Comically limp self-punishment- this is why police unions need broad reform.

Police need reform. Police unions need to go entirely. Police unions exist primarily to prevent police from consequences of their abuses of power. The State doesn't need unions to protect itself from its citizens.

I would think Police unions would probably gladly accept. higher pay for more accountability. It feels like accountability sheltering is a deal with the devil that cities made.

You've never negotiated with a union rep on anything, have you?

You pay every beat cop in the country $1 million/yr and they would never agree to the level of accountability most people expect. Independent review of actions by someone outside the chain of command? Unpaid leave when you're under investigation? At-will employment? Raises and promotions based on skill, not seniority? Random, immediate, and pass-fail physical, psychological, and marksmanship tests? Most of these seem completely reasonable to most people and if you said even one of them in a contract negotiation the first order of business by the union rep would be to remove you from contract negotiation.

> You've never negotiated with a union rep on anything, have you?

To be fair, how many people can say they have?

>you said even one of them in a contract negotiation the first order of business by the union rep would be to remove you from contract negotiation.

You can do the same thing by saying "jury nullification" during the jury duty selection process. You can watch BOTH lawyers scramble to kick you out of the room.

To be fair, this may be not because you know about it, but because you're the sort of person to bring it up unsolicited.

Serious question: why would a defense attorney want to kick off the one crazy juror who brings up jury nullification during voir dire?

Cops are already paid very, very highly and should be held accountable. Cops don't take accountability and do take the pay, so your thesis is pretty well tested and didn't work.

Generally I'd say public sector unions (especially in essential services) are of very questionable benefit and need limits, but robust private sector unions are much more obviously beneficial to society.

-----

In the private sector the incentives are mostly aligned for producing reasonable deals, because both sides rely on the business being healthy and making a profit and the jobs fundamentally rely on that.

In the public sector they aren't aligned. The politician is most incentivized to avoid immediate political turmoil. Voters are not market analysts who recognize and have a problem with deals that produce massive costs in the long-run (ex: exceptionally young or exceptionally generous retirement). The union is often aware it can extort the public with the threat of causing chaos. Government can raise taxes/take on heavier debt, which further weakens it's negotiating position - in all but the most extreme cases it won't be going into bankruptcy or ceasing to exist, taxpayers in 30 years will just be on the hook for paying a bad deal made by a previous generation.

Public sector unions, like all unions, are designed to level the power imbalance between worker and employer. Nothing about public/private employers changes this dynamic.

Public sector unions are inherently problematic.

The argument for a union is that they keep a company in check and the two balance each other at the negotiating table.

Public sector unions negotiate against voters and tax payers. There is really no opposite force to resist against their negotiating power and the only hard line is the state budget.

100% agree with this. Yes government's can also abuse it's workers, but society can more easily vote out an abusive government (especially locally) than an abusive CEO / board. There's no perfect solution, but police unions are a pretty good example of a worst case scenario.

I'm very pro union in the private sector.

Teachers aren't a paramilitary force employed by the state.

Nor do they somehow have contractural agreements with their cities that limit civilian oversight and require that possible crimes by members have to be handled as internal disciplinary issues first.

Structurally this means evidence gathered by internal investigations will often be destroyed and can't be used for possible criminal charges, as well as plenty of time to tighten up stories and close ranks with each other.

Hey the military has rules of engagement.

Uniform Military Code of Justice and Military Court Martial.

Also, probably for obvious reasons military unions are strictly prohibited by federal law for active-duty personnel [1].

[1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/976

Parent post says "paramilitary" which is explicitly NOT the military.

I'm not sure what you're arguing against here, but it seems clear to me that the comment you're replying to was drawing a comparison to the military.

Right, they’re just the people tasked with educating and keeping safe our most vulnerable.

And they, already, don't have qualified immunity while they're doing so. They are also already disallowed in many places.

Are you seriously trying to equate people exercising their right to peacefully protest to the power to detain and shoot people?

Rarely does one see a single word do so much work as "spectrum" here attempting to link protests to paramilitary activity.

"On the spectrum of" is doing a lot of heavy lifting for you there. How many teachers have shot someone in their care this year? I'm guessing very few.

Also, "definitely not zero" is an absurd bar. "One teacher did something, better condemn all teachers!"

this may be the weirdest definition of "paramilitary activity" ive seen.

