Why Bad Cops Aren't Fired

Finally, a bad cop has been fired:

A Salt Lake City police detective was fired and his supervisor demoted Tuesday for their roles in the arrest of a nurse who was manhandled and shoved screaming into a squad car as she tried to protect the legal rights of an unconscious patient.

Detective Jeff Payne was fired and James Tracy, his watch commander, was demoted two ranks from lieutenant to officer after an internal review by the Salt Lake City Police Department found their actions toward the nurse violated department policy and undermined public trust.

This is good thing, but it's not enough: the watch commander is the one who ordered the subordinate to arrest the nurse. Now they're sending him back out on the street?  The guy should be out on his ear, no matter how many years of seniority he has. Clearly, the higher-ups don't want the guy to lose his pension for making a mistake that, in their minds, any cop could make.

The question is, will Payne stay fired? Because, all too often, cities that fire bad cops are forced to rehire them:

Since 2006, the nation’s largest police departments have fired at least 1,881 officers for misconduct that betrayed the public’s trust, from cheating on overtime to unjustified shootings. But The Washington Post has found that departments have been forced to reinstate more than 450 officers after appeals required by union contracts.

Most of the officers regained their jobs when police chiefs were overruled by arbitrators, typically lawyers hired to review the process. In many cases, the underlying misconduct was undisputed, but arbitrators often concluded that the firings were unjustified because departments had been too harsh, missed deadlines, lacked sufficient evidence or failed to interview witnesses.

The arbitrators protecting bad cops are there because union contracts force arbitration. It's exactly the thing that Republicans complain about every time the subject of unions come up. "Oh, unions protect lazy and incompetent employees. They're terrible!"

But apparently not all unions. After gaining control of the legislature and governor's office in Wisconsin Republicans gutted most public sector unions in the state. Except for the police and fire fighters unions. They got special treatment because they supported Scott Walker, though Walker claimed it was for "public safety:"

"There is an inequity, that's for sure," said Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association. "But everybody knows that police and firefighters didn't create that inequity."

Gov. Scott Walker and fellow Republicans in the state Legislature changed the law last year, saying they needed to cut costs without endangering public safety by risking police and firefighter strikes in reaction to the statute.

This seems to be clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, guaranteeing equal treatment before the law, and worse, an explicit acknowledgment that Republicans are caving in to threats of extortion by ornery cops and fire fighters.

I can understand that politicians are leery of crossing the police unions because they depend on them for enforcing their decisions. But it makes no sense to have a police force that tolerates corruption, incompetence and wanton murder by cops.

Almost as importantly, these cops cost cities and counties hundreds of millions of dollars every year when courts award damages for the illegal actions of bad cops.

Not all cops are bad. Not by a long stretch. But when cities are forced to keep the bad ones on the payroll, it's got to be disheartening to to the good cops. And little by little, the ethos of corruption gains hold, until all the good cops can't take it anymore and just leave.