Police unions and use‐of‐force reforms in American cities

Abstract

Following the murder of George Floyd, there was widespread debate about the policies that govern the use of force by police, but municipal leaders suggested that police unions kept many of the proposed changes from being adopted. Although there is anecdotal and scholarly evidence that unions frequently oppose policing reform, the limited literature in this area actually offers somewhat mixed conclusions about the relationship between union strength and the success of previous reform efforts. In this study, we draw on Halpin's theory of interest groups as politically adaptive organizations to develop expectations about the behavior of police unions in police governance subsystems. We hypothesize that union attempts to influence policy will correlate positively with reform adoption when the political environment is conducive to victory on that front or makes the cost of opposition too high and negatively when the opposite conditions hold. Analyses of the impact of union campaign contributions on the adoption of use‐of‐force policies in the 100 largest U.S. cities demonstrate that the nature and direction of union influence are moderated by the political climate of the jurisdiction in which they operate.

Neck‐restraint bans, law enforcement officer unions, and police killings

“…As neck-restraint regulations expand, reformers have contended with a common obstacle to adopting such bans: law enforcement officer unions. Unions may negotiate for weaker use-offorce regulations to protect their members and to "increase officers' sense of security and their insulation from punitive action" (Alpert & MacDonald, 2001, p. 398; see also Fisk & Richardson, 2017;Levinson, 2017;Nicholson-Crotty et al, 2023;Rushin, 2016). For example, in 2020, a coalition of law enforcement unions successfully sued New York City over a law that would punish officers who applied pressure to a person's neck or kneeled on their torso or back (Watkins, 2022).…”

Editorial introduction: Exploring policy theories, narratives, and policing

“…In their article “Police unions and use‐of‐force reform in American cities,” Nicholson‐Crotty et al. (2023) examine the role of police unions in use‐of‐force reform across the 100 largest US cities. Drawing on Halpin's interest group theory, the authors hypothesize that union efforts to influence policy will correlate positively with reform adoption when the political environment is conducive to victory or makes the cost of opposition too high and negatively when the opposite conditions hold.…”