Denver Police Protective Association

I like cops. Always have. They perform a mostly thankless, often misunderstood, regularly dangerous job that gives them a great deal of authority, and even greater deal of responsibility, and exceptionally high divorce rates.

The Denver Police Protective Association just sent a letter to Denver's new mayor, John Hickenlooper, that will not change my idea of the officers terribly much, but which does show their union in a particularly bad light. In the letter, the DPPA essentially both offered up a bribe and a threat to the new mayor.

Denver police won't write tickets to help the city's coffers as long as Gerry Whitman is leading the department, the union implies in a letter to Mayor John Hickenlooper's transition committee.

"The problem is that officers have no loyalty to this administration," the letter says, "thus they have no desire to participate in this venture."

In addition, the Denver Police Protective Association hints in the letter that upcoming labor negotiations will be more difficult if Hickenlooper doesn't dump Whitman, who has been the city's police chief since February 2000.

What a load of BS. Firstly, tickets are not written (or should not be written) as a form of further taxation of the citizens. Tickets are issued (or should be issued) because people have broken the law not because the city needs to shore up its tax revenue. I mean, that would be like making a deal with tobacco companies to rape loads of the income that they make from selling legal products to help balance state budgets. Oh, sorry, oops.

...the memo says the "police administration" had suggested that street officers write at least one ticket a day to help the city's finances.

"This is not a difficult feat for the officers to accomplish," the letter says before describing the officers' reasons for not wanting to do so.

So, the "police administration" has offered police officers as a sort of unofficial city tax collector and the police union is saying that the officers would be happy to act in that capacity if only the current police chief is replaced.

Again I say, what a load of BS.

And how about the thinly veiled threat to make new contract negotiations more difficult? Even worse.

As one of the citizens of Denver, I fully expect every cop employed in my city to damned well do his job to the best of his ability whether he happens to like the chief or not. Hell, I'm not a big fan of the Denver Police chief, but this is not the way to handle the disagreement--power plays and threats only play into the most cynical of beliefs about police officers.

Like I said, I support police officers, and I appreciate the work they do. This, though, just feels wrong.

Read the story.

Posted by zombyboy at August 21, 2003 07:34 PM | TrackBack