It is the responsibility of any unionized workforce to elect people to leadership positions who will zealously represent their interests. But there can be a very fine line between zealous representation and zealotry.
Reasonable people understand that being a police officer does not somehow inherently make a person stupid or incompetent. There are many good officers in the Portland Police Bureau, and the fact that reasonable people have to keep pointing out that we do understand this fact in the main is because the leadership of the police union likes to paint all critics as extremists.
But the “leadership” of Portland’s police union certainly seems to take some very peculiar forms.
It believes that its officers might not be able to do their jobs if they have to fill out paperwork or face public scrutiny. In other words, in the course of allegedly representing its members’ interests, it calls those members too easily distracted to be able to properly perform their duties.
It tries to take advantage of a lack of proper public information about officer-involved shootings in order to conflate real incidents with hypothetical ones, confusing the public away from the truth. In other words, in the course of allegedly representing its members’ interests, it relies upon duping the public.
It argues that its officers move to use greater force simply because they become exhausted (pdf) when dealing with a suspect. In other words, in the course of allegedly representing its members’ interests, it claims that force is justified when officers become tired.
It asserts that any public discussion of why police data suggests a disparity between how people of different races are treated is the same as calling all police racists. In other words, in the course of allegedly representing its members’ interests, it refuses to see that even the appearance of impropriety is damaging to its officers.
It tries to deflect attention from its officers’ actions by lying about the family of someone who was killed in police custody. In other words, in the course of allegedly representing its members’ interests, it will smear and slander the families of victims.
There can be a very fine line between zealous representation and zealotry. It’s crossed when the leadership of the police union forgets that “to protect and to serve” means to protect and serve the public, as well as its own members.
Robert King and the other leaders of Portland’s police union are zealots, and the officers of Robert King’s House of Wingnuttery need to stop electing people like him to represent them.
Until they do — until they clean their own house and remove the leadership which disgraces the names and reputations of those many good police officers who protect and serve the City of Portland — they cannot expect reasonable people to support them.