It’s not weird, it’s just a lie.

I hate how our society has just normalized people lying blatantly to our face and still giving the benefit of the doubt. It’s how you see a violent crowd breaking windows and beating people get called a peaceful tour.

Most propagandized people in the history of the world

Teachers don’t have state granted rights to commit violence. They also don’t have qualified immunity. The Supreme Court hasn’t decided they have no duty to protect.

You’re talking apples and donkeys.

They even had to reach far enough to compare performance standards to corruption investigations.

> Why wouldn’t this logic apply to all unions?

For public sector unions, it absolutely does.

A better comparison is, on a sliding scale, tsa or firefighters, emts. All can invade your privacy and take / destroy your things to a varying degree. You don't get to chose which fire gets you out of your car or which EMT does cpr on you.

You do get to choose not to use TSA though. It might be inconvenient or expensive but that doesn't mean the choice doesn't exist.

Are you talking about being able to afford a private jet? If yes, then I would hardly call it a choice. I would definitely pick private, if I could, but I believe that most people (including me) just aren't able to afford it.

Otherwise, I have no idea what you are talking about. TSA Precheck still requires you to go through TSA security checkpoints, and you still gotta get all your items scanned and walk through the security gate (you just don't need to pull your laptop out of the bag and don't need to take off your shoes). And you still might get occasionally pulled to the side for an extra check because you got randomly picked (happened to me twice in the past few years).

Can you explain what you mean by that? Are you saying "You can just drive instead" or do you mean there is a way to fly within the US without going through the TSA?

That logic does apply to most/all state employee unions. Teachers, fire & rescue, etc.

But as others have pointed out, police unions are even worse in that the police uniquely are allowed to wield the power of the state with lethal force (military too, but until recently, we were supposed to be protected by Posse comitatus).

Good point. I accept your terms.

Straw man argument. Teachers are important but don’t have impunity to use deadly force.

it should apply to all public sector unions, they're a disaster. That's the real problem. Should never have been allowed.

Cop unions are very different from basically every other kind of union. Cops aren't workers. They don't need workers unions.

Teachers and administrative staff are workers. They need workers unions.

Teachers don’t have guns, and the ability to tie you up in the courts or worse.

Teachers can weaponize CPS reports and absolutely cause legal problems. I know someone who dealt with that. Their kid's doctor put the kid on an ADHD medicine, he had a bad reaction to it, and then the doctor told the mother to immediately discontinue it.

The teacher was annoyed the kid was kind of disruptive and so filed a report that the mom had committed "medical neglect" for not giving her son the meds.

She had to take off work and deal with random CPS visits until they were satisfied.

This is a kid with good grades who can read multiple grade levels higher and who is most likely bored in class. I think he was in the first grade at the time

I don't know what the consequences of that are or could have been but it raised my eyebrows

Yeah, that's a great point, thanks for sharing. One time a teacher cut in line in front of me at the grocery store, so it seems like the real problem here is teachers having too much power.

This. Police routinely take away people's lives, either by shooting them needlessly, or using their power to fabricate charges or evidence against someone to ensure they spend their life in the criminal justice system.

They only have the power to mess up dozens of kids' futures each...

Sure, that makes the case for reform stronger for police unions, but why should bad union behavior (ie. protecting criminal or incompetent members) be tolerated at all?

Because the freedom of association is a core principle of the American constitution. Curtailing that freedom should be a measure of last resort.

>Curtailing that freedom should be a measure of last resort.

This just feels like it turns into a cudgel against whatever groups you hate. Bad police unions? Boo! Let's ban them! Bad teacher unions? Free association is protected by the constitution so they get a pass. Catholic priests? On one hand they're consistently hated on by progressives, but on the other hand much of the arguments that can be used to defend them can be applied to teachers.

Police, like the military, should be held to a higher standard, because we grant them a monopoly on violence.

What you want to say is: teachers don't have qualified immunity

Nonsense.

Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364 (2009) (citing Thomas v. Roberts, 323 F.3d 950 (11th Cir. 2003)("This case involves a[n] ... action brought by thirteen elementary school students ... against Tracey Morgan, their teacher [and others].... [W]e affirm[] the district court's grant of qualified immunity to the individual defendants on the children's claims.")).

Fair enough, TIL.

