discipline in law enforcement essay

Discipline as an Integral Part of Effective Police Supervision Essay

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Introduction

Fostering discipline in the police force.

The police department, as faction of the judiciary and law enforcer, cannot be allowed to be tainted with traces of indiscipline. It is a ridicule and an outright insult to the judicial system in its totality. The duty to ensure that unbecoming behavior and unacceptable professional conduct does not gain ground in the police force is bestowed on the police supervisor.

For the effective role of supervisor to be fully realized, the individual supervisor cannot overlook the importance of a disciplined force. Without discipline, the supervisor will have failed as an individual and failed the whole institution as well. This essay looks into the maintenance of discipline among the police as an integral part of effective police supervision.

Supervisors as disciplinarians

The ability to maintain discipline among the subordinates is one way of measuring the suitability of a supervisor for the role. The sergeant is the most important party in the police force, and his position the most challenging one. “It is the sergeant…who plays the pivotal role and, in large measure determines whether the police department will face unfair labor practice charges, costly arbitrations, lengthy litigation, and more union activism,” (More & Miller 2007, P.314).

The police are the point of connection between law enforcers and the society. They have been given discretion to deal with matters concerning the public such as determining when to arrest a suspect or when to shoot. “The powers that police hold and exercise…if improperly used, reduce public confidence in police, decrease respect for the law, and increase fear amongst a community, thus destabilizing it,” (Office of Police Integrity 2007, P. 18).

When a supervisor sleeps on his work as the disciplinarian organ of the institution the result is; “lower quality of service provided by a given department and undermine the integrity of the entire profession,” (More & Miller 2007, P. 316). Further, “poor supervision and the lack of effective disciplinary mechanisms allow ‘loose cannons’ who are in positions of power to abuse that power,” (More & Miller 2007, P. 317).

Being the one who has the most contact with the subordinates, he can use that advantageous position to create a police force whose professional standards are not tainted with unethical issues.

The discipline could be constructive or punitive. Constructive refers to disciplinary measures geared to create internal discipline of an officer while punitive comes way after the employee has been found to have committed an indiscretion and is intended to make him not repeat the act, and should only be used when all other alternatives are depleted.

Good disciplinary measures

Sergeants, when they notice indiscipline, should not wait until the situation gets out of hand. They should take corrective measures with immediate effect. “Failure to act promptly and decisively tends to perpetuate the problem and sets the stage for more debilitating interpersonal conflict,” (More & Miller 2007, P. 301).

It makes other subordinates believe that the disciplinary measure laid down by the organization are merely for formalism purposes and are not really applicable. Further, they show that the supervisor is in control and has the authority over the subordinates yielding respect from them.

The disciplining should also be firm and fair and must be seen to be applied indiscriminately and equitably. “A great sergeant establishes a sense of equity. This doe’s not mean people are always treated equally, just always fairly,” (Werder, 1996).

They should not be in violation of any written law or accepted rules of procedure and the subordinate must be able to understand his reasons of being disciplined. The root of the indiscipline and motive of performing the act must be established through enough evidence and the errant subordinate must be given a chance to be heard and explain his case.

Further, other less serious disciplinarian measures such as formal reprimands or arbitration should be tried out before the supervisor can jump to the more serious ones such as demotion or discharge. The measure adopted should be reasonable and not excessive taking into consideration the circumstances of the particular case.

The disciplinary measure should be less bureaucratic and filled with many formalities. A research currently conducted showed that “amongst the significant defects with the current discipline system, are the numerous, inconsistent, excessively formal and slow review and appeal processes available,” (Office of Police Integrity 2007, P. 14)

The employees should be properly informed of the unacceptable form of behavior to avoid a situation where the employee was unaware of the existence of the offence in the first place. “Once, the subordinate knows the rules he knows what to expect in case of failure to follow the disciplinary code,” (Shimansky 2006).

The discipline measures adopted must have just two objectives i.e., to act as a future deterrence both to the deviant subordinate and to the others or to change the specific individual and ensure he is reformed.

Any other objective of the supervisor such as to muster control of the subordinate or to settle some old scores, will be inappropriate and an abuse of power. The supervisor must at all time guard himself against making an emotional decision on discipline matters. They must remain in total control of the situation without having to be accommodative of subordinate’s improper behavior.

As much as supervisors are mandated to maintain discipline, they should not take to themselves the habit of nosing around the private business of the subordinates. All their actions should be confined to circumstances within the formal business of the organization. What the subordinate does outside the employment circle should be a no go zone for the supervisor.

The most effective manner of maintaining discipline is by outlining some procedures and principles, uniform to the whole organization, that every individual has to adhere to. The rules must also prescribe the right punitive measures to be undertaken in case of the subordinates defying such rules.

This makes the system a lot more formal and will yield respect from subjects. It will also ensure uniformity and avoid situations where the subordinate feels unfairly handled. They must, accordingly be communicated to all the subjects in a manner to obtain acceptance from them. Rules which are not generally accepted by the subjects often result into a situation of chaos and unresolved conflicts.

Positive discipline

These are measures taken by the supervisor long before any indiscipline has been detected. they are more of preventive measures as opposed to curative. They are aimed at securing the officers loyalty to the principles and procedures and get them to adhere to such policies willingly, without being sanctioned.

The subordinates are driven by “the human tendency to do what needs to be done, to do what is right in a given situation, and to voluntarily comply with the reasonable standards of performance and conduct that apply to all members of the workforce,” (More & Miller 2007,P. 291).

The supervisor has the duty of ensuring that create this kind of dedication from the subordinates. They develop self-discipline where the subordinate decide to give their all to the better performance of the whole institution for which they work for. Here, the supervisor simply acts as role model to be emulated.

They take a personal decision to motivate the subordinates through recognition and rewards. They create an environmental that is necessary for the growth of such a self-driven employee. A supervisor who has acquired skills and expertise to achieve this is a quality staff to the institution.

Discipline in the police force is one of the most important things and the topic should be handled with care. Lack of discipline in the force means that the indiscipline is extended to the society in general since a person who is undisciplined himself cannot function to the right standards.

But as much as we delve in punitive discipline institutions should realize that the most important discipline is the positive discipline. When subordinates are internally disciplined, the effects will be long lasting as opposed to corrective discipline which is administered after some malpractice has already happened. Police supervisors should seek to adopt methods of according positive discipline if they want to be effective in the role in the long run.

More, H and Miller, L. (2007). Effective Police Supervision: Coaching, Counseling and mentoring , 5th Ed, Chapter 11-13, copyright Mathew Bender and Company, Inc, a member of the LexisNexis Group

Office of Police Integrity. (2007). A fair and Effective Victoria Police Discipline System , Victorian Government Printer, session 2006-2007, P.P No. 3

Shimansky.B. (2006). Discipline as an integral Part of Effective Supervision, retrieved from web.

Werder, E.J. (1996). The Great Sergeant! Personal Qualities of a Great Sergeant, National Executive Institute Associates, Major Cities Chief’s Association and Major County Sheriff’s Association.

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Police Discipline: A Case for Change

This paper discusses the issues surrounding the police discipline process.

Law enforcement officials, police personnel, and the general public have long been frustrated by the extensive and involved process in dealing with police discipline. Police executives are often upset that a case that has taken months and sometimes years to resolve may be overturned through the actions of arbitrators, civil service boards, or grievance panels. Police officers are often upset over the seeming lack of fairness and consistency in police discipline cases, while the general public is dismayed by the time it takes to investigate and close a case. This paper examines the issues surrounding the police discipline process. This paper has three main sections that focus on issues related to the discipline process and the primary purposes behind the process. The first section discusses law enforcement officials' task of creating an environment where officers understand what is expected of them and behave in a manner that will allow them to avoid the disciplinary process altogether. The second section reviews issues associated with the traditional approaches to police discipline and discusses new and different approached being tried by police departments around the country. The final section offers recommendations for ways to implement more effective and efficient approaches to police discipline. Tables, endnotes, and references

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The Importance of Discipline in Law Enforcement Officers

Filed Under: Essays Tagged With: citizenship

Discipline is an essential quality in the law enforcement career. Many people would agree that discipline consists of training, correcting, or helping citizens and oneself to obey the laws and codes of behavior. Discipline brings forth good leadership and courage when dealing with issues in the community and country. For example, Police officers can help the community by patrolling the streets, responding to emergencies, and dealing with members of the public. In addition, discipline is necessary in the work performance.

One of the requirements of law enforcement is training. In order to determine whether a candidate has the needed strength and tolerance to do the job of a police officer, they would have to take the physical agility test. Although many people criticize this test, it is critically important because flexibility, strength, and endurance are necessary for the job, or it could result in injury or death of an officer or a citizen.

Furthermore, officers are role models to the citizens and should obey the laws as well as codes of behavior. As role models, they have to act properly since they are constantly under review by government agencies: the courts, and the judicial review. In other words, positive role models are necessary to avoid crime from increasing. In conclusion, discipline is the key of being successful as a law enforcement officer.

The Essay on A Civil Role Model

The word civil carries a lot of weight. The usage needs to be carefully considered when it's entered into a sentence or a phrase. Civil means a wide variation of things. It can be defined as a way to be observant of the forms required for good breeding. It can also be a means to the needs and affairs of the general public. However, the latter of the two definitions can also be stretched to include ...

Topic Sentence: Discipline is an essential quality in the law enforcement career. I. Definition

A. Good leadership and courage when dealing with issues

B. Police officers can help the community

II. Work Performance

A. Determine if candidate has the needed strength and tolerance, physical agility test B. The physical agility test is necessary

III. Officers are role models

A. Officers are under review by the government agencies

B. Avoid crime from increasing

Conclusion: Discipline is the key of being successful as a law enforcement officer.

