We had that problem in our department as well.
There were always guys that you just knew where going to be a problem. Unfortunately, the city didn’t do anything during the probationary period when they could. The union wouldn’t do anything because..it’s a dues paying member. The only recourse for the line troops was to “bury” the person in a inside job or in a district where the risk to people was limited.
It wasn’t until the end of my career that the department started using FTO’s that could make recommendations during the probationary period about the unsuitability of certain officers. Then it was up to the administration and the city to address the problem. Sometimes they did, sometimes not.
I appreciate and commend you on your honesty about this reality Sir. Far too many times in the last 20 years there has been so many conversations where there is always absolute denial that there is even a problem at all. Bad pickles just don’t exist.
I think you are absolutely right about the unions, and not just in this occupation, in all occupations where there is a union representing employees. It’s a protection racket that gives the employee a subconscious assumption that they are completely immune to consequences and accountability of their own actions. The “I can’t be fired no matter what” mentality starts to influence their actions.
Unfortunately this feeling of immunity affects very important on the job decisions and personal pride to do the best they can in performing their job. Why worry if there are almost no consequences to worry about. And this is true, these officers in this event just have to call their union legal dept and they will probably be let off the hook no matter what the situation was.
So in the bigger picture of cause and effect, the fault for these events is on both the local depts and the union. The local depts for not taking care of their employees well enough so that they do not need to join a union to get what they deserve. And the unions for supplying almost absolute immunity from consequences of personal wrong action making them legally untouchable up to, and even after a blatant event like this.
But in turn there is also the huge “public” factor in this too. The public is the jury that allow these issues to perpetuate and become more often and more common because of their own decisions in trial cases concerning these events. This factor is just recently starting to change.