Starvin Larry

From Radley Balko…

Who should ultimately control police discipline in New York: elected officials through their appointed police commissioners, or unelected labor arbitrators chosen in part by labor unions?

The question has plainly picked up added resonance in recent days. Gov. Cuomo will soon have a chance to answer it.

Sometime before year’s end, the state Legislature must send Cuomo a bill it passed just weeks before Eric Garner’s fatal July 17 confrontation in Staten Island. The measure would allow unions representing police and other civil-service employees across the state to insist on collective bargaining of disciplinary procedures affecting their members.

The bill represents the latest in a series of attempts by police unions to nullify a unanimous 2006 state Court of Appeals decision, which affirmed the New York City police commissioner’s disciplinary authority.

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association had sued then-Commissioner Ray Kelly for overriding disciplinary provisions in the police contract — including a rule requiring

NYPD superiors to wait at least 48 hours before questioning police officers accused of misconduct.

Oddly, Mayor de Blasio’s Albany lobbying office didn’t bother to file a memo taking a position on the bill before it passed.

But the New York State Conference of Mayors went on the record in opposition — and for good reason.

Police unions argue that disciplinary procedures should be a mandatory subject for negotiation under the 1967 Taylor Law, which governs public-sector collective bargaining. But the state Court of Appeals said Taylor could be superseded by older laws that make police discipline a matter of local control.

While “the need for authority over police officers will sometimes yield to the claims of collective bargaining . . . the public interest in preserving official authority over the police remains powerful,” Judge Robert Smith wrote for the state’s highest court.

The police-discipline bill was a classic under-the-radar, end-of-session special — an election-year favor to unions, brokered on the leadership level in both houses

http://nypost.com/2014/12/07/a-bill-to-loosen-police-discipline/