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Impact of School Police: Many Unanswered Questions

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Corrected : An earlier version of this article misstated Professor Sheri Bauman’s academic discipline and incorrectly reported the number of schools that are part of a research control group.

Academics and activists alike hope the results of ongoing federally funded research on school police, school climate, and student safety will help inform both policy changes and the broader public debate over the role of law enforcement in schools .

A lack of rigorous research and statistical data on school police has made it difficult to track their effectiveness and to determine what factors affect their contributions to school climate, researchers say.

While advocacy groups point to unfavorable outcomes— like higher rates of arrest and referrals to law enforcement for black students —there’s little consistent national data on factors that may account for variations between different schools.

That includes information on the various types of agreements between school districts and the law enforcement agencies they contract with to provide school police. Details on the training, backgrounds, and race of school-based officers might also help explain some of the dynamics of their interactions with students.

Also missing is a critical mass of broad, large-scale studies on whether or not school police programs meet one of their core goals in many districts: reducing crime and keeping students safe from outside threats, like school shooters, a 2013 report by the Congressional Research Service concluded.

“The body of research on the effectiveness of [school resource officer] programs is limited, both in terms of the number of studies published and the methodological rigor of the studies conducted,” that report said. “The research that is available draws conflicting conclusions about whether [school resource officer] programs are effective at reducing school violence.”

More research of all kinds could inform improvements to school police programs and student discipline policies and help flag systemic issues that may lead to unnecessarily harsh discipline in some situations, said Phillip Goff, the president of the Center for Policing Equity at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“In some ways, we’re nowhere on police in schools. We’ve just begun to understand that when you place police in schools, arrests are more likely,” he said, referring to findings disputed by some police groups, “But there are some modifiers for that.”

The lack of information on school police mirrors a larger lack of data on law enforcement in general, Goff said. For example, there was no national dataset of officer-involved shootings until news organizations began collecting such information independently, he said.

Studies on School Police Underway

Complicating the quest for research and data: school police are employed through a variety of channels. Some work directly for districts with their own police departments, while many are placed in schools through cooperative agreements with local police and sheriff’s departments. Some officers work in schools part time, and some rotate among schools, making it hard to track their interactions with students.

Most research on school police is based on a sample of schools or an analysis of previously collected data from a single district, which may not allow researchers to glean insights that are transferrable across rural, suburban, and urban areas, said the Congressional Research Service report. And many studies lack control groups to test their findings, said the report, which was compiled following the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Like Columbine and other mass shootings, Sandy Hook was met with calls for more police and armed staff in school by lawmakers on the state and local levels.

In addition to federal grants for school resource officers and calls for stricter gun laws, the Obama administration responded to those shootings by calling for more research about all areas of school safety, including bullying, discipline, the use of data in threat assessment, and training for school police.

In 2014, the National Institute of Justice launched its Comprehensive School Safety Initiative, awarding $75 million in grants to fund research in these areas. The agency awarded additional waves of grants in 2015 and 2016.

It may be a few more years before researchers begin publishing the first of their findings, as many of the funded studies and pilot-projects have a multi-year time frame.

In Connecticut, for example, researchers are tracking four years of data from a pilot group of 12 schools to determine if training school staff members about the role of school-based police can lead to more consistent discipline across different groups of students and reduce discriminatory impact.

“There has not been a clearly articulated role for the police in schools,” said Ronald Sabatelli, a human development professor at the University of Connecticut who is leading evaluation of the project. “And there needs to be a reinforcement of best practices in terms of how to respond to disciplinary issues with students.”

Teachers, administrators, and officers at participating schools completed a one-day training program to ensure that they are all on the same page about police responsibilities and the limits of their involvement in routine discipline issues. Another group of demographically similar control schools, where staff did not receive training, will also be monitored to track differences in disciplinary incidents and referrals to law enforcement.

In Arizona, a statewide project funded through the federal grants may help meet the demand for large, scaleable data on the effectiveness of school resource officers.

Officials at the Arizona education department are working with researchers at the University of Arizona to test enhanced school resource officer training in 15 schools throughout the state.

“There’s almost no empirical quality research that examines the effects of school resource officers on school climate,” said Sheri Bauman, a professor of counseling at the University of Arizona who is helping lead the project.

That training for police and student support personnel in participating schools includes information on working in a school environment, student discipline, and childhood trauma.

Participating schools have working groups of administrators, school counselors, and police officers who examine data and seek to solve problems in their schools. For example, one school’s team realized bullying reports were clustered in one area of the school and worked to move more adults there during transition times, said Kris Bosworth, a professor of education at the University of Arizona who is also working on the project. In another school, an officer noticed that many tardy reports were coming from students whose parents were getting stuck in a slow-moving school drop-off lane and worked with administrators to reroute it.

Sometimes school police help to see a problem “with a different set of eyes,” Bauman said. “And sometimes they can relate to kids who wouldn’t relate to a mental health professional.”

Researchers plan to compare those schools to two groups of control schools—16 where officers received only basic police training mandated by the state and 15 schools that applied for state-funded police officers but did not receive them.

They are collecting a broad variety of data points, including more traditional data on discipline incidents and law enforcement referrals and new information, like how and when officers interact with students and information from surveys of officers, school staff, and students about their perceptions of the school environment. Researchers are also collecting information about the officers, including their training, background in law enforcement, and perception of their responsibilities at school.

“We need some data,” Bauman said. “We need to know what’s working and not working and to be able to make decisions based on some kind of factual basis instead of hunches, or stories we’ve heard, or our beliefs about what makes a safe school.”

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P1 First Person: Complacency, confidence, and our conclusions

Part four of a four-part series entitled ‘think first’ addressing a critical element of officer safety.

Editor’s Note: This week’s PoliceOne First Person essay is from PoliceOne Members Kevin Jeffries and Lance Nickell — the fourth and final installment in a four-part series addressing the most critical element of officer safety: the need to think first ! In PoliceOne “First Person” essays, our Members and Columnists candidly share their own unique view of the world. This is a platform from which individual officers can share their own personal insights on issues confronting cops today, as well as opinions, observations, and advice on living life behind the thin blue line. If you want to share your own perspective with other P1 Members, simply send us an e-mail with your story.

By Kevin Jeffries, Probation Safety Specialist, Arizona Supreme Court and Lance Nickell, Probation Safety Specialist, Arizona Supreme Court

The American Heritage College Dictionary defines complacency as “...an unawareness of danger or trouble.” It has been my experience that we can place complacent officers in two broad categories: those who deny that the job holds danger, and those who see the dangers of the job but still become complacent. The former group is still complacent, as their denial shows an “unawareness of danger,” and they are hard to convince otherwise. Sadly, it will likely take a 9/11 moment for them to realize what other officers already know. In fact, they are not too likely to read this article past the first paragraph. Even though they recognize that they work with convicted felons in high-crime neighborhoods, they are still blind to the danger. Does a fish know that it is wet? Due to their constant denial and unconscious incompetence, these folks should not work in the criminal justice arena. Their lack of awareness could be a safety hazard to other officers.

At one time or another, we have all been a part of the second group of officers and have slipped in and out of complacency. It is a slow fade from being a well-trained, tactically-minded officer to a totally complacent officer. This group is teachable because they acknowledge the premise that our jobs can be dangerous. Three major factors can cause us to be complacent officers: laziness, hurriedness, and offender cooperation. The first two need no explanation — we shortcut because it’s easier and faster.

As officers, we want and strive for offender cooperation. I tell our Arizona officers to not let yesterday’s cooperation lead to tomorrow’s complacency. There is no guarantee that just because an offender is constantly cooperative and even friendly with you, that you are safe in their presence. So even in the midst of the cooperation that we expect and enjoy, be a safety-conscience professional. Mind your safety issues just as strongly with those offenders who cooperate and smile at us, as we do with those offenders who seldom cooperate and sometimes scowl at us.

In 1981, a study was conducted that is still applicable to our jobs today. A group of researchers went to a prison and interviewed 53 violent offenders. They showed these violent offenders a video tape consisting of 60 citizens walking up and down the street. They asked those offenders whom they would choose to victimize from this group? Overwhelmingly, the violent inmates chose people who appeared to lack confidence (Grayson, B. and Stein, M., 1981).

So what should officers take away from this study? Act confidently.

What about officers who lack self-confidence?

The answer is simple: Fake it — act confidently.

Studies show that while it is difficult to think your way to a new way of acting, you can act your way to a new way of thinking. When we act a new way and receive positive feelings regarding that action, our beliefs change and our behavior will follow suit (Kenagy, J., 2010). So act confidently, and you will see that, over time, you will grow into a person of confidence. While you are growing into that confident person, you will seem less vulnerable to human predators.

Bear Bryant was right: Most of us have the will to win or be successful, but the victor is the one who plans, prepares and ponders what it will take for success. So prepare to win by practicing your defensive tactics techniques and with all your safety-related tools. However, do not underestimate the importance of the mental preparation and knowledge as it relates to safety. Mentally rehearse possible negative situations that could occur. Have a plan to be successful when any of those negative situations occur (remember — not if, but when).

Exercise situational awareness by scanning the environment and subject(s) and assessing the demeanor of the subject(s). Know the OODA loop cycle and how to use that to your advantage. Be on the lookout for threats, and know how to assess them. Never let yourself become complacent by laziness, hurriedness or trust…

Just think first !

