Vanished problems and their consequences

BY TONY BOUZA

Ours is an activist, not a reflective, society.  Our shelves groan under the weight of “How to …  ,”  not “What if … ,” books.  Yet I’ve always been intrigued by Conan Doyle’s “The Dog That Didn’t Bark.”  Why not?  What did it mean?
It meant something—and that’s the point—we need to understand what no longer exists—or what didn’t happen—sometimes with greater urgency than we’re inclined to give.
A long life affords—hopefully—perspective.
The police world I entered in 1953 was brutal and corrupt.  Today it’s just brutal—centering on America’s perennial dilemma, race.
What happened to corruption?
Remember when friends would regale you with tales about how they’d handed a cop a $20 bill, with the license, at a traffic encounter?  The palmed currency exchanged in dubious transactions of all sorts.
That doesn’t exist anymore.
Today: cops are not corrupt—and therein lies an unexpected tectonic shift.
Today’s cops are well-paid, enjoy really handsome benefits (for which I thank the authors thereof) and have been endowed with dignity and respect.
How come?
Police unions.
They secured great wages (yes) and cornucopias of benefits from their municipal employers.
Once achieved, though, they had to do more.  What?
They trooped to state capitols with cash, endorsements and constituencies and persuaded legislators to pass laws that encased cops (and teachers) in protective cocoons.  Civil service laws that prohibited firings and most other forms of control passed easily.  No one was watching.
Once deprived of the power to control through fear (the real strength of our economic system), chiefs adjusted—they stopped managing, remained union members—and used the rank and file as their base of support.
And so we wound up with Detroit—bankrupt.  Chicago with pension costs it can’t handle.  The enormous iceberg of the obligations passed by legislatures is just emerging into view.  The march began when a Detroit mayor, in the early ’70s, seized the moment to add to the burden by weakening the police.
Today we emerge with honest police departments and schools, peopled with operatives who cannot be held accountable for performance.
Police unions have become apologists for, and protectors of, bums and thumpers in the ranks.  An unlikely prophet has emerged in attempts to curb the powers of unions of public servants—Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
The trade union movement is one of America’s great adornments.  One of the firmest pillars of our society.  It deserves kudos.  But any organization run by humans—even the Vatican—can succumb.  In the public sector, the pendulum has swung too far from the people and too favorably to member interests.
It’s time for a correction.