The police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked protests and unrest across the nation and around the globe. Everyday people rose up in anger and frustration at police violence and the astounding lack of consequences officers face for harassing, brutalizing, and killing civilians.
Activists in every region of the United States joined not only in protesting police abuse, but also organizing to end it.
In San Antonio, Oji Martin co-founded the grassroots organization Fix SAPD to push for significant reforms of the San Antonio Police Department. Fix SAPD noticed an alarming trend: Not only are police officers rarely disciplined for violence, but of those who are fired, a stunning 70% are eventually rehired. And the problem lies in chapters of the Texas local government code.
Chapter 143—the code that governs police (and other civil servants') hiring, promotions, discipline and records—gives police wildly unfair disciplinary advantages such as allowing officers to review the evidence against them before being questioned and expunging “incidents” from an officer’s record after only 180 days. Chapter 174—the collective bargaining statute—allows the local police union contract to supersede the civil service laws set forth in Chapter 143. That means the contract carries more weight than the actual law.
Last summer Fix SAPD launched a petition drive to repeal both Chapters 143 and 174 by ballot initiative. The organizers and volunteers began the work to collect tens of thousands of in-person signatures. Though they fell short of the signatures needed to put Chapter 143 on the ballot, they were successful in gathering enough signatures for a repeal measure for Chapter 174 on the ballot for the next municipal election election to be held in May.
Fix SAPD’s deputy director Ananda Tomas sat down for an interview with Daily Kos Liberation League to discuss the organization's Repeal 174 campaign.
If Chapter 174 is repealed, police officers in San Antonio will still retain union power. Many Texas municipalities have not enacted Chapter 174, but they still meet with unions via a process called meet and confer, where voters could have more input on the final contracts.
Tomas said the current collective bargaining agreement gives police far more power than the communities they serve to determine what accountability looks like. Meet and confer would even the field and offer communities more oversight.
The campaign has already faced significant challenges collecting signatures during a global pandemic in one of the most impacted states in that nation. Now, the campaign has just a little over two months for voter education, combat malicious disinformation, and get out the vote. All this work must happen while Texas recovers from the recent deep freeze which has already led to outlandish utility bills, property damage, and death.
Roughly 68% of San Antonians and 62% of respondents nationally believe that police unions hold too much power and are a barrier to true accountability. Fix SAPD's campaign to repeal Chapter 174 could serve as a national example of how to rein in that power.
Sick of cops literally getting away with murder? Chip in $5 to help Fix SAPD and their sister organization in Austin, Police Oversight Project, fight for police accountability.