Real estate investors flip for Cleveland during the pandemic

Cleveland is one of the cities mentioned in this New York Times analysis of the strength of police unions in blocking, or watering down, proposed reforms of police departments.

From the piece:

The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition.

They aggressively protect the rights of members accused of misconduct, often in arbitration hearings that they have battled to keep behind closed doors. And they have also been remarkably effective at fending off broader change, using their political clout and influence to derail efforts to increase accountability.

In some case, the Times notes, unions have not resisted reforms outright, but have made them difficult to put in place. This is where Cleveland enters the story:

Federal intervention is often one of the few reliable ways of reforming police departments. But in Cleveland, the union helped slow the adoption of reforms mandated by a federal consent decree, according to Jonathan Smith, a former U.S. Justice Department official who oversaw the government’s investigation of policing practices there.

Mr. Smith said union officials had signaled to rank-and-file officers that the changes should not be taken seriously, such as a requirement that they report and investigate instances in which they pointed a gun. “I heard this in lots of departments,” Mr. Smith said. “‘Wait it out. Do the minimum you have to do.'” He said he believed that the reforms have since taken hold.

Steve Loomis, the Cleveland police union president at the time of the consent decree, tells the Times that he and his colleagues saw some of the mandated rules as counterproductive.

“Every time a kid points a gun, he has to do a use-of-force investigation,” Loomis said of his younger colleagues. “Now guys aren’t pointing their guns when they should be pointing their guns.”

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