I know some kids who had a really bad time in school because some teachers treated them badly. Yes, it's not as bad as what the cops can do, but it was still pretty life altering.

Maybe not teachers or the DPW mechanic or whatever, but pretty much ever "enforcement" arm of the state does by proxy though.

Anyone with "inspector" in their title is just an abstraction layer above the cops and courts.

are you seriously arguing that Teacher unions are just as bad? Teachers don't have the power to weild state sanctioned violence on you.

I mean, maybe you could argue about Fire Department Unions, (they can shut down events, force you from entering your home, etc) but then again, nobody has written a song called "Fuck the Fire Department"

Dude. If it weren't for unions, you would be working 70 hours each week for a shit pay and would even have less employee rights than you have not (assuming you live in the US, based on your dismissive comment against unions)

Unions are bad, period. Teachers Union is one of the worst.

This logic absolutely should apply to all unions, including both police and teachers unions. You can find equally disgusting anecdotes of bad teachers who are protected by their unions, with students paying the price. You can tell a lot about whether someone has impartial judgement by seeing whether they consistently support/oppose both

I have friends who are cops.....the amount of shenanigans that happens behind the curtains is insane. It is literally full of high school drama, divorces, sleeping around, just all around poor behavior.

Unfortunately, the same happens in other high stress industries. Nurses are wild too.

I don’t think “high stress” is the common denominator for that kind of behavior. That just sounds like horny, immature humans - happens in lots of places.

It happens essentially everywhere. If you think it doesn't happen at your place of work, it's likely just because you haven't been included in the gossip circle.

Drama is stressful/exciting. People who have a high tolerance for stress/excitement are the ones who take on stressful jobs (nurses, police, flight attendants...) and the ones who are more tolerant of/likely to engage in drama.

Exactly.

Is Florida State University also a high-stress environment?

or…birds of a feather?

This happens everywhere, your office just isn't sharing the gossip with you

I don't give a shit about what cops do on their time off, as long as it's legal. It's what they do in a uniform that matters.

A lot of this will happen without unions anyway. It seems like every country has a completely different cultural gestalt surrounding police work.

For some reason, modern police culture in american seems to increasingly value a corporatist perspective of us vs them (them being everyone who is not police), the normalization of violent response, fixation with the concept of face and widespread corruption.

Police Unions didn't create them, and abolishing them won't eliminate their lobbying power, you don't need a union to organize yourself around a lobby.

Let's not use this excuse to perpetuate the demonization of unions. After decades of increase concentration of productivity gains in the hands of capital at the expense of labor, and as we enter the AI age, this is the least thing we need.

i dont know that it's a modern phenomenon. For example law enforcement being used to attack strikers in West Virginia, cops from Los Angeles being sent to the CA border to attack Dust Bowl Okies, maybe other readers can think of others. For all the good that LE does, there has always been a strain of working for more extreme capitalist interests.

Cops (modern cops) grew out of capital trying to socialize the cost of protecting their interests. Whether it was slave patrols or dock warehouse security, central cops evolved to protect capital's interests.

Would police unions vote to strike to support a trooper who stole a laptop?

If so, then I think you've got police problems, not police unions problems.

Back in 2019 the police in Fresno stole a bunch of rare coins during a search of a house where the warrant did not cover anything like said coins, valued at $125,000, by reporting that they seized $50,000 when they actually took twice that much in cash and the coins. The 9th Circuit ended up deciding that while it was obviously morally wrong, qualified immunity applied because there's clearly established case law that stealing property that was specifically targeted for a search does violate the Constitution, because there's no analogous case regarding property stolen by police that the police did not know was there and are not covered by the warrant, there's no clearly established violation of the 4th Amendment even though it is literally an unlawful seizure of property. Supreme Court denied cert, allowing the decision to stand. I wish I was joking.

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/17...

Despite how the USA barely pretends to be egalitarian, there is 100% an importance totem pole, with billionaires and businesses on the top, then politicians, the police, the military, religious leaders all somewhere in the middle in some order, and then the rest of the population on the very bottom. Any fight between these cohorts will be decided based on where they are on the totem pole, not based on the law, the Constitution, or what's right.

Please, please tread on me.

Qualified immunity is a stain on American jurisprudence and an insult to the idea of America as a free society.

