Last weekend’s CBS “60 Minutes” episode highlighted the power of the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association (POA)—or, the city’s white police union—in stifling calls for police reform. In the episode, St. Louis Prosecutor Kim Gardner spoke movingly about how, when she has tried to carry out her campaign promises for reform she has faced relentless pushback from the POA. She has been faced with death threats, smears against her character, and piles and piles of letters saying she “should be hung up from a tree…by the KKK” and similarly disturbing threats.
These attacks have been exacerbated by the police union’s intemperate, inciteful comments that call her a cop-hater. They have lobbied strenuously against her, the first Black woman to be elected St. Louis’ top prosecutor. These smears come from the POA’s leadership, not the professional officers on the force with whom she continues to work.
When interviewer Bill Whitaker asked Gardner if the threats frightened her, she responded stoically: “Well, I signed up for this.” What she really fears, she said, is that one of her loved ones might be hurt because she took this job.
When Jeff Roorda and the Police Officer’s Association threaten reform-minded politicians, such as Megan Green, who questioned their budgetary allocations or assert that Gardner is unqualified to do her job because she attempts to ensure that police officers who kill are not given the power to continue killing, they are working from an old playbook.
The ascendancy of the current power of police unions gained considerable momentum during the “law and order” era of the 60s through the 80s, and the age of reckless, shameful and destructive mass incarceration that was supported by Democrats as well as Republicans.
The influence of police unions grew as they proclaimed themselves as the most important safeguard against greater discord. They have increasingly functioned less like an ordinary union — something organized for the protection of the basic rights of workers — and more as an instrument for the protection of white police abuse, and even killing with impunity.
However, the increased use of video on mobile phones, the heightened reckoning on race in the aftermath of multiple high profile police shootings of Black people and the huge costs of civil judgements that need a lower level of proof for conviction, have put some of this undisputed power police unions have enjoyed in jeopardy.
The Ethical Society of Police(ESOP), the Black police union of St. Louis, has advocated against racial discrimination and racist violence within the police departments of the metropolitan area since 1972. Though the Ethical Society was not mentioned in the “60 Minutes” segment, their role and outspokenness have been crucial in highlighting exactly how much the Police Officer’s Association has used implicit and explicit threats of violence by some police officers as a cudgel against ordinary St. Louisans.
Their insidious effect on public opinion became even more evident earlier this week. When jury selection began in the trial of two St. Louis police officers who violently beat one of their own undercover colleagues (a Black police officer) in 2017, potential jurors were asked if they had seen the “60 Minutes” episode. If they had, they were eliminated from the pool as biased.
The final jury selected in this case is 100% white.
The incident in which the two white officers gleefully attacked one of their own occurred during the 2017 protests after the acquittal of Jason Stockley, a white police officer who killed a Black man at point-blank range after stating, “I’m going to kill this motherf*cker.” In that case, too, the Police Officer’s Association stood firmly and unquestioningly on the side of Stockley, even raising money to pay his bail.
To achieve a St. Louis that doesn’t experience the highest rate of killings by police in the country, we must support measures advocated by Gardner, and the ESOP, and everyone who is fighting against those who would protect the current unjust system, including the POA and other enablers that are permissive of police violence and abuse.