About the Authors Kevin Jeffries is currently employed by the Arizona Supreme Court in the Education Services Division as the Probation Safety Specialist. Kevin is considered a Subject Matter Expert in Defensive Tactics, Firearms and Use-of-Force. Prior to his employment at AOC he was a unit supervisor with the Ohio Adult Parole Authority (APA) supervising the Mahoning County Probation Unit. While with the APA he was an Unarmed Self-Defense Instructor, Field Tactics Instructor and Chairman of the Akron Regional Training Advisory Council.

Kevin is a Lead Firearms and Lead Defensive Tactics instructor for the Arizona Supreme Court Administrative Office of the Courts and was instrumental in developing both the firearms and defensive tactics curriculum. Kevin has presented Officer Safety trainings for the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA) and is a guest columnist for APPA’s Perspectives Magazine. Kevin also instructs on a national level as an adjunct faculty member for the Community Corrections Institute. He holds certifications as a Simunitions instructor, TASER instructor, NRA Tactical Firearms Instructor, NRA Handgun Instructor, and Glock Armorer.

Kevin received his Bachelor of Science in Law Enforcement Administration from Youngstown State University and his Master’s Degree in Public Administration at Western International University.

Lance Nickell is the Lead Firearms Instructor and Range Master for the Maricopa County Probation Department and develops curriculum and policy for his department’s officer safety related topics. In his 17 years as a Probation Officer, he has had numerous assignments including the Sex Offender Unit, Fugitive Location Unit, and Staff Development and Training. Lance assisted in establishing and currently manages his department’s firearms training programs and leads the department’s 20 firearms instructors.

Lance is also a Lead Firearms Instructor and Use of Force subject matter expert for the Arizona State Supreme Court. He has been recognized twice by this court as the Firearms Instructor of the Year. He has presented nationally for both the American Probation and Parole Association and the National Law Enforcement & Corrections Technology. As an avid shooter, Lance has won numerous Gold, Silver, and Bronze in the Arizona Police Games and continues competing at area matches.

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Gillespie, T., Hart, D., and Boren, J., (1998). Police Use of Force, A Line Officer’s Guide . Varro Press, Kansas City.

Graham v. Connor , 490 U.S. 386, 396 (1989).

Grayson, B. and Stein, M. I., (1981). Attracting assault: Victims’ nonverbal cues . Journal of Communication, 31, 68–75.

Grossman, D., (1995). On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society . Little, Brown and Co., New York.

Kenagy, J., (2010). Acting your way to a new way of thinking . For Your Advantage, retrieved 3.16.11 from http://kenagyassociates.com/resources.writing.php

Petrowski, T. D., (2002, November). Use of force policies and training, a reasoned approach (Part 2) . The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 71 (11), 24-32.

Pinizzotto, A., Davis, E., and Miller, C., (2006). “Dead Right” Recognizing Traits of Armed Individuals . The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, retrieved 3.18.11 from http://www2.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/publications/leb/2006/mar06leb.pdf

Prymer v. Ogden , 29 F.3d 1208 (7th Cir 1994).

Thompson, L. and Mesloh, C., (2006). Edged weapons: traditional and emerging threats to law enforcement . The Law Enforcement Bulletin, retrieved 12.21.10 from http://www2.fbi.gov/filelink.html?file=/publications/leb/2006/mar06leb.pdf

Thornton, Robert L.,(2003). New Approaches to Staff Safety, 2d ed . Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections.

Wardlaw v. Pickett , 1 F.3d 1297, 1299 (1993).

The contents of First Person essays solely reflect the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Police1 or its staff. First Person essays shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes. Reference to any specific commercial products, process, or service by name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply any endorsement or recommendation. To submit a First Person essay, follow the instructions on the Police1 Article Guidelines for Authors page.

A Proposal for Police Reform: Require Effective Accountability Measures in Police Union Contracts as a Condition of Tax-Exempt Status

The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments on prior drafts from Derek Borchardt, Daniel Chirlin, Christopher Dioguardi, among other generous readers, and the research assistance of Theodora Danias. All errors are the author’s alone.

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In the wake of the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, government leaders across the nation are urgently considering reforms that might prevent police brutality. 1 Policy analysts have  suggested changes  to federal, state, and local laws to improve transparency for police departments and accountability for officers. Proposals have been made to  outlaw chokeholds ,  grant public access to disciplinary files ,  end the defense of qualified immunity ,  increase federal oversight  of troubled police departments, and  strengthen civilian review boards . Some of these proposals have already been  studied empirically  by scholars and think tanks and  enjoy support  across the political spectrum. 2

But there is reason to fear that some well-meaning legislative reforms will ultimately be frustrated unless the rules governing police accountability and discipline found in police contracts are overhauled. 3 For example, some advocate for police department policies creating a duty to intervene, requiring officers to prevent the inappropriate use of force by other officers. But Minneapolis has a  duty to intervene  policy, yet the bystander video appears to show three officers failing to (effectively) intervene while a fourth used his knee to fatally pin down George Floyd’s neck. Many of the proposed police department policies are formulated as  standards  (such as requiring de-escalation or warning before using deadly force “ when possible ,” or requiring officers to exhaust all other “ reasonable  alternatives” before using deadly force), which police supervisors and disciplinary officers must interpret and apply in light of the circumstances. 4 Many of the proposed policies have neither the force of law nor the clarity and concreteness of rules, nor do they address disciplinary decision-making processes. 5 These policies might serve other functions, such as expressing norms. But if the problem is accountability, then we should not expect that modifying standards of conduct alone will change disciplinary outcomes or, for that matter, front-line behavior.

I.  The Problem

Empirical studies of police reform efforts indicate that police unions, and the collective bargaining agreements (“CBAs”) they negotiate for police officers, often provide procedural protections for officers accused of misconduct that might be superficially (and politically) attractive, but that ultimately and tragically undermine police accountability. 6 Some local politicians seem willing to reform these CBAs. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey  stated recently  that “for years in Minneapolis, police chiefs and elected officials committed to change have been thwarted by police union protections and laws that severely limit accountability.” Unfortunately, too many city politicians have failed to show political courage when negotiating CBAs with police unions, and too many state politicians have, likewise, failed to build accountability into public-sector collective bargaining and dispute resolution laws or provide appropriate transparency for disciplinary records. 7 There is a sad irony in city and state politicians decrying the lack of accountability of police departments they run and regulate. 8

The discussion of reform is rightly focusing on the police union CBAs that provide seemingly insuperable procedural protections to officers accused of wrongdoing. 9 Preliminary research from a team of economists at the University of Victoria suggests that the number of civilians killed by police in the United States increased about  60 to 70 per year  after police officers gained collective bargaining rights. The lead researcher, Professor Rob Gillezeau, suggests this  takeaway : “Police accountability matters and employers, in this case local and regional governments, have failed to bargain in a manner that protects public safety.” One  recent review  of 178 police union contracts found that they “commonly contain provisions that can insulate frontline officers from accountability and oversight.” 10 The same author reviewed police discipline cases and  concluded  that “the complexity and formidability of the disciplinary appeals process may explain the inability of traditional external legal mechanisms to promote reform in American police departments.” Yet another  study  from researchers at the University of Chicago found that violent incidents increased approximately forty percent when sheriffs’ deputies in Florida obtained collective bargaining rights. These and other commentators identify a small number of provisions commonly found in police union CBAs that  undermine police accountability  and at times permit officer misconduct to go unchecked—even when federal consent decrees and settlements mandate reform.

II.  The Legislative Proposal

This article proposes federal legislation intended to promptly eliminate such provisions from collective bargaining agreements. Federal legislation is appropriate here as a matter of policy because it appears that police unions will not give up these protections voluntarily, some state and local legislatures and executives will be unable or unwilling to tackle the issue politically, and the problem is widespread and implicates basic rights and liberties. In brief, I propose that police unions should receive tax-exempt status only if they implement certain indispensable accountability measures in their collective bargaining agreements. 11 Tax-exempt status is important to unions: because union dues, donations, and investment income would otherwise be taxable income, 12 losing tax-exempt status would dramatically shrink unions’ operating budgets.

The last time Congress limited eligibility for tax-exempt status to achieve a civil rights objective was (to my knowledge) 1976, when Congress adopted § 501(i) of the Internal Revenue Code to prohibit racial discrimination by § 501(c)(7) social clubs. 13 The Senate report said: “In view of national policy, it is believed that it is inappropriate for a social club or similar organization described in section 501(c)(7) to be exempt from income taxation if its written policy is to discriminate on account of race, color or religion.” 14 Similarly, it is inappropriate for a union serving public employee members to be exempt from income taxation if it contracts with public entities in a manner that impedes accountability and frustrates effective supervision, prompt and binding discipline, and transparency. 15 Countless federal court cases have affirmed this national policy favoring effective police discipline. For example, courts routinely reject challenges by officers to departmental regulations or disciplinary decisions in deference to the police department’s duty to maintain discipline. Courts also have held municipalities civilly liable for failing to maintain discipline in their police forces. 16

Tax policy also justifies my proposal. The rationale for providing tax-exempt status to labor unions is that unions increase utility by overcoming  collective action problems ,  enhance democracy  by giving less powerful interests a more equal voice, and help secure public goods (nonexcludable and nonrivalrous goods), such as improved working conditions and standard wages, for the mutual benefit of their members. But CBAs that undermine effective police discipline harm the public and union members alike. And while there may be reasons to subsidize police unions with tax-exempt status, there is no reason to subsidize unions that undermine accountability, discipline, and transparency in policing.