Demand of people who want your vote in the coming elections that they support a legislative correction to this judicial activism. This country was founded in large part because 250 years ago the British sent soldiers into American cities and American homes, with powers to detain, arrest and deprive of life and liberty with no accountability. If a colonial was wrongly treated they would force adjudication in favorable courts back in Britain, effectively making their soldiers immune from accountability.

The fact our judicial system has saw fit to independently replicate this injustice that none of us voted for is a crime against the very notion of what it means to be an American. Hold your leaders accountable.

It's an AND. The union is why administrations can't get rid of the problem employees.

In Seattle, the police are "quiet quitting" (traffic ticketing is down 8x over ~10 years ago) and literally committing fraud and getting away with it (an officer on his second time falsely applying over 24 hours of work in a day, just had to return the pay for that week. There's STILL not computerized time tracking...)

Unions strike primarily for collective bargaining purposes.

They use the bargaining to set contract terms that restrict how people can be fired.

A union member who gets in trouble can leverage union resources and representation to protect themselves.

One of my family members did a term as a union rep. He was getting really frustrated with some of the little claims that union members wanted to use the union to protect themselves from, but it was part of the job. Fortunately for him there wasn’t a serious incident like this to deal with during his term.

> … claims that union members wanted to use the union to protect themselves from ...

One could argue that as litigious as US society has become, it makes sense to find out what resources are available when you’re the target of a grievance.

Further, since we are also a society of specialists, one should consult a specialist when one is the target of aforementioned grievances.

It wasn't really that complicated. It was a lot of stories about someone getting caught doing something like time card fraud or even unarguable sexual harassment and then desperately trying to avoid consequences for their own actions.

I'm in a union. My dad has been a union rep (different union), so I know a bit.

There is no way my colleagues would go out on strike to protect me if I stole anything. And that's absolutely right. Nor would I expect my union to go into bat for me, after anything like that was proven; nor for anything immoral.

Mad.

Unions are there to make sure you're treated fairly, not to shield members from consequences when they act immorally/illegally.

I agree with you on moral grounds, but I have some stories.

> Nor would I expect my union to go into bat for me, after anything like that was proven

Sure, but one of the jobs of the rep is to prevent it from being proven that you are guilty.

Also, there would be no need to strike, because the union has negotiated the bureaucratic processes that will be followed when you do something wrong. Following the usually slow process will let you look for ways to escape, including the company not properly filing paperwork within the allotted time.

Source: union steward's stories.

No, but they go on strike when negotiating their collective contracts, and put terms in the contract that govern how failures like this are investigated and punished.

Apologies if I misread/misinterpreted you, but police can't (generally) strike in the USA. Most states have a specific laws against police and firefighters from going on strike. Federal law enforcement cannot strike

edit: a source (I assume lawyers.com is reputable..) https://legal-info.lawyers.com/labor-employment-law/wage-and...

It's not legal, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

See "Blue flu" for cases where cops coordinate a strike using sick leave. Another way they strike is by simply not doing their job. They'll just sit in their cars all day and won't respond or will severely delay response to dispatch.

AFAIK, those cops never get a ATF style house cleaning.

Oh no, they still strike. It's just one of the other definitions: "to engage in battle. to make a military attack."

Who's gonna arrest them? Who would enforce a civil judgement against them?

Police Unions engaged in collective action beyond striking to support other police who shoved a senior citizen to the ground and gave him brain damage, so stealing is nothing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_police_shoving_inciden...

That's seemingly contradicted, or at least cast in doubt by your own article:

>The Buffalo police union, the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, was angered by the suspensions of the two officers, and it retaliated on June 5 by withdrawing its legal fees support for any other Buffalo officers for incidents related to the protests. [...] All 57 police officers from the Buffalo Police Department emergency response team resigned from the team, although they did not resign from the department.[45] According to the police union's president, the mass resignations were a show of solidarity with the two suspended officers.[46] However, his account has been contradicted by two of the resigned officers, who stated they resigned because of a lack of legal coverage. One of these officers said "many" of the 57 resigned officers did not resign to support the two suspended officers.[47]

Either the officers resigned in protest, or the union withdrew legal support in protest and the officers resigned as a result of that. Either way, the resignations were a result of union support for the criminals in their ranks.

That only seems to confirm what I wrote?

