Stir the Pot on Joe Gamaldi Part 2

As some of you read in my previous post, Joe Gamaldi and the Houston Police Officers Union need to be kept in check. While Gamaldi is on Fox saying police unions are being “demonized” (I’m glad to lend the verb from my previous post, which he undoubtedly read), your rights are being stomped. Stomped like peaceful protesters all over the country being attacked by police.

My regret from my previous post is not giving anyone an actionable choice to stop the union’s influence on our city. So, I reached out to Tarsha Jackson and asked if she had anything I could share with you.

Here are two ways you can get involved:

1) You can join Texas Organizing Project’s Right2Justice Campaign, support BLM Houston, or support Pure Justice.

2) E-mail your representatives. It wasn’t hard to reach Ms. Jackson. I’m sure you can get a hold of your city council member. Just tell them what you think. Ask questions. They’re just people. If they ignore you, vote them out.

What I’m most excited to share is a draft of what is being proposed:

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Police Contract

City council should:

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• Open up negotiations to allow members of the public to attend, either virtually or in person.

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• Pass a resolution notifying the police union of the city’s intent to terminate the contract 90 days before it expires on December 31, 2020 unless the following items are in place in the newly proposed contract:

• End to the 180 day rule that prevents officers for being disciplined for incidents occurring in the past.

• End to the 48 hour rule that prevents officers from being interviewed about complaints for 48 hours, and gives them access to all materials related to the complaint in advance.

• Fix the appeals process for disciplinary matters so that Independent Hearing Examiners are appointed by a civilian oversight board, rather than a committee of police officers.

• Give the civilian oversight body real authority to investigate and discipline officers with complaints against them. Make the head of that body fully empowered to pursue police accountability independently.

• End the evergreen clause that causes the contract to stay in place even if no agreement has been made with the city.

Use of Force and Arrest

Implement policies to strengthen police use of force guidelines using the Campaign Zero recommendations. These include:

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• Establish standards and reporting of police use of deadly force

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• Revise and strengthen local police department use of force policies

• The Use of Force Policy has not been updated since 2015, the current policy does not require officers to de-escalate situations, when possible.

• There’s no explicit ban on chokeholds or strangleholds

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• End traffic-related police killings and dangerous high-speed police chases by prohibiting police officers from:

· shooting at moving vehicles (Ex: Denver PD Policy)

· moving in front of moving vehicles (Ex: Denver PD Policy)

· high-speed chases of people who have not and are not about to commit a violent felony (Ex: Milwaukee PD Policy)

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• Monitor how police use force and proactively hold officers accountable for excessive force

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• Implement a cite and release policy that requires officers to issue citations for low-level misdemeanors instead of making arrests, unless there is clear, continued danger to the public.

End the use of “less lethal” ammunition for crowd control, including rubber bullets, baton rounds, bean bag rounds, etc.

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Honestly, I expressed to Ms. Jackson a more absolute proposal. I said our city should not be making deals with the union at all. As I mentioned in my previous post, the vast majority of officers in HPD and the HPOU do not live in Houston city limits.

You wouldn’t want Russia interfering in your elections, would you?

You wouldn’t want China interfering in your elections, would you?

So, why let people who do not live in your city influence your city’s policy?

We want many bad policies gone and many “bad apples” dealt with. But the union is only interested in defending their members as they perpetuate legitimized extortion when they ask for pay raises based on the pay of competing departments and unions that are also a part of the National Fraternal Order of Police.

The union will say, “But recruiting numbers are down. We need more pay. We need softer rules. We need to get away with murder. Etc.” But pay has only gone up, up, and up, and yet their recruiting remains low. Despite the required college hours going from 60 to 30, and now zero, their numbers are still down! Perhaps they haven’t accounted for conscience.

This may sound counterintuitive to Gamaldi and the union, but if they want to save the profession that I grew up loving, they need to be less antagonistic and more open-ears. The “us vs the world” rhetoric has got to stop. Blue Lives Matter is as much of a rhetorically antagonistic signifier as the Confederate monuments. How can people trust police judgement and the subsequent “justice” they face will be impartial if those in uniform are disgustingly tribal?

All people are asking is for the police to stop sticking up for the bad guys who wear uniforms, stop influencing policy that prevents us from taking action on bad guys who wear uniforms, stop introducing policy that allows them to destroy people with impunity, and stop trying to impede our civil liberties.

Thankfully, the anti-police union movement is gaining steam.