Thus, Congress should adopt legislation providing that no police union shall be exempt from taxation under § 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code unless any collective bargaining agreement to which the union is a party satisfies certain statutorily-defined core requirements of accountability and transparency, such as the following: 17

• Officers may be interviewed by police department supervisors and prosecutors at  any time  following any use of force.
• Officers may be charged with knowingly making a false statement without regard to whether the officer was provided an opportunity to  review video or audio evidence  before making the statement.
• Records of complaints and discipline may not be expunged from officers’ personnel files unless found meritless on the basis of competent evidence and all retained records must be made available to the public upon a showing that access is reasonably necessary to serve a lawful purpose (and subject to appropriate restrictions in the interest of the privacy and safety of the officer and any victims, witnesses, or other third parties). 18
• Complaints of misconduct  may not be dismissed or disregarded  solely on account of the passage of time or because they were made anonymously or without a signed affidavit, and the complainant’s name need not be revealed to the officer before charges are brought.
• The union will not accept as members or knowingly provide any services or benefits to any officers who have been terminated for gross misconduct by any law enforcement agency. 19

The legislation would authorize the U.S. attorney general to add or remove requirements, pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act, if he or she finds, after gathering and considering relevant data and recommendations from police departments, police unions, and independent police experts (and other interested persons), that the CBA provision inhibits (or does not inhibit) the prompt, effective, and fair administration of screening, training, investigation, discipline, and termination of law enforcement officers in a manner that upholds public order and safety. 20

Furthermore, any police union found by the attorney general, after considering relevant evidence, to have knowingly interfered (by act or omission, including by means otherwise permitted by the CBA) with any provision of any settlement agreement or consent decree relating to any alleged pattern or practice of violating federal law would have its tax-exempt status revoked. This change gives police unions an incentive to voluntarily amend or waive provisions of collective bargaining agreements that conflict with or impede the requirements of civil rights settlements or consent decrees. 21

These proposed requirements on tax-exempt status might be enough to convince police unions to reform their own CBAs by striking or waiving some key procedural barriers to accountability. But the police unions will need to do it themselves, in coordination with the stakeholders they serve. 22 Lasting reform requires police union (and officer) buy-in; the new provisions cannot be seen as yet another “ bad idea dreamed up by civilians .” 23 This proposal does not endeavor to micromanage the disciplinary process, but it also does not leave disciplinary reform solely to the local political process, which is sometimes unable to overcome police union opposition. 24

Any covered union seeking tax-exempt status must file, along with its Form 1024 application for recognition as tax-exempt, and annually thereafter with its Form 990, a certification that (1) the union’s current contract complies with the requirements and (2) the union’s current contract is consistent with any judicial settlement agreement or consent decree relating to any alleged pattern or practice of violating federal law (a) entered prior to the effective date of the union contract and (b) in effect during any part of the period of the union contract. Because the IRS might not have the requisite expertise to determine whether a police union’s contract satisfies the proposed new requirements, the new legislation would grant concurrent investigative and enforcement authority with respect to these matters to the attorney general. The legislation would also direct the attorney general to issue guidance on CBAs and best practices for cooperating with settlements and consent decrees—and perhaps work with representatives of local governments, police departments, and police unions to develop a set of model CBA provisions, adoption of which might result in an administrative presumption of compliance.

Finally, the proposed legislation is not intended to be retroactive. Rather, it would provide police unions a one-year grace period, during which time they can seek to renegotiate CBAs with local governments and submit their certifications of compliance. Of course, police unions might choose  not  to renegotiate their contracts and forfeit their 501(c) tax-exempt status. Those unions would likely be unable to survive the resulting blow to their operating budgets and might be replaced by different unions—perhaps introducing a new era of  competition  in union representation for police officers, and possibly starting a race to the top. 25 Officers and the public interest alike would be better served by unions willing to embrace accountability.

III.  The Policy

This proposal has two particular advantages.  First , it encourages reasonably prompt police union alignment with widely accepted police reforms that may help protect civil rights. Currently, police unions have a natural incentive to secure maximal procedural protections for their members; yet such protections unfortunately appear to have become major  impediments to police accountability . With these new requirements in place, however, police unions would have a compelling incentive to institute reform in order to obtain and maintain their tax-exempt status. Viewed objectively, and in comparison to due process rights existing elsewhere in our legal system, officers would continue to enjoy robust means of defending themselves against allegations of misconduct—a necessary premise of fair police reform, as the president of the Fraternal Order of Police has  insisted .  Second , this proposal gives the Department of Justice new ways to (a) promote national standards and best practices in the domain of police accountability and (b) monitor whether existing CBAs promote police accountability and whether union activities align with the civil rights commitments of the communities served by their officer-members. 26

This proposal does not involve excessive federal intervention into local police departments or burdensome protocol or bureaucracy for officers on the street. And this proposal (for better or worse) is not premised upon any of the popular ideologies or metanarratives concerning police violence in America. Rather, the premise is an observation about the role of CBAs in the breakdown of police accountability, which has been voiced on the right and the left. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute gave  testimony  on June 10, 2020, to the House Committee on the Judiciary, observing that “[s]ome powerful unions place too many roadblocks in the way of firing incompetent or abusive cops.” 27 Former President Barack Obama  identified  “collective bargaining agreements with police unions” as one of the important targets of local police reform. Hopefully we have not lost the capacity to recognize well-founded agreement and act on it.

Lawmakers at the local, state, and federal levels have many options for addressing the role that CBAs play in impeding accountability and transparency. Local and state legislators could consider whether to amend or repeal so-called “Law Enforcement Officer Bills of Rights,” many of which create (among other things) the hearing and appeals processes available to officers found by departments to have engaged in misconduct. 28 State legislators could consider whether to curtail collective bargaining rights for law enforcement employees with respect to matters of discipline. 29 Congress could adopt requirements for any federal funding of local police departments, conditioning eligibility for federal funds on procedural reforms complementary to those listed above—as House Democrats proposed in the  Justice in Policing Act of 2020  and as Senate Republicans proposed in the  JUSTICE Act . 30 However, such measures appear less likely to garner prompt bipartisan support and a timely roll-out, and some of them may face lengthy court challenges on vagueness and federalism grounds. 31 The Department of Justice can consider ramping up  pattern-or-practice investigations  and the Collaborative Reform Initiative of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, but such efforts will be more effective if police unions have an incentive to take an active part in the most consequential, structural reforms.

IV.  Objections and Responses

My proposal is subject to the following objections, each of which I believe can be satisfactorily answered: 32

1. The proposal would force police unions to choose between tax-exempt status and procedural protections in CBAs that have admittedly been criticized, but that are no different than protections afforded by the CBAs of other public-sector unions. Why single out police unions?

The integrity of policing is under attack throughout America today. Certain procedural protections have been identified as likely undermining effective discipline and accountability; this proposal might encourage police unions to embrace reform. And if the proposal is adopted, and the reform is successful, then perhaps the attention focused on police union CBAs today might be turned to other public-sector CBAs tomorrow. 33

2. The proposal is supposed to garner bipartisan support in Congress. But why would Republicans support increased federal agency intrusion into local, private organizations? Doesn’t this type of proposal invite Congress and executive branch agencies to propose other politicized requirements masquerading as “public safety” regulations to suffocate unpopular but politically effective organizations?

There are four reasons this proposal might be palatable to Republicans, notwithstanding the federal mechanisms. First, this proposal does not touch First Amendment rights—it has nothing to do with religion, speech, press, assembly, or lobbying. Second, there is no question here of federal executive agencies or courts legislating public policy (here, the national interest in effective police discipline); Congress would specifically address the political question implicating eligibility for federal tax-exempt status; the policy would not be extrapolated from the supposed import of terms such as “charitable purpose,” “public benefit,” or the “ betterment ” of those engaged in labor. Third, it is well established that the government may decline to subsidize an activity that the Constitution prevents the government from penalizing or coercing. 34 And, fourth, although federal action may be justified by the widespread failure of state and local politics to address issues implicating basic rights and liberties, this proposal does not police the internal management or activities of the unions; and it leaves the negotiation of new procedures to local governments and police unions. (And, for additional comfort, Congress could also consider a sunset provision on the legislation, allowing, say, ten years for the parties to reset contractual relationships, practices, and expectations.)

3. Why can’t police unions circumvent the proposed regulations by lobbying state and local legislatures to adopt the problematic CBA provisions as part of Law Enforcement Officer Bills of Rights, such that police unions could sign acceptable CBAs and still protect “bad apples” through state and local procedural guarantees?

As briefly noted above, the proposal would require unions that wish to retain their tax-exempt status to waive, in their CBAs, any state or local statutory protections that confer the same procedural protections that would cause their tax-exempt status to be forfeited if contained in their CBAs. The legislation should expressly state the national policy of promoting police accountability by eliminating such procedural protections from CBAs and authorizing unions to waive such state or local protections even if those state or local protections contain anti-waiver provisions. This should suffice for preemption. Unions may waive state statutory rights of their members in a CBA, provided the wavier is clear and unmistakable. 35

4. Why can’t police unions set up for-profit affiliates to act as bargaining agents for public-sector contracts and thereby moot the (perhaps too indirect) attempt to achieve substantive CBA reform by regulating the unions’ tax-exempt status?

