TO PROTECT AND TO SERVE

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #404

So what is the remedy? Reclaim the ability fully to punish police officers who abuse their powers. And what stands in the way of enforcing that responsibility? Police unions routinely defend all officers, and their financial and political power almost always allows them to succeed in those defenses. So often even the worst police officers can’t be fired. How has that happened? Police and other public employee’s unions have more control over local elections than any other group in our society, including elections for members of county boards of supervisors, city councils, sheriffs and even state legislators and senators. So the unions carefully pick the candidates they will support, and those candidates know full well that if they do not do the public employee’s union’s bidding once they are elected, the unions will either sponsor a recall election against them, or will certainly support someone else next time. That is what happened to former California State Senator John Moorlach, Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Hewitt, Santa Ana City Councilwoman Cecylia Iglesias and many more. So reducing the financial ability of public employee’s unions to support or oppose any candidates who oversee their members is a good place to start. The other step is to repeal the court-created doctrine of qualified immunity, which stands for the proposition that public officials cannot be disciplined unless it is found that their actions “violated clearly-established law.” Of course, we in the law can almost always find some small factual or legal variance between what the present public official is accused of and the previous precedent where some public officials were held accountable. So access to administrative and even judicial discipline is almost always denied. For the benefit of our society at large, this too must change.

Quote for the week: “I tried to re-marry my ex-wife, but she figured out that I was only doing it for my money.”