By William Allardice

Now the dirty little secret, every organization including the police, media and politics have bad actors, and it is everyone’s duty to call them out.  The police, like all unions, have a moral, if not legal duty to defend its members to the fullest extent of the law. 

Re “California progressive politicians turning away campaign cash from cops”; June 6, 2020

Police unions’ “power to raise and dispense large amounts of campaign cash has warped the electoral process and has slowed or blocked reasonable efforts to hold officers accountable for bad performance,” the Los Angeles Times declared recently in an editorial supporting prohibitions against candidates accepting contributions from such unions.

Others contend that kind of reasoning deserves to be applied to other public employee union campaign contributions as well. As a retired, longtime union official, (not police) I find these beliefs in interesting company.  Every major corporation and large company have the same view of unions – they want them disbanded or hobbled and ineffectual. 

Now the dirty little secret, every organization including the police, media and politics have bad actors, and it is everyone’s duty to call them out.  The police, like all unions, have a moral, if not legal duty to defend its members to the fullest extent of the law.