The answer to this question will depend on state law, but in New York, for example, this is not possible because the  Taylor Law  provides that union dues ( i.e. , the union’s revenues that are exempt from federal income taxation) may only be collected on behalf of and paid to the recognized/certified organization serving as the collective bargaining agent. So police unions  could  set up for-profit affiliates, but those affiliates would not be able to rely on membership dues deduction and transmission, and no other nonprofit union affiliate would have the right to deduction and transmission by the employer because the nonprofit affiliate would not be the recognized/certified organization. It would be possible for unions to set up for-profit bargaining agents and ask union members to voluntarily contribute dues to affiliated nonprofits. But this reintroduces the collective action problems that labor law tried to solve by creating a system of mandatory dues deduction and transmission to the bargaining agents. 36 It ignores “ the need for coercion  implicit in attempts to provide collective goods to large groups.” 37 So a for-profit bargaining agent is not a realistic way to sidestep the proposed legislation.

Congress and the Department of Justice should consider this targeted proposal, which builds on empirical scholarship regarding the mechanisms for promoting police accountability and might garner prompt bipartisan support. A new  Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice  was  launched  in January 2020. The Republican-sponsored  JUSTICE Act , which failed a cloture vote on June 24, 2020, called for establishing a National Criminal Justice Commission, which would, among other things, “develop recommended best practices guidelines to ensure fair and effective policing tactics and procedures that encourage equitable justice, community trust, and law enforcement officer safety,” including “best practices for the hiring, firing, suspension, and discipline of law enforcement officers.” Our government leaders must urgently consider ways to bring about changes in police union CBAs. This proposal is a concrete and attainable way to reach that goal.

