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Other police officers
I don't think you've spoken with actual police officers much, there is huge divide between state police and local police in the US.
I’m sorry you think that, you’d be wrong on the assumption though.
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I challenge you to find a sector of society to whom police (and their unions) are not antagonistic.
most society sectors that happens to be outside America
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Given how prevalent police unions are, and how incredibly quick they are to raise complaints, you'd hope for more self-awareness/solidarity and less hypocrisy.
If a police union demands too much, they don't threaten their employer with going out of business the way private sector unions do. The private sector union is naturally constrained to saying, "We want to help you build a reliable business for the long term; treat us fairly and we will do good work." Sometimes, of course, they do better at this than other times, but it is never in a union's interest to impair the bus…
Yet, that’s what they do. The Packard car company is one such victim.
Unions bankrupted Twinkies.
The work rules imposed in union contracts required the company that makes Twinkies, which also makes Wonder Bread, to deliver these two products to stores in separate trucks. Moreover, truck drivers were not allowed to load either of these products into their trucks. And the people who did load Twinkies into trucks were not allowed to load Wonder Bread, and vice versa.
All of this was obviously intended to create more jobs for the unions' members. But the needless additional costs that these make-work rules created ended up driving the company into bankruptcy.
The labor leader John L. Lewis called so many strikes in the coal mines that many people switched to using oil instead, because they couldn't depend on coal deliveries. A professor of labor economics at the University of Chicago called John L. Lewis "the world's greatest oil salesman." The higher costs of producing coal not only led many consumers to switch to oil. They also led coal companies to substitute machinery for labor, reducing the number of miners.
There is also a reason why labor unions are flourishing among people who work for government. No matter how much these public-sector unions drive up costs, government agencies do not go out of business. They simply go back to the taxpayers for more money.
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There has always seemed to be an antagonistic relationship between police unions and trade unions. Police unions are often disallowed membership in so-called "big tent" unions due to their perceived past and alleged ongoing role in union-busting. Since the early 20th century, there hasn't been a meaningful reconciliation between the movements (and often, the role of police in general is perceived to be inherently ant…
I challenge you to find a sector of society to whom police (and their unions) are not antagonistic.
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As discussed above, police unions are a different beast. And an explicitly partisan union would be a shot in the foot of the organizers. That's not exactly how you build solidarity.
I'm not sure what you mean. Many unions are explicitly partisan organizations, and indeed many see political activism as one of their core activities.
Please do correct me if I'm wrong! That's my favorite way to learn. I've grown a lot from being the least-informed gal in the room.
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If a police union demands too much, they don't threaten their employer with going out of business the way private sector unions do. The private sector union is naturally constrained to saying, "We want to help you build a reliable business for the long term; treat us fairly and we will do good work." Sometimes, of course, they do better at this than other times, but it is never in a union's interest to impair the bus…
Aren't police unions similar to other government unions, like teachers unions then?
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Suppose they were republican organizations. Would you feel the same? Picture this: You take a job writing software for camera boxes on power poles. It happens to be direct employment with a police department, and it isn't management, so somehow you wind up forced to join the police union. Every election, they give millions of dollars to the republican candidates. They supported Bush. This year, they give Trump $42,00…
Not Democratic as in the party, democratic as in the members vote on what the union does.
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I'm not sure what you mean. Many unions are explicitly partisan organizations, and indeed many see political activism as one of their core activities.
As far as I understand they are "partisan" not by design but as a result of representing their interests (which, in my opinion, should always represent the aggregate of the workers the union represents -- which is sadly not so) Please do correct me if I'm wrong! That's my favorite way to learn. I've grown a lot from being the least-informed gal in the room.
It infuriates many of the workers. They start off angry from being forced to pay an undesired membership fee, essentially a private income tax, and then the union pours salt in their wounds by lobbying to maintain the forced relationship and by supporting politicians that anger the workers.
Imagine being forced to fund your most hated politician. That is the reality for millions of American workers.
Unions represent the interests of unions. Workers would be better served by class-action lawsuits, which sadly are being suppressed due to a supreme court decision that allowed forced arbitration. That supreme court decision was not based on constitutionality, and thus could be undone with a simple ordinary act of congress. Unions could also be wiped out by congress. Doing both at the same time would make sense. Class action lawsuits are a far less corrupt way to address worker abuse.
What I recently have started to think about is how these sorts of stories COULD be used as a tool to further their cause if the "victim" wanted it to be.
What better way to shine a light on a cause than to manufacture a story that shows they have real enemies who are actively trying to disrupt their cause?
Again, not saying this case is such, but only here to say the future is going to be hard to get right. Everyone will be an expert (if they want to be) at stirring up dissonance.
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SkyCop cameras are anything but covert. They are meant to present an obvious police presence. https://www.skycopinc.com/ https://www.google.com/search?q=skycop+camera&source=lnms&tb...
Thanks. I'm well aware of how Skycop cameras appear, as well as their website address. The MPD has over 2,000 of them deployed. Did you consider, if this camera box existed and was covert, how it was located immediately after it was placed? Who was it that climbed the pole to open a box that said, "High Voltage," and take pictures of the inside? If the actual box looked nothing like a Skycop deployment, why was the f…
Your assertion that this is likely a skycop seems to however not based on any evidence.