Police unions have ... not been doing police or the union movement proud lately, and not just in Ferguson or New York City. The latest is from Pittsburgh, PA, where the police union is outraged that Chief Cameron McLay had the nerve to pose with
a sign saying he'd fight racism. Why? Because the sign specifically said "I resolve to challenge racism @ work. #End white silence."
The photo swept across social media, and local police union president Howard McQuillan took the statement against racism as an affront to the entire police department, telling KDKA: “The chief is calling us racists. He believes the Pittsburgh Police Department is racist. This has angered a lot of officers.”
There's a lot to be said about systemic racism, and how even an individual police officer with absolutely no personal bias whatsoever (as if any of us has absolutely no personal bias whatsoever; as if that's even possible) can be pushed into problematic actions by a system that is itself biased. But even if you set aside the systemic issues, seriously, Howard McQuillan? Are you suggesting that there is not one single Pittsburgh police officer who harbors any kind of racist sentiments? Not one? Because if there's one, it's still worth challenging that racism, right?
Unions—police unions included—absolutely should push for due process for their members accused of wrongdoing. But police unions seem to be going past that, to an insistence that members shouldn't need due process because they shouldn't face any consequences for wrongdoing to begin with. Not even consequences like criticism, not even when they kill unarmed civilians. That police, in fact, can do no wrong and that to suggest that they ever do is an outrage against justice and the rule of law. As if the uniform makes the human being infallible even in a broken system. Which, no.