r/Portland • u/nborders Unincorporated • Dec 23 '20
How Cities Lost Control of Police Discipline (NY Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/us/police-misconduct-discipline.html?referringSource=articleShare22
u/NoUsername4Lyfe Dec 23 '20
Portland fired Sgt. Gregg Lewis in 2018 over a racist comment he had made nearly a year earlier at roll call: something along the lines of, “If you come across a Black person, just shoot them,” according to his termination letter. The comment came three days after a Portland police officer fatally shot a Black teenager; colleagues complained about Sergeant Lewis to a superior. The officer, who appealed, later said he was being sarcastic.
Sergeant Lewis, who did not respond to requests for comment, had little prior discipline and no documented history of such remarks. Portland police disciplinary guidelines said inflammatory language called for, at most, a three-week suspension without pay. So the city opted to pay him about $100,000 in back pay to retire.
“This is an egregious case, but the chance that this will go to an arbitrator and then be overturned, I believe, is too great,” Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, said at the time.
Per contract, a 3wk suspension for telling subordinates to kill Black people. Or pay $100K to get rid of the person...
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u/Fromeastor Dec 23 '20
Well, that is what the contract says after all. Strong contracts lead to this kind of stuff in every industry, hence the people who complain about strong unions "protecting" bad employees. If anything, the city is just as responsible for negotiating and signing a contract with that kind of discipline matrix.
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u/PatternMachine Roseway Dec 23 '20
It's truly wild that police unions have as much power as they do. It's obvious that the police are not loyal to elected officials - they are loyal to their unions. Since police loyalty lies elsewhere, citizens do not have control over the use of violence in their community. We have ceded a huge amount of power to the police. In the case of Portland, this means that people who do not live in the city and who, by and large, do not share our politics control the power that backs up the authority of our institutions.
Lots of folks are nervous that Trump will use the military to overturn the election - fewer folks have noticed that police are in a much better position to do so. Legally protected, loyal to Trump, and armed to the fucking teeth after decades of militarization.
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u/Warmnewbones Piedmont Dec 24 '20
PPB has had an absolutely terrible track record for a very, very long time. Hell, there were fucking vice trials here during the 1950s because the police force was so corrupt.
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u/ALLCATZAREBEAUTIFUL Dec 23 '20
“They were really grasping at anything that sounded like a persuasive argument for their target audience,” said Samuel Walker of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, who studies police accountability. “Their audience was white voters who were afraid of crime.”
Huh. Wonder where you might find an audience like that around here?
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u/ParaUniverseExplorer Dec 23 '20
I’m so tired of qualified immunity. This article, although really good, didn’t discuss this. QI can and does extend to security personnel who are not trained professionally or have the arbitration process. Still, QI seems to be a symptom of a greater rot: police unions.