Police Union Expresses Frustration Over Labor’s Response To Ferguson, Eric Garner

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jacobfischler/police-union-expresses-frustration-over-labors-response-to-f

The AFL-CIO’s sole police union sent a letter to the federation’s president about the issue.

posted on Dec. 10, 2014, at 10:50 a.m. Jacob Fischler BuzzFeed News Reporter


Getty Images Alex Wong

WASHINGTON — As labor unions continue to rally in a call for justice over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, the AFL-CIO’s police union has sent a letter to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka addressing their concerns over the rhetoric, hoping to bring it to heel.

The AFL-CIO confirmed it received a letter this week from Sam Cabral, the president of the International Union of Police Associations. The letter comes as other unions have condemned grand juries for not indicting the killers of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City, and called for sweeping police reforms.

Neither IUPA nor the AFL-CIO would discuss the details of the letter, citing it as an “internal” matter. But a spokesman for the police union said they were frustrated there “wasn’t much” they could do to help quell the anti-police narrative that’s seemed to come to a boiling point nationwide.

“What we are doing is staying very, very close to all the reports that are coming in and gleaning through them,” IUPA spokesman Rich Roberts told BuzzFeed News. “Trying to bypass all the emotion that’s being generated.”

FULL story at link.

The police union doesn't seem to understand they have a big PR problem because of officers actions around the country.

[ladjf]

1. The police union understands. They just don't want to lose their control. nt

[Kingofalldems]

2. Has the police union ever backed a strike?

They have certainly bashed the heads of picketers.

[NOLALady]

3. IIRC

The police had a strike in NOLA during the tenure of the first non white Mayor. Late 70s I believe.

"In his first term, Morial faced a sanitation workers’ strike and a police strike which led him to cancel the 1979 Mardi Gras parade season. The police union wagered, among its membership, that a strike coinciding with Mardi Gras would force the city to grant many of their demands, but Morial refused to give in and was supported by leaders of many of the city's Carnival krewes. The New Orleans krewes either canceled their parades that year or moved them to suburbs in other parishes. Emblematic of Morial’s hard-line stance toward the police strikers was the Napoleonic gesture he made by placing his arm inside his coat and striking a characteristically pugnacious pose at the announcement that he was canceling Mardi Gras."

[Downwinder]

4. Like the Police always respect other Unions.