• 1 Democratic representatives have introduced the  Justice in Policing Act of 2020  and have proposed  House Resolution 988  (116th Congress, 2019–2020), which condemns “all acts of brutality, racial profiling, and the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers” and calls for various law enforcement policies and reforms. Legislative proposals are discussed in Grace Segers & Caitlin Huey-Burns,  Congress crafts police reform legislation in response to police violence ,  CBS News  (June 5, 2020), and Conor Friedersdorf,  Police Reform is Popular. Rioting Is Not. ,  Atlantic  (June 3, 2020).
• 2 For example, the Cato Institute found that “79% of Americans would prefer that an ‘outside law enforcement agency take over the investigation’ when an officer is suspected of criminal wrongdoing.”
• 3 See  U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Police Use of Force: An  Examination  of Modern Policing Practices 58 (Nov. 15, 2018) (“Police union contract provisions can pose another challenge deterring law enforcement officials from holding their officers accountable.”); Lucy Morrow Caldwell,  It’s Time to  Take On  Police Unions , National Review (Dec. 16, 2014); Paige Fernandez,  Police Unions Should Never  Undermine  Constitutional Policing , ACLU (May 15, 2019) (“Time and again, we witness transformative advances on use of force and biased police and civilian oversight, just to have them undermined behind the closed doors of collective bargaining with police unions.”).
• 4 This does not mean that better use of force policies should not be adopted.  Some have pointed to Camden, New Jersey, as a  success story .
• 5 Some of the problems of implementation, and securing lasting change, are discussed in Simone Weichselbaum,  Policing the Police: As the Justice Department pushes reform, some changes don’t last ,  Marshall Project  (May 26, 2015).
• 6 See, e.g. , Stephen Rushin,  Police Union Contracts , 66 Duke L.J. 1191, 1198 (2017) (analyzing 178 police union collective bargaining agreements and finding that “a substantial number of these contracts unreasonably interfere with or otherwise limit the effectiveness of mechanisms designed to hold police officers accountable for their actions”), and the other articles cited herein.
• 7 See  James Surowiecki,  Why Are Police Unions Blocking Reform? , New Yorker (Sept. 12, 2016) (“Cities don’t have to concede so much power to police unions. So why do they? Big-city unions have large membership bases and are generous when it comes to campaign contributions. Neither liberals nor conservatives have been keen to challenge the unions’ power. Liberals are generally supportive of public-sector unions; some of the worst police departments in the country are in cities, like Baltimore and Oakland, run by liberal mayors. And though conservatives regularly castigate public-sector unions as parasites, they typically exempt the police.”); Conor Friedersdorf,  How Police Unions and Arbitrators  Keep  Abusive Cops on the Street , Atlantic (Dec. 2, 2014); Ken Girardin,  New York lawmakers have  sought  to weaken police discipline , Empire Center for Public Policy (June 1, 2020).
• 8 This dynamic has been observed by,  e.g. , the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board.  See  The Problem with Police Unions , Wall St. J. (June 10, 2020).  See also  R. Rainey & H. Otterbein,  Local unions defy AFL-CIO in push to oust police unions , Politico (June 30, 2020) (“‘No contract is rammed down the throat of a city or jurisdiction. They signed it, they negotiated it, they agreed to it,’ said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police.”); R.T. Rybak,  I Was Mayor of Minneapolis. I Know Why Police Reforms Fail . , Atlantic (June 18, 2020) (“The lack of accountability seems incongruous because the mayors and city councils that negotiate with police unions include some of the country’s most progressive elected officials and represent some of the country’s most progressive constituencies.”).
• 9 See  D. Belkin, K. Maher & D. Paul,  Clout of Minneapolis Police Union Boss Reflects National Trend , Wall St. J. (July 7, 2020); N. Scheiber, F. Stockman & J. Goodman,  How Police Unions  Became  Such Powerful Opponents to Reform Efforts , N.Y. Times (June 6, 2020); Walter Olson,  Police  Misconduct  and ‘Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights’ Laws , Cato Institute (Apr. 24, 2015) (“Union contracts often add further layers of insulation from discipline.”); Samuel Walker,  Institutionalizing Police Accountability  Reforms : The Problem of Making Police Reforms Endure , 32 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 57, 76–77 (2012) (“Collective bargaining agreements, for example, contain provisions related to the investigation of alleged officer misconduct (whether on the basis of a citizen complaint or an internally generated complaint) that impede a timely and thorough investigation.”); Kevin M. Keenan & Samuel Walker,  An Impediment to Police Accountability? An  Analysis  of Statutory Law Enforcement Officers’ Bills of Rights , 186 Pub. Interest L.J. 185, 188 (2005) (“Collective bargaining agreements, for example, contain provisions related to the investigation of alleged officer misconduct (whether on the basis of a citizen complaint or an internally generated complaint) that impede a timely and thorough investigation.”); Samuel Walker,  The Neglect of Police Unions:  Exploring  One of the Most Important Areas of American Policing , 9 Police Practice & Research 95 (2008) (“[T]here are specific provisions in many collective bargaining agreements that inhibit investigations.”); Catherine Fisk & L. Song Richardson,  Police Unions , 85 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 712, 750 (2017) (“The power of police unions to negotiate over terms of employment and disciplinary processes, which is at the core of the collective bargaining process in any unionized workplace, will be essential to consider in any serious approach to police reform.”).
• 10 See also  Seth Stoughton,  The Incidental Regulation of Policing , 98 Minn. L. Rev. 2179, 2212 (2014) (“A more recent investigative report by a newspaper in Florida, a state that lacks a strong civil service regime, found that thousands of officers from agencies across the state retained their jobs even after being arrested or implicated in crimes due to ‘a disciplinary system that has been reshaped in officers’ favor by the state’s politically influential police unions.’ Grievance procedures can undermine supervisory efforts to discipline officers even in light of a clear violation of law or policy.”) (internal brackets and footnote omitted).
• 11 On the basis of a survey using the  Tax Exempt Organization Search  tool on the IRS website, and other publicly-available information, it appears that the collective bargaining representatives of police officers in the twenty-five largest cities that permit collective bargaining (identified in Rushin, 66 Duke L.J. at  1222–23 ) filed for tax-exempt status either as social welfare associations, under § 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, labor organizations, under § 501(c)(5), fraternal organizations, under § 501(c)(8), or voluntary employees’ beneficiary associations, under § 501(c)(9). For this reason, the proposed amendment would be a new section of 26 U.S.C. § 501, rather than an amendment of any of the specific exempt classifications.
• 12 See  9  Mertens Law of Fed. Income Tax’n  § 34:187 (“An organization that loses its exemption will generally be treated as a corporation for tax purposes and, thus, required to file Form 1120 and taxable on any net income from business or investment activity.”).
• 13 See  David A. Brennen,  Race and Equality  Across the Law School Curriculum: The Law of Tax Exemption , 54 J. Legal Educ. 336, 346 (2004) (“From a black perspective, one might wonder why this provision applies only to social clubs. Does this mean that racial discrimination by other tax-exempt organizations is permissible for tax law purposes? Although the public policy doctrine announced by the Supreme Court in  Bob Jones University v. United States  clearly prohibits racial discrimination by tax-exempt charities, that doctrine applies  only  to tax-exempt charities. The  Bob Jones University  public policy doctrine does not apply to the many other tax-exempt organizations described in the tax exemption statute.”).
• 14 Id.  at 346 n.35 (quoting S. Rep. No. 94-1318, at 8, 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. 6051, 6058).
• 15 Cf.  Bob Jones Univ. v. United States , 461 U.S. 574, 591 (1983) (“When the Government grants exemptions or allows deductions all taxpayers are affected; the very fact of the exemption or deduction for the donor means that other taxpayers can be said to be indirect and vicarious ‘donors.’”).
• 16 See, e.g. ,  Tindle v. Caudell , 56 F.3d 966, 971 (8th Cir. 1995) (“Because police departments function as paramilitary organizations charged with maintaining public safety and order, they are given more latitude in their decisions regarding discipline and personnel regulations than an ordinary government employer. . . .  The regulations at issue in this case are rationally related to the department’s legitimate interest in developing ‘discipline, esprit de corps, and uniformity’ within its ranks.”) (citation omitted);  Locurto v. Giuliani , 447 F.3d 159, 183 (2d Cir. 2006) (“The First Amendment does not require a Government employer to sit idly by while its employees insult those they are hired to serve and protect. Under the circumstances, ‘an individual police officer’s [or firefighter’s] right to express his personal opinions must yield to the public good.’”) (internal citations omitted);  O’Donnell v. Barry , 148 F.3d 1126, 1135 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (“First, the District rightly argues, and the district court correctly agreed, that because of the special degree of trust and discipline required in a police force there may be a stronger governmental interest in regulating the speech of police officers than in regulating the speech of other governmental employees.”);  Briggs v. Malley , 748 F.2d 715, 719–20 (1st Cir. 1984),  aff’d and remanded , 475 U.S. 335 (1986) (“If we cannot demand of our police officers that they recognize when they do not have the authority to make a search or effect an arrest, then we have given up the very idea of a rule of law. The exercise of police power  within  the law is the very foundation of the social contract.”);  Malley v. Briggs , 475 U.S. 335, 353 n.9 (1986) (Powell, J., concurring) (“It is of course true that actions by police must comport with the Constitution. Police departments and prosecutors have an obligation to instill this understanding in officers, and to discipline those found to have violated the Constitution.”);  see also  Estate of Roman v. City of Newark , 914 F.3d 789, 800 (3d Cir.),  cert. denied , 140 S. Ct. 82 (2019),  and cert. denied , 140 S. Ct. 97 (2019);  Bordanaro v. McLeod , 871 F.2d 1151, 1162 (1st Cir. 1989).
• 17 This list draws from but is not the same as the  Collective Bargaining Agreement Checklist  included in Appendix 6 of the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force Report.  See also  Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights,  New Era of Public Safety: A  Guide  to Fair, Safe, and Effective Community Policing  (2019), Recommendation 7.14 (Oppose Provisions that Weaken Accountability Systems When Negotiating Collective Bargaining Agreements).
• 18 For nuanced discussion of the legitimate privacy and transparency interests involved, see Kate Levine,  Discipline and Policing , 68 Duke L.J. 839 (2019).
• 19 Something similar was discussed in Ben Grunwald & John Rappaport,  The Wandering Officer , 129 Yale L.J. 1676, 1770–71 (2020) (noting that a version of this requirement was adopted by Connecticut in 2015).
• 20 As a matter of legislative drafting and administrative rulemaking, the legislative text and procedure envisioned would be similar to the law concerning the classification of controlled substances, under  21 U.S.C. § 811 .
• 21 See, e.g. ,  Settlement Agreement ,  U.S. v. City of Albuquerque , 14 Civ. 1025 (JB) (D.N.M. July 30, 2019) (ECF No. 465, incorporating ECF No. 465-1 at ¶¶ 56, 74) (imposing certain obligations “consistent with any existing collective bargaining agreements”).
• 22 There is some reason to think that police officers themselves might support such reforms. As Jonathan M. Smith (former Chief of the Special Litigation Section of the DOJ Civil Rights Division) has argued: “Reform is good for union members — in fact, the overreach of law enforcement bills of rights and some union contracts have harmed the very officers the contract rules are intended to protect. The obstacles to correcting police misconduct have not only undermined confidence in the police, especially among minorities, but have actually placed officers at greater risk by damaging relations between police departments and communities.”  Police Unions Must Not Block Reform , N.Y. Times (May 29, 2015).
• 23 The proposal described herein is intended to respect the need for local buy-in, while encouraging unions to attend to problematic CBA provisions more urgently than they have to date.  See also  Stephen Rushin & Allison Garnett,  State Labor Law and Federal Police Reform , 51 Ga. L. Rev. 1209, 1226 (2017) (“All of this suggests that unilaterally forcing major revisions to the collective bargaining agreement—a document designed through collaboration—on an unwilling police union may prove unreasonably disruptive and hamper the overall reform process. In many ways, the approach by the DOJ during the Obama Administration made sense. It did not shy away from calling out potentially problematic language in collective bargaining agreements. Nevertheless, it did not seek to use the federal courts to overturn these collective bargaining agreements. Instead, it pressured municipalities to renegotiate these problematic terms when the collective bargaining agreements expired. This seems to strike a reasonable balance.”).
• 24 See  Rachel Greszler,  Confronting Police Abuse Requires Shifting Power From Police Unions , Heritage Foundation (June 9, 2020) (“At a minimum, local and city officials should renegotiate collective bargaining provisions in police contracts to remove provisions that hamstring departments’ ability to enforce accountability and discipline.”). However, Greszler cites a  2017 Reuters report  on police union contracts that begins with the story of the unsuccessful attempt in San Antonio to negotiate such provisions out of the police union contract.
• 25 There are, of course, barriers and defensive tactics to union competition, but this prospect deserves  further consideration .
• 26 This proposal falls squarely within the spirit of  Executive Order 13896 , which recognized that “the Department of Justice has a historically important role in helping to develop, identify, and establish best practices for law enforcement and supporting a range of programs related to the administration of justice.” Congress would need to provide funding for sufficient staff at the Department of Justice to study, promulgate, and enforce the new rules.
• 27 See also  Rafael A. Mangual ,  The Limits of Police Reform , Wall St. J. (June 11, 2020); Steven Greenhut,  Saving Bad Apples ,City J. (Nov. 7, 2013); Daniel DiSalvo,  Not Public-Spirited , City J. (June 8, 2020).
• 28 See  Stephen Rushin,  Police Disciplinary Appeals , 167 U. Pa. L. Rev. 545, 553–54 (2019) (suggesting,  e.g. , that “policymakers could replace arbitrators with democratically accountable actors” or consider “giving arbitrators narrower standards of review or limiting their ability to reduce punishment if the evidence supports the alleged violation.”) (internal citations omitted).  See generally   Keenan & Walker ,  supra  note 10.
• 29 See, e.g. , S. Stoughton, J. Noble, & G. Alpert,  How to Actually Fix America’s Police , Atlantic (June 3, 2020) (“[U]nions have leveraged the collective-bargaining process to create labyrinthine procedural protections that can make it exceptionally difficult to investigate, discipline, or terminate officers.”). The most widely-reported limitation of collective bargaining rights for public employee unions is Wisconsin’s  Act 10 , which largely exempts public safety employees. One author recently made a  connection  between Act 10 and police union reform. Rushin does not reference Act 10, but does  argue  “that states should amend labor laws to increase transparency and community participation in the development of police disciplinary procedures,” and mentions the possibility that “states could amend labor laws to remove police disciplinary procedures from the list of appropriate subjects for collective bargaining.” Governor Walker also considered  extending  Act 10 to police and fire unions. In New York City, because there is local “legislation [that] specifically commits police discipline to the discretion of local officials[,] . . . collective bargaining over disciplinary matters is prohibited.”  Patrolmen’s Benevolent Ass’n of City of New York, Inc. v. New York State Pub. Employment Relations Bd. , 6 N.Y.3d 563, 571–72 (2006);  see also id.  at 576 (stating that “the public interest in preserving official authority over the police remains powerful.”). But elsewhere in New York, police unions have a right to collectively bargain over disciplinary matters.  See, e.g. ,  City of Syracuse v. Syracuse Police Benevolent Ass’n, Inc. , No. 6869/2019, 2020 WL 2462111 (Sup. Ct., Onondaga Cty. May 11, 2020).
• 30 See generally  Congressional Research Service,  What Role Might the Federal Government Play in Law Enforcement Reform?  (June 1, 2020). For an overview of federal assistance programs, see Executive Office of the President,  Review: Federal Support for Local Law Enforcement Equipment Acquisition (Dec. 2014).
• 31 A lengthy court battle over this proposed legislative and administrative action is unlikely here, even though it subjects certain organizations to different requirements for tax exempt status, because “statutory classifications are valid if they bear a rational relation to a legitimate governmental purpose.”  Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Washington , 461 U.S. 540, 547 (1983) (holding that 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status may be denied an organization using tax-deductible contributions for substantial lobbying activities without violating the First Amendment or Equal Protection Clause).
• 32 I am grateful to readers of earlier drafts of this article, who raised different versions of these objections.
• 33 In a recent  defense  of police officer disciplinary rights under CBAs, the President of the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York stated that, “[i]n the disciplinary realm too, our only demand has been for the due process rights afforded to other civil servants,” but this begs the question as to what procedural rights for civil servants are consistent with public integrity and the common good.
• 34 See, e.g. ,  Ysursa v. Pocatello Educ. Ass’n , 555 U.S. 353, 358 (2009) (“[A] legislature’s decision not to subsidize the exercise of a fundamental right does not infringe the right, and thus is not subject to strict scrutiny.”) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted);  Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Washington , 461 U.S. 540, 549 (1983) (observing that “tax exemptions and deductions . . . are also a matter of grace that Congress can, of course, disallow as it chooses.”) (internal quotation marks, modifications, and citation omitted);  Harris v. McRae , 448 U.S. 297, 318 (1980) (“Whether freedom of choice that is constitutionally protected warrants federal subsidization is a question for Congress to answer, not a matter of constitutional entitlement.”).
• 35 See, e.g. ,  Metro. Edison Co. v. NLRB , 460 U.S. 693, 705–06 (1983) (“This Court long has recognized that a union may waive a member’s statutorily protected rights, including his right to strike during the contract term, and his right to refuse to cross a lawful picket line. Such waivers are valid because they rest on the premise of fair representation and presuppose that the selection of the bargaining representative remains free. Waiver should not undermine these premises. Thus a union may bargain away its members’ economic rights, but it may not surrender rights that impair the employees’ choice of their bargaining representative.”) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted);  New York City Transit Auth. v. New York State Pub. Employment Relations Bd. , 8 N.Y.3d 226, 234 (2007) (holding that “the  Weingarten  right created by section 75(2) [ i.e. , the right to have a union representative present with the employee at an investigatory interview, if the employee reasonably believes that the interview might result in disciplinary action], unlike the right given by the Taylor Law to ‘participate in . . . employee organization[s],’ may be surrendered in collective bargaining.”);  cf.  Spencer v. New York City Transit Auth. , No. 95-CV-4779 (JG), 1999 WL 51814, at *10 (E.D.N.Y. Jan. 14, 1999) (“It is firmly established in New York that unions may waive individual employees’ constitutional rights, including due process requirements, through collective bargaining agreements.”).
• 36 Mancur Olson,  The Logic of Collective Action:  Public Goods and the Theory of Groups  88 (1971) (“A rational worker will not voluntarily contribute to a (large) union providing a collective benefit since he alone would not perceptibly strengthen the union, and since he would get the benefits of any union achievement whether or not he supported the union.”).
• 37 Olson acknowledged that collective action problems might be solved, at least in the short term, by strong emotions or ideological motives, but that “some measure of coercion” would generally be necessary.  Id.  at 87. Alternative solutions to the collective action problems are explored in C. Fisk & M. Malin,  After Janus , 107 Cal. L. Rev. 1821 (2019). It would be naïve to suppose that creative lawyers and legislators could not find ways for police unions to both solve the collective action problems and refuse to adhere to the proposed CBA reforms. But these efforts would take time and cost money. And, in the interim, local government officials might find the courage to bargain in the interests of their constituents, and better CBAs might gain acceptance.

