The Liberal Case Against Public Unions

Derek Chauvin, the policeman who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, had a history of citizen complaints and was thought to be “tightly wound,” not a trait ideal for someone patrolling the streets with a deadly weapon. But under the police union’s collective bargaining agreement, the police commissioner lacked the authority to dismiss Derek Chauvin, or even to reassign him.

There’s near zero accountability in America’s police departments. A 2017 Washington Post report on police discipline examined data from 37 large cities and found a dismissal rate of less than two-tenths of 1 percent, or 130 officers per year out of 91,000.

Democracy is designed as a process of accountability. Voters elect governors and mayors to deliver public services effectively, and, if they disappoint, voters hold them accountable at the next election. To fulfill their constitutional obligations, elected executives must be empowered to manage public employees. Democracy can’t work, as James Madison put it, without an unbroken “chain of dependence…[from] the lowest officers, the middle grade, and the highest.”

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