Kaiser Permanente and jointly committed $130 million to launch Futuro Health. With a goal of placing 10,000 new allied healthcare workers by 2024, Futuro Health is providing career discovery, advising, coaching, and financing support for candidates interested in launching healthcare careers.
SEIU-UHW is onto something big, and I’m hopeful it’s just the start. Unions should extend the concept to its logical conclusion and provide paid pathways, with unions serving as employers of record through to placement with the ultimate hospital, police department, school district, or other employer. Unions could recoup the costs of sourcing, screening, training, and employing candidates with the dues they’ll collect from future members. The result would be powerful: no education friction for candidates to enter the profession (i.e., no-cost training, hired by union on day one); no hiring friction for employers who’d be able to try candidates before they buy.
SEIU-UHW should pursue this model and other unions should follow. But we can’t afford to take a chance. Unions have great power over many facets of American life, and with great power comes great responsibility. Labor unions in law enforcement, teaching, government, healthcare, and even Hollywood writers should have community responsibilities written into federal law that are consistent with the power that federal law vests in them.
Mandatory union-paid pathways would improve all these industries in two ways. First, better and more diverse talent would be attracted to the profession due to lack of friction. Second, try-before-you-buy allows employers to weed out bad hires before they become problems that get shuffled around – often to the school or precinct least likely to put up a fuss (i.e., serving the most marginalized communities). More important, union-paid pathways would significantly increase economic opportunity in our communities. And as an added bonus, if police unions were required to provide friction-free pathways to first jobs, we’d also have fewer Cadet Tackleberrys on our streets. I believe Cadet Jones has a sound effect for that [APPLAUSE].