Rewrite the contracts.

Police union contracts in many American cities, including Chicago, have become a threat to community safety by shielding abusive police officers. They just gotta go.

As police unions have spread across the nation over the last half-century, they have secured provisions in collective bargaining agreements that protect their members from answering to the public, or even to elected officials. Many contracts make it virtually impossible for police departments to punish rogue officers.

There is a straight line from those collective bargaining agreements to misconduct by individual officers, who know there is little risk of their being called to account. Last year, a University of Chicago study found misconduct complaints — though not a large number — increased after a Florida court gave sheriff’s deputies the right to unionize.

“Our estimates imply that the right to bargain collectively led to about a 40 percent increase in violent incidents at [sheriff’s offices], which appears to persist over time,” the study said. The study did not examine details of particular union contracts, said Dhammika Dharmapala, a U. of C. law professor and one of three authors of the study.

Read more at Chicago Sun-Times