>The Buffalo police union, the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, was angered by the suspensions of the two officers, and it retaliated on June 5 by withdrawing its legal fees support for any other Buffalo officers for incidents related to the protests.

Why do you think the union withdrew legal support here, given that the union supported the officers?

The Union has nothing to do with it, it is systemic corruption.

I don't want to blow your mind but the union is part of the system. A pretty central part, actually.

The one day suspension was 100% because of union protections.

there's a pretty well known saying about all cops and it's never been proven wrong.

That's a funny thing because, as with all absolutes, it's trivially easy to prove it wrong. All you need is _one_ cop to not be a bastard to prove it wrong.

I've known several non-bastard cops.

Then you, like many others, misunderstand what the saying All Cops Are Bastards means. It's not an observation about the morality of each individual cop. It's shorthand for the fundamental corruption and injustice inherent to the institution of policing itself.

If Mother Theresa or Mister Rogers becomes a cop, ACAB isn't suddenly disproved, because it's not about specific individuals and their specific moral qualities. It's about systemic and fundamental problems with policing as a whole.

Is your name Humpty Dumpty by any chance?

Perhaps they should not have chosen a name with an easily misunderstood claim such as "all".

They picked exactly the appropriate word.

If you work alongside bastards, like civil-rights-violating bastards not chew-with-your-mouth-open bastards, and aren’t actively working to get them removed from the force - i’ve got bad news about your bastard status.

Which is the point of the saying. It’s not that all cops are individually bastardly, it’s that all cops are part of a system that both protects bastards regularly, and does systemically bastardly things (like say heavily policing crimes of poverty while ignoring crimes of wealth).

I'd have to go through a decent chunk of the dictionary before I started referring to people who chew with their mouth open as "bastards."

> systemically bastardly things (like say heavily policing crimes of poverty while ignoring crimes of wealth)

I'm the last person I would expect to be defending police, but I think if you look at the rate of physical and property violence perpetrated by "crimes of poverty" vs. "crimes of wealth" that might have a lot more to do with it than the cop trying to decide if the victim has money or not before they do anything.

"property violence"? Isn't it well known that wage theft is much larger than shoplifting, for example.

> than the cop trying to decide if the victim has money or not before they do anything.

Who said that? The cops don’t need to ”decide” to bust you based on how much money you have, the system already put them on patrol in the poorer neighborhood.

The police are too busy going after crimes of poverty to go after the crimes that impoverish people. “Crimes of wealth” do plenty of violence, it’s just laundered thru abstractions and layers of misdirection.

Poor neighbors are where the crime happens - at least the crime that some beat cop is qualified to see or investigate.

> “Crimes of wealth” do plenty of violence

Not for actual definitions of violence, no. I'm not saying they're not crimes, or they're not serious, but there's a reason "violent crime" is a category of its own. It's an important distinction. Words mean things, and trying to say murder or aggravated battery is just one kind of violence and embezzlement or stock fraud is a different kind is, at best, incredibly dishonest.

It's deeper than this. If you try to justify why Marijuana is schedule 1, you can't. The only reasonable explanation is "the DEA hates black Americans and poor people and wants to punish them most". That's the reasonable explanation, not the conspiracy.

"The DEA" doesn't have opinions because it's not a person.

Marijuana was made schedule 1 close to 60 years ago, and it's very possible the people who made that decision had racist motivations. It's also possible they didn't and they just wanted to punish anyone who was using marijuana more than other drugs.

"People working at the DEA 60 years after this decision was made are very obviously racist and hate blacks and poor people" is much more of a stretch than "nobody really cares enough about this to change it and it wouldn't change very much anyway," isn't it? Unless, of course, you're not interested in actually understanding why things are the way they are and are more interested in perpetuating some victimhood fantasy.

The decision was undisputably made with racist intentions, and anybody not willing to acknowledge that is not a reliable narrator and isn't worth arguing with. It would be like me trying to argue with someone in a mental institution - it's just not worth it, neither of us will gain anything from it.

I also didn't say everybody at the DEA is racist. You said that, based off of I guess you profiling me as some radical. I'm not, I understand that the DEA is an organization.

But what some people don't acknowledge is there are two types of racism in America: individual racism, and systemic or institional racism. You don't have to say these n-word to be racist. Most of our institutions are structured and designed in such a way to be racist. The DEA is structurally racist, and so is ICE.

