That's 34 people who should be off the streets - so that's notable.
It would also be interesting to find the count of claims where the board was unable to get evidence it was entitled to.
As long as there's zero accountability or transparency, there will always be the remote possibility that there are good cops out there being complained against, but that should be an argument for greater accountability and transparency, not for assuming the best and waiting for the next time a police officer murders someone on camera to do the same thing again.
The problem is that in addition to representing the line workers, the union also manages the entire department. It controls everything except setting the department's budget.
It would be like the C-executives of GM being part of the United Auto Workers union. There would be zero accountability for anyone, and the interests of the shareholders would not be represented well.
Unions must exist in an adversarial relationship with management - it keeps all parties honest. If the union takes over management, you get a disaster.
The issue is that I think most of us agree when it gets to the level you describe, perhaps that's not a job worth doing.
It's easy to see how it gets to that point though. Friends in the union might not care who is in the wrong, and selective retelling of the facts can get other union member up in arms about the "raw deal" their fellow member is getting, so it's probably easier for the union to just protect all but the most egregious behavior against non union people. I imagine that's just how the incentives work out.
Generally, data doesn’t convince anyone who doesn’t want to be convinced, and can usually be used to support a wide variety of contradictory interpretations.
Avoiding this is why science has to be so rigorous.
I’m not sure we’ll get to absolute confidence. But at least knowing we have a complete data set and sound, valid process.
No, this narrative is disgusting. People don't punch people in the face, choke them, hit them with nightsticks, spray them with tear gas and pepper spray, shoot them with rubber bullets, and fucking murder people, because they're "imperfect humans, as we all are". You wouldn't cut anyone else this kind of slack, stop putting police officers above the rest of us.
People don't report officers because they "violate some rule within their complex policing guidelines", for the simple reason that people don't know all the complex policing guidelines. People report officers because they do stuff that is obviously illegal (or should be).
What's unexpected here are how few officers have received any sort of disciplinary action.
The article notes that only 303 of 36000 officers (0.8%) have 5 or more substantiated violations against them. The particulars of those should be examined more closely perhaps, but overall I’m not taking this as a sign of things being irrevocably broken. It even suggests that minor tweaks (reforms) would work, as they have elsewhere like in Seattle.