Earlier this month the New York Times ran an editorial entitled “When Police Unions Impede Justice.” They make the point that collective bargaining agreements for police employees often make it very difficult to hold police officers accountable for misconduct. When you have nearly 1.0 million sworn police officers in the United States, you’re bound to have a few bad apples. According to the NYT, these collective bargaining agreements discourage citizens from lodging misconduct complaints, micromanage investigations, and minimize disciplinary sanctions.

This isn’t news. It’s one of the reasons collective bargaining agreements for police officersare especially problematic. The other big problem with collective bargaining agreements for members of public safety are theoften excessive and unaffordable benefit packages they’ve “negotiated” with the politicians whose careersare made or broken by these same unions. So what if police unions were abolished?

One may argue that abolishing police unions in favor of police associations – which… Read More