He thanks participants in a breakout session at the Fourth Annual Civil Procedure Workshop. And special thanks, as always, to Nicole Porter.

Qualified immunity is awful. It inhibits government accountability and precludes recovery for victims of government misconduct. But it’s not just the substantive defense that’s a problem.

The author thanks Lad Boyle, Ari Glogower, Daniel Hemel, Greg Polsky and Steve Rosenthal for discussion and feedback. He also thanks Madison Rinehart for assistance with research, and Matthew Reade and his colleagues at the  University of Chicago Law Review  for   their attentive editing. Other work by the author is  available here .

When the CARES Act was signed into law in late March 2020, it looked to be an appropriately extraordinary legislative response befitting the extraordinary public health and economic challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thanks to  Amrita Sethi  for outstanding research assistance.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the “TCJA”) fundamentally altered United States tax law.

State of New Jersey | Department of Law & Public Safety

AG’s Office Releases Information Regarding Major Discipline Taken Against Law Enforcement Officers in 2023

– , Attorney General – ,

Media Inquiries – Citizen Inquiries –

by NJOAG Communications | Jul 31, 2024 | Attorney General Directive 2022-14 | demotion | destroying evidence | discrimination or bias | domestic violence | Excessive Force | false certification | filing a false report | improper arrest | improper search | improper seizure | indictable crimes | Major Discipline | Misconduct | Office of Justice Data | Office of Public Integrity and Accountability | OJD | OPIA | reporting requirements | suspensions | termination | untruthfulness | use of force | Advancing Innovative Policing Policies | Office of Justice Data | Office of Public Integrity and Accountability | Policing Policy | Policing Policy | Press Release | Public Integrity | 0 comments

Additional Forms of Misconduct Added Pursuant to Revised Attorney General Directive

For Immediate Release: July 31, 2024

Office of the Attorney General – Matthew J. Platkin, Attorney General Office of Justice Data – Kristin Golden, PhD , Chief Data Officer Office of Public Integrity and Accountability – Drew Skinner, Executive Director

For Further Information:

Media Inquiries- Tara Oliver [email protected]

TRENTON – The Attorney General’s Office today released information regarding New Jersey law enforcement officers who faced major disciplinary action from their agencies in 2023. The release is part of the Office of the Attorney General’s ongoing effort to increase transparency and public access to information about police discipline and use of force. It is being provided in compliance with Attorney General Law Enforcement Directive 2022-14 , issued in November 2022, in which Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin expanded the definition of major discipline and required law enforcement agencies to include more details about the misconduct that led to disciplinary action.

“The information released today reflects our commitment to increasing accountability in policing. For the first time since information regarding major disciplinary actions has been made public, we have made significant changes to the requirements by expanding the information provided. Increased transparency helps increase confidence in law enforcement, leading to greater public safety,”  said Attorney General Platkin . “New Jersey’s law enforcement officers – the vast majority of whom serve with professionalism and honor – benefit from this increased public trust, enabling them to more safely and effectively serve New Jersey’s residents.”

While the Attorney General Directive 2022-14 was issued in 2022, the increased reporting requirements took effect on January 1, 2023, making the 2023 reporting year the first year of the more robust reporting requirements. For the first time in this report, information is being released about certain forms of misconduct regardless of the type or severity of the discipline imposed on the officer, including sustained findings of the following:

• discrimination or bias against any person because of the individual’s actual or perceived race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, civil union status, domestic partnership status, affectional or sexual orientation, genetic information, sex, gender identity or expression, disability, nationality, familial status, or any other protected characteristic;
• excessive force in violation of departmental policy or the Attorney General’s Use of Force Policy;
• untruthfulness or demonstrating a lack of candor;
• filing a false report or submitting a false certification in any criminal, administrative, employment, financial, or insurance matter in their professional or personal life;
• intentionally conducting an improper search, seizure or arrest;
• intentionally mishandling or destroying evidence; or
• committing an act of domestic violence, as defined in N.J.S.A. 2C:25-19.

As in previous years, this release also includes information about officers who were suspended for more than five days, demoted, or terminated the prior year. The revised major discipline definition also includes any officer who:

• resigned, retired, transferred or separated from the agency, regardless of the reason, while any internal affairs investigation or complaint was pending, and the misconduct ultimately sustained fell within the categories above or if the misconduct would have resulted in a suspension of more than five days, demotion, or termination had the member not separated from the agency; or
• was charged with any indictable crime under New Jersey or an equivalent offense under federal law or the law of another jurisdiction related to the complaint.

Under AG Directive 2022-14, all New Jersey law enforcement agencies must submit major discipline reporting forms to the Attorney General’s Office annually for review, compilation, and analysis by the Office of Justice Data (OJD) and the Office of Public Integrity & Accountability (OPIA).  AG Directive 2022-14 requires that reports contain the names of officers subjected to major discipline, along with synopses describing the misconduct in sufficient detail so that readers unfamiliar with a case may fully understand the factual scenario that resulted in the disciplinary action. This information is contained in a written report and summarized on the Major Discipline Dashboard .

In the 2023 reporting year, the most frequently occurring offense as indicated in the summaries related to attendance, including lateness and call-outs too close to the start of a shift. There were 538 major disciplines from 167 agencies, involving 460 unique officers. Pending cases are not included in this data.

In addition, the updated Internal Affairs dashboard with 2023 information is also being released today. Annual summaries of internal affairs investigations are required to be submitted by law enforcement agencies to OPIA under Attorney General Law Enforcement Directive 2021-6 .

The 2023 Internal Affairs and Major Discipline releases are part of ongoing initiatives undertaken by Attorney General Platkin to make New Jersey’s criminal justice system more transparent, to provide policy makers and the public with access to data, and to foster greater understanding and trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve. Other efforts to increase transparency include launching a data warehouse providing de-identified information on arrests in New Jersey and releasing expanded data on the demographics of law enforcement agencies throughout the state.

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• Attorney General’s Office Investigating Vehicle Crash During Police Pursuit Resulting in Death of Motorcyclist in Hope Township, N.J. August 14, 2024
• Attorney General Platkin and Multistate Coalition Secure $4.5 Million from Enzo Biochem for Failing to Protect Health Data August 13, 2024
• Attorney General’s Office Investigating August 12, 2024, Police-Involved Shooting in Newark, N.J. August 13, 2024
• NJ Investors Urged to Redeem Funds Remaining on “Abra” Trading & Lending Platform August 12, 2024
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Maine police academy looks to expand disciplinary rules for officer misconduct

Aug. 14—The state police academy is considering new rules that would allow it to discipline Maine law enforcement officers when their behavior does not rise to the level of criminal charges but is deemed unprofessional.

The Maine Criminal Justice Academy has released a draft proposal for the new code of conduct, which would allow the academy's board of trustees to discipline officers for certain behavior, including harassing people, falsifying written or verbal communications in official reports, possessing a controlled substance and engaging in conduct while on duty that would "significantly diminish the public's confidence" in officers.

A public comment on the draft rules ended Sunday, three years after the Maine Legislature expanded the academy's disciplinary powers and provided the public with more information about misconduct by police and corrections officers.

The changes are a "long time coming," Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce said in a phone interview Wednesday.

"We're moving toward what people were crying for back in 2020 with law enforcement — police reform and trying to professionalize the law enforcement profession," he said.

The academy certifies all law enforcement and corrections officers in the state. Its board of trustees, comprised of a number of representatives from law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and town managers, has only been able to discipline officers for criminal misconduct, with few exceptions.

The board currently decertifies about five to six officers a year, Brian Pellerin, the board's outgoing chair and a chief deputy for the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office, said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Police chiefs in Maine are required by law to report officers' criminal conduct to the board, regardless of whether the officer faces charges. If an officer is convicted or accused of a crime, the board has the authority to review the conduct and take action, which could mean issuing a letter of reprimand, suspension or revoking their certificate to be a law enforcement officer in the state.

