On 23 Jul 2016, at 23:58, Pat Barrett <pbarrett@cox.net> wrote:
> Now we are getting to the heart of it. You talk like a CEO: “Here’s the problem; here’s my fix.”
Not my “fix,” just something that I think would make a slight improvement. Better than leave with pay, i.e., “I’d like a long-term paid vacation. I’ll just shoot somebody and go back to work when my buddies get the charges dismissed.”
> The policy on pay was negotiated by the union.
That doesn’t make it right.
> We could just do it the Republican way and say the boss is the boss, take your pay or leave and do as I say and when I’ve had enough of you, you’re gone….. with nothing.
Well, maybe we should. And if “the boss” (police chief or commissioner) doesn’t fire the bad apples, fire the boss. People will gripe about due process, but “at-will” is apparently legal in many states.
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My response:
This one first.
“I’d like a long-term paid vacation. I’ll just shoot somebody and go back to work when my buddies get the charges dismissed.”
People do not make decisions like that. That’s why I put our exchange into Basics on my blog. The factors in such shootings are very complex but they are not calculated, certainly not in the cost-benefit manner you suggest. I understand you were being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but when you listen to people say things like “my tax money is going to people who don’t want to work”, you realize that rhetorical accusations about “lazy welfare recipients” actually stick and become part of the narrative and in the same way accusations that cops shoot people at random or b/c they are Black create false narratives. It’s complicated.
“That doesn’t make it right. ”
No one, me, said anything about the union negotiated contract being “right”. That was a misleading statement on your part, suggesting that I had somehow asserted that it must be OK b/c the union negotiated it. I was merely pointing to the probable source of the policy: not the town council or a professional police organization but a union. That’s important b/c unions are part of a wide network of organizations and a lot of union contracts are boiler plate, so looking at a policy in Twin Forks, AZ does not necessarily tell us about what the people in that town wanted in all the specifics of the contract.
You wrote ” And if “the boss” (police chief or commissioner) doesn’t fire the bad apples, fire the boss. People will gripe about due process, but “at-will” is apparently legal in many states.”
Your approach to managing staff has been tried and continues to be tried and it doesn’t work. Authoritarian, top-down, heavy-handed fiats simply alienate the very people you need to make a going concern. That’s why Chief Davis’ actions are so praised, they are a very hazardous way to deal with problem employees b/c it creates a good deal of anxiety and resentment and unproductive circling of the wagons and resistance to management. Davis in Dallas figured out how to do it, much to his credit. Police chiefs and commissioners are sacked all the time, that’s the kind of job it is. But the beat cop cannot be dealt with that way BECAUSE it leads to all sorts of undesirable behavior on the part of employees; this is exactly what causes corruption: insecurity. That is why the Progressive Movement introduced around the turn of the last century civil service. Francis Fukuyama talks a great deal about the requirement for a good civil service in order to have good governance. In this country, over the last 40 years and starting really with the New Deal, civil servants have been vilified, including teachers. Those who cry out “Blue lives matter” ignored the White Militia (= Black thugs) who sighted in on federal civil service agents to no outcry from the Right except to support the thugs.
Anyway….. without due process you get thuggery at the government level.
Pat B