Why Should We Care About the FOP Contract?

Why Should We Care About the FOP Contract?

As an organization committed to the abolition of police, why should we care about the City negotiating a “better contract” with Philly police? The answer is simple: the more we can increase transparency and police discipline and decrease police funding, the easier it will be to reach our ultimate goal. The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) is currently negotiating a new contract with the Mayor’s office. The FOP, while not technically a union, is the largest police labor organization in the country with roughly 350,000 members and more than 2000 local chapters or “lodges”. In Philadelphia, about 14,000 active (6,500) and retired (7,500) cops and sheriffs are represented by FOP Lodge #5. Early in 2020, at the height of COVID uncertainties, rather than negotiate a new 3- year contract, the Mayor’s office and the FOP agreed to a one-year extension of the previous contract, along with a 2.5% raise(higher than all other unions). That extension ends on June 30 which is why negotiations for a new contract are underway.

For the past two years, the Mass Liberation Taskforce has been working to access and investigate this contract and the overall process of contract negotiation. What we have discovered has been both enlightening and infuriating and makes clear that this contract is a major obstacle towards our overall goal of Abolition and demands our attention. This attention resulted in an unprecedented  public hearing on the contract, despite the FOP filing a lawsuit to stop it, where community members shared their deeply disturbing experiences with Philly police and their visions for a new kind of community safety.

Our organizers have been meeting regularly with both City Council members and Deputy Mayor of Labor Rich Lazer, the lead negotiator for the Mayor’s office, to demand transparency, discipline, defunding, and an end to the grossly unjust process of binding arbitration. While it is true that binding arbitration is protected by state law (Act 111), the Mayor’s office does have the ability to negotiate for more rules around arbitration such as disallowing the practice of reducing or reversing discipline even when there is consensus that a cop has committed a crime. Since 2013 only 2% of community member formal complaints against Philly police have resulted in a guilty finding and 70% of those guilty verdicts are overturned in arbitration. This absence of police accountability is what led to Council Member Curtis Jones’ recently passed legislation forming a new Citizens Police Oversight Commission (CPOC). And yet, this new commission does not offer us a path towards real Community Safety. Community safety happens when we invest in caring for our communities through housing, mental health care, rec centers, community led anti-violence programs, and not cops!

While Deputy Mayor of Labor Rich Lazer assures us that police reforms are the City’s top priority in this negotiation we are demanding much more and will only realize these demands with public pressure. Without such pressure the FOP and its president, John McNesby, will continue to dodge the transparency and discipline necessary to reign in this terrorist “fraternal order” and give us both the time and the investment to rethink community safety without cops. Let’s Keep Up The Pressure! Community Control Now!

Check out the recent teach in on the FOP contract by Community Control Now!