But not all police misconduct can be defined by criminal laws, creating a gap in what the academy is able to consider. For example, an officer who lies or commits sexual harassment may not be reported to the trustees. And low-level, Class E crimes aren't currently considered severe enough for the board to step in, Pellerin said.

The draft rules say that officers would be subject to discipline for:

— Harassing someone because of their race, color, sex, sexual orientation or gender identity, physical or mental disability, religion, age, ancestry, national origin or familial status. This would include unwelcome advances, comments, jokes and other verbal or physical conduct.

— Misrepresenting information or lying to obtain a certificate from the board.

— Misrepresenting information or lying in connection with their duties as an officer, including falsifying official reports. There is an exemption for when officers are conducting interviews or interrogations as part of official investigations.

— Disclosing information that the officer knew, or should have known, was confidential.

— Doing anything while on duty or in uniform that would significantly diminish the public's confidence in them or law enforcement broadly.

— Possessing controlled substances, including marijuana, in violation of federal law.

The changes were spurred around 2018 when the former Oxford County sheriff resigned amid sexual harassment allegations. The academy faced pressure from legislators because former sheriff Wayne Gallant's actions weren't considered a criminal matter, Pellerin said.

The 2021 law, which passed with police support, also came about after the Portland Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News published a joint three-part investigation that showed the Maine State Police had a pattern of not disclosing public information about trooper misconduct, even when final discipline had been issued. Final discipline decisions in Maine are public records under state law.

"There was a lot of frustration with the fact that we were really kind of limited in what we can do," Pellerin said. "We don't want to have an adversarial relationship with the Legislature. We're a tool for them and they're a tool for us."

After that law was passed, the academy started a rule-making process that resulted in the release of the draft code of conduct last month.

Under the proposed changes, the chief administrative officers of a law enforcement or corrections agency — such as a sheriff, police chief or head of state police — also would face discipline if they fail to report a conviction or misconduct by an officer to the board as required; fail to report the findings of an investigation requested by the board within 30 days; or allow or fail to stop and report an officer's unethical or unprofessional conduct.

Joyce, the Cumberland County sheriff, said he had a few initial concerns, but he said they were alleviated after talking to Pellerin.

LOCKING IN EXPECTATIONS

But his department is accredited, he said, meaning it already follows certain standards for reporting misconduct to the academy. Where the change might have more of an impact is on smaller, unaccredited agencies, he said.

"It's just locking expectations of the academy in, so that ... nobody can play dumb that they didn't know what was going on," Joyce said.

Tara Wheeler, a criminal justice research associate at the University of Maine's Catherine E. Cutler Institute, agreed. She said having these expectations in writing will help smaller agencies that may not have policies on reporting certain conduct.

"Different agencies have different regulations about officer conduct, so making a statewide standard that all officers are held to is probably a benefit," Wheeler said.

The board posted its draft rules on state websites and solicited comments from various police unions and groups, like the Maine Sheriffs Association, Maine Chiefs of Police Association and the Teamsters Local 340. The board now has 120 days to vote on the rules.

"This isn't something that's happened overnight," Pellerin said. "This is a process that's gone through multiple drafts to kind of find that sweet spot of capturing what we wanted to capture without becoming the internal affairs department for every police department."

He said the board has yet to review the comments, and couldn't provide copies to a reporter, but he said that the board will review them at its next meeting when trustees can choose whether or not to consider the recommendations in the comments. That meeting has not yet been scheduled.

"The reason for public comment is just to identify those unintended consequences of something that maybe we haven't considered," Pellerin said.

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Jordan: The Essay Competition on International Humanitarian Law

• Respect for IHL

The International Committee of the Red Cross in Jordan is happy to organize its second International Humanitarian Law (“ IHL ”) essay writing competition to engage the law students on relevant IHL discussions and to provide an academic platform for legal debates. For this year, students will be able to choose from two essay questions dealing with different areas of IHL. 

Note:  Students taking part in the essay competition can only choose one of the topics below. 

First Topic: The Enforcement of IHL

The year 2024 marks the 75 th anniversary of the 1949 Four Geneva Conventions.  They specifically protect people who are not taking part in the hostilities, including civilians, health workers and aid workers, and those who are no longer participating, such as wounded, sick and shipwrecked soldiers and prisoners of war. The Conventions and their Protocols call for measures to be taken to prevent or put an end to all breaches. They contain stringent rules to deal with what are known as "grave breaches". Those who commit grave breaches must be pursued and tried or extradited, whatever their nationality.  Recently many questions rose about its enforcement and effectiveness. In its latest challenges report released in 2019, the ICRC has emphasized that the biggest challenge to IHL is lack of respect for it. Efforts to enhance respect for IHL should be taken by all parties to armed conflict; by States, at the national, regional, and international level; and by all actors that can influence those involved in the fighting.

Discuss the legal mechanisms available to enforce IHL, including the specific obligations of states enriched in Common Article 1 to the Four Geneva Conventions. In your opinion, after 75 years, from a legal perspective, do the Four Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols still effectively protect the individuals they are intended to safeguard? What legal gaps, if any, exist in ensuring adequate protection under the aforementioned conventions.

Second Topic: Application of IHL to Cyberattacks

In the digital era, the means and methods of warfare have evolved with an increasing number of digital risks that have the potential to exacerbate or change conflict dynamics and to increase the risk of intentional and unintended harm for affected populations.  Cyberattacks could increase people's exposure to risk and vulnerabilities and contribute directly or indirectly to endangering civilian populations' safety or dignity.  The evolution of such digital risks posed complex questions to the applicability of IHL, which, as some would argue, originally sought to regulate traditional warfare.

Critically analyze and discuss how does IHL prohibits misinformation, disinformation and hate speech and the applicability of IHL to cyberattacks. And what challenges may arise in ensuring compliance with IHL in the cyberspace?

Language: The essay should be written in Arabic.

Eligibility Criteria:  The competition will be on held for undergraduate law schools’ students in Jordan. 

Awards: The first-place winner in each category will receive a certificate and 500 JOD

The second-place winner in each category will receive a certificate and 400 JOD

The third-place winner in each category will receive a certificate and 300 JOD

Deadline: You are requested to send your essay to  [email protected]   by 30 th October 2024. 

Competition Rules:

Defending the Essay:  As a precondition for their qualification, students whose essays are nominated for the first three places must discuss their essays with the jury.  

Font:  Manuscripts should be submitted in Word format in 12 pt Times New Roman font with 1.5 line spacing (including for the footnotes).

Length : Manuscripts submitted should be minimum 3,000 and maximum 5,000 words, footnotes included.

Highlighting : No highlighting (bold, italics, underlined) should be used within the text body, except for italics for foreign language terms: e.g. a limine. Foreign organizations should not be set in italics.

I. Internet References: For references available on the internet please indicate "available at:" followed by the full website link. The first internet reference should indicate the date of the last visit for all subsequent references. Example: ..., available at  https://international-review.icrc.org/  (all internet references were accessed in March 2014).

II. The editorial basics Dates: Use the following style: 1 February 1989. Numerals: We use Arabic numbers, not Hindi. Numerals below 100 should be spelled out, except for ages, which should always be given in digits .

Related articles

Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory: The law of occupation must be respected

ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric: “War without limits equals suffering without end”

Students, teachers and schools should always be protected in armed conflict

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Biden Denounces Violence on Campus, Breaking Silence After Rash of Arrests

President Biden defended the right to dissent but made clear that he believed too many of the demonstrations had gone beyond the bounds of free speech.

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President Biden Addresses Campus Protests

President biden defended the right of demonstrators to protest peacefully, but condemned the “chaos” that has prevailed at many colleges nationwide..

Violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is. It’s against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations — none of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others, so students can finish the semester and their college education. There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked. But let’s be clear about this as well. There should be no place on any campus — no place in America — for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place for racism in America.

By Peter Baker

Traveling with President Biden aboard Air Force One

• May 2, 2024

President Biden broke days of silence on Thursday to finally speak out on the wave of protests on American college campuses against Israel’s war in Gaza that have inflamed much of the country, denouncing violence and antisemitism even as he defended the right to peaceful dissent.

In a previously unscheduled televised statement from the White House, Mr. Biden offered a forceful condemnation of students and other protesters who in his view have taken their grievances over the war too far. But he rejected Republican calls to deploy the National Guard to rein in the campuses.

“There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos,” Mr. Biden said into cameras in his first personal remarks on the campus fray in 10 days. “People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.” Antisemitism, he added, “has no place” in America.

The president’s comments came as universities across the nation continued to struggle to restore order. Police officers in riot gear arrested about 200 people as they cleared a protest encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, while other officers removed demonstrators occupying a library at Portland State University in Oregon. Activists erected 30 tents at the University of Wisconsin-Madison a day after the police removed tents and detained 34 people .

The confrontations on Thursday followed a tense 24 hours during which police officers made arrests at Fordham University’s Manhattan campus , the University of Texas at Dallas, Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Tulane University in New Orleans , among other places. As of Thursday, the campus unrest had led to nearly 2,000 arrests at dozens of academic institutions in the last two weeks, according to a New York Times tally .

Administrators at some colleges, including Brown University in Rhode Island and Northwestern University in Illinois, opted to avoid conflict by striking deals with pro-Palestinian protesters to bring a peaceful end to their encampments — agreements that have drawn harsh criticism from some Jewish leaders .

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