According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, approximately 46% of law enforcement agencies in the United States are authorized to collectively bargain. “Protective service occupations,” which includes police officers, is one of the most highly organized occupations in the United States.
Police officer unionization efforts began in 1919, when members of Boston’s police department went on strike after the city’s police commissioner denied their right to unionize. That strike ended in a shootout that killed two. Most public-sector workers didn’t get the right to collectively bargain until the 1960s.
Recently, sergeants of the Northeastern University Police Department (NUPD), joined the wave of organizing among workers on the nation’s college and university campuses, including Northeastern’s graduate students and dining workers. Although it’s not clear what NUPD sergeants are specifically seeking in a collectively bargained contract, police unions have historically won higher pay, reduced working hours and better working conditions for their members –– and, in some cases, protections against discipline and reform, some say.
In February 2023, NUPD sergeants, sergeant detectives and detectives — 14 employees in total — petitioned to hold an election that would decide whether they will be represented by the American Coalition of Public Safety, or ACOPS, a New England-based union representing private-sector public safety personnel.
But in a pattern known all too well by other employees of the university who have tried to organize, the university administration opposed the sergeants’ right to unionize in a filing with the National Labor Relations Board.
After a legal back-and-forth, the NLRB ruled that NUPD sergeants could hold a union representation election. The 14 sergeants in the bargaining unit voted unanimously in September 2023 to be represented by the ACOPS. Despite this election win and certification by the NLRB, NUPD’s new union members are still fighting for a contract. The ACOPS filed a complaint with the NLRB in November 2023 alleging the university was engaging in bad-faith bargaining.
The university and ACOPS did not respond to a request for comment.
Photo from Pixabay
The ability to form unions and engage in collective bargaining is a fundamental right which allows workers to advocate for higher pay, better working conditions and protections from employer discrimination and intimidation. However, police unions have faced backlash even from some pro-labor advocates. In the wake of nationwide demands for police reform over the past several years, some experts have argued that police unions may protect officers from disciplinary actions resulting from misconduct, preventing those engaged in wrongdoing from accountability.
“Despite broad support for unionization on the political left, police unions have become public enemy number one for academics and activists concerned about race and police violence,” Colorado criminal law professor Benjamin Levin wrote in a 2020 essay for the Columbia Law Review, pointing to how police unions seem to “prioritize the interests of their members over the interests of the public at large and the communities they police.”
Some union members have demanded that cops be excluded from their organizations. For example, some members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the largest trade union of public employees in the U.S., formed a group in 2022 to demand that AFSCME drop bargaining units composed of law enforcement officers, jail and prison guards and probation officers from the union.
“We demand a cop-free labor movement. We demand that AFSCME fight to expel the International Union of Police Associations from the AFL-CIO...,” the group says on its website.
The largest police union in the U.S., the National Fraternal Order of Police, has often been at the forefront of keeping legislation aimed at demilitarizing and reforming police departments from moving forward. For example, in 2014, demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri stemming from the police shooting of Michael Brown sparked bipartisan support in Congress for defunding a Pentagon program that provides police with weapons and military equipment, including rifles, grenade launchers and night-vision goggles. Despite the push, the Fraternal Order of Police pushed back against any legislation that would codify demilitarization into law.
“We are the most vigorous law enforcement advocacy group, and we intend to be at our most vigorous on this issue,” Jim Pasco, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, told The Hill in 2014.
A 2019 study observing correlations between Florida sheriff’s deputies’ collective bargaining rights and police misconduct found that unionization for officers led to a 40% statewide increase in cases of violent misconduct. “We have previously suggested that unionization may provide procedural protections that undermine detection and sanctioning of misbehaving officers,” researchers write in the study. “Other rights include a tightened time limit on internal affairs investigations and expungement of old records, even when the officer is found to have engaged in misconduct.”
In 2020, members of a Buffalo police union resigned in support of two police officers who were suspended after video showed them shoving a 75-year-old protester. The president of the Buffalo union said the organization stood “100 percent” behind the two officers.
In addition to providing legal counsel to and standing behind officers accused of wrongdoing, police unions have fought to keep arbitration hearings secret, even taking legal action to keep officers’ disciplinary records secret. Beyond that, data shows that police unions and associations often contribute millions of dollars to political candidates and committees in an effort to push back against demands for demilitarization of police and creation of separate police oversight boards, among other aims of police reform advocates.
One study by a police accountability task force in Chicago found that the “code of silence” is not an “unwritten rule” or an element of police culture, but rather embedded in union contracts. “The code of silence is institutionalized and reinforced by [Chicago Police Department] rules and policies that are also baked into the labor agreements between various police unions and the City,” the report said.
Photo from Pixabay
At the same time, some law enforcement unions have taken steps toward implementing reform. According to USA Today, black, brown, women and LGBTQ+ officers often form their own police associations that work to better address issues that concern those employees. Many of these unions have been demanded accountability for officer misconduct and brought attention to the culture of police unions and the need for reform.
Despite its employees holding the same powers and “full law enforcement authority” as public officers, NUPD is not subject to the same public records laws as other departments in the state are, meaning police reports filed by the department are not accessible. Despite this, NUPD publishes a daily public crime log and annual statistics on use of force data.
In August 2023, three Northeastern police officers were listed in a state database that compiled information about officers who had sustained allegations of misconduct. The allegations against NUPD officers, which were found to be substantiated, included alcohol and drug abuse, “conduct unbecoming” and bias on the basis of gender.
There is a lack of statistics on how many college police forces are unionized across the country. Further, it is unclear whether police unions on university campuses hold the same power to impede progress or bargain and lobby for similar interests as city police unions, for example.
ACOPS, the union that now represents NUPD sergeants, states on its website that it provides legal representation for members during disciplinary hearings and participates in “political action efforts.” These are activities that are common among unions. The question is, what are thr goal of the representation and political action?
Only time will tell whether a union for campus police officers — especially on Northeastern’s campus — will promote a greater public good. Experts and academics concur that the phenomenon of police unions is understudied and deserves more attention, however, especially in the context of police accountability and reform.
Author’s Note: Multiple attempts were made to contact ACOPS by phone. The organization was not able to be reached. Northeastern University did not respond to a request for comment over email.
