NYTimes | Early
this year, Megan E. Green, a St. Louis alderwoman, met with officials
of a local police union to discuss a proposal for a civilian oversight
board that would look into accusations of police misconduct. After Ms.
Green refused to soften her support for the proposal, the union backed
an aggressive mailing campaign against her.
But
Ms. Green won her primary with over 70 percent of the vote, and the
Board of Aldermen approved the oversight board by a large margin. “All
that stuff backfired,” Ms. Green said. “The more they attacked me for
it, the more people seemed to rally around me.”
During
the urban crime epidemic of the 1970s and ’80s and the sharp decline in
crime that began in the 1990s, the unions representing police officers
in many cities enjoyed a nearly unassailable political position. Their
opposition could cripple political candidates and kill police-reform
proposals in gestation.
But
amid a rash of high-profile encounters involving allegations of police
overreach in New York, Baltimore, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and North
Charleston, S.C., the political context in which the police unions have
enjoyed a privileged position is rapidly changing. And the unions are
struggling to adapt.
“There
was a time in this country when elected officials — legislators, chief
executives — were willing to contextualize what police do,” said Eugene
O’Donnell, a former New York City police officer and prosecutor who now
teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “And that time is
mostly gone.”