It's not some "victimhood fantasy", you're just uneducated on it. But it's real and the rabbit hole goes very deep, I recommend some research on these topics. And, for the record, I'm white, I'm just not blind.

There's another relevant saying about apples you should check out.

> trivially easy to prove it wrong

Only if the other person is arguing in good faith and believes you.

Defuck the police!

I disagree with the other trendy slogans, but yours is one I can definitely get behind!

This is why ACAB

We need to remove immunity for everyone. Cops, judges, politicians. Otherwise the most justice you get is taking money from taxpayers with a lawsuit, rather than from the corrupt people doing the crime.

And you'll end up with no reasonable person wanting to do those jobs becausr any day any bs complaint or lawsuit could cost you your livelihood, no thanks.

Hence insurance on the individual. Kick in the wrong door and insurance covers it. Do it twice and suddenly the actuary sees an expensive and risky pattern.

People don't like to admit that there are problems that the market is absolutely able to solve.

It is nuanced. Insurers can be problematic. Tort law has strange incentive structures in the way it's implemented in various places. But, broadly speaking, the price of insurance is an informative signal.

Colorado has no qualified immunity for cops. Are they short of cops?

Really! Are there any downsides?

It's symbolic since these cases broadly speaking need to be adjudicated in federal court for the most part and the federal law doesn't mention any immunities, it's a court-created doctrine. But neither the court nor congress thinks it's urgent enough of an issue, the last time a bill had support it ended up with around 70 cosponsors and it adds nothing but affirms that the law is applied as written and didn't get a vote, during the short period of tri-partisanship in 2020, because nbd it only accounts for 3-4 billion dollars of money that is taken from those who aren't able to be charged with any crime and redistributed to cops around the country in a sort of slush fund fashion, chump change if you consider how much debt we're running for... god knows what at this point. When you speak in trillions and can simply handwave that sort of deficit away, a few billion eventually sounds trivial, I'm guessing.

That's already true of you and I (assuming you are not a policeperson).

Kind of like how an unjustified DUI arrest can mess up your life?

That's a false dichotomy. Those aren't the only two options.

Doctors regularly have people's lives in their hands and if they make a significant mistake, they are liable. Not that the current state of medical malpractice law is exactly the gold standard, but that's an example of another approach to a similar situation. I do hear that some folks avoid the profession because of that, but I don't think that it's the case that "no reasonable person" wants to work in healthcare.

I don't think most reasonable people want police to be personally liable for every single thing they do, but neither do they want them to have broad and complete immunity from the law. The answer is somewhere in the middle, where police are protected in certain situations, but do still need to think about the consequences of their actions.

Medical services are a good deal cheaper in texas because they have doctor friendly malpractice laws. There are tradeoffs with everything.

> Medical services are a good deal cheaper in texas because they have doctor friendly malpractice laws

I didn't do more than 30 seconds of research here so I won't claim to be an expert, but according to the report in [1], Texas is the state with the fifth highest medical bills, "highest percentage of adults who have chosen not to see a doctor at some point in the past 12 months due to cost", and "the highest percentage of children—14.9%—whose families struggled to pay for their child’s medical bills in the past 12 months".

Some of that is no doubt Texas refusing to expand Medicaid under the ACA, but also "the study found that Texas exhibits the fourth-highest annual premium for both plus-one health insurance coverage ($4,626) and family health insurance coverage ($7,051.33) through an employer," so "a good deal cheaper" doesn't really seem an apt descriptor.

[1] https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article291990...

Plainly, we don’t have to pretend like there could be unforeseen consequences. This is a thing that exists in many jurisdictions and many societies around the world and we can see that many reasonable people become police officers in those societies.

It's the same rules the rest of the population works under.

That's how it is for literally every other fucking job. The goddamn cashier at McDonalds could theoretically get fired if some bozo complains loudly enough, even if it's not true.

We're legitimately at the point where mcdondalds cashiers have higher standards for accountability and behavior than the police. Just sit back and really, really think about that. And, to top it off, there's droves of people like yourself who are so accustomed to such a broken system that they legitimately believe it couldn't be done any other way - even though there are minimum wage workers working under stricter rules!

He violated the policy of turning off devices that can be tracked off before stealing them.

Doesn’t say one way or the other, but probably suspended with pay. That’s typical. It’s like a free vacation day.