Ken Cockrel on DPOA: Let 'Em Quit and Work in Dearborn

The recent decision on police residency, which was handed down last week by the three-man arbitration panel chaired by Harry Platt, constitutes a victory tor the people of the city of Detroit.

Mayor Young, with whom this column sometimes disagrees, is to be commended for taking an unyielding position on this question.

That his strategy, apparently well presented by his special counsel, George Edwards, has paid off is good news to the people in this community who believe that the DPOA needs to be constantly reminded that they do not run this city.

That the city government has immediately announced its intention to enforce the residency requirement against those cops who now reside outside the city limits should produce some interesting revelations about our local men and women in blue. Estimates of the number of police officers who live in suburbia vary considerably, depending upon the source of the estimate, but surely there are many whose subterfuge should be brought to an abrupt end.

Ronald Sexton, DPOA president, has announced that the police union will appeal though their prospects for success are practically non-existent.

The "never-say-die" posture of the DPOA on residency is a classic example of the backwardness of a public employee union that permits the racism of its members to persist unchallenged.

In an era when unions, both "public" and "private," are reeling defensively from the assaults of an economy in depression, it is absurd to fight against so basic a proposition as residency.

The police have long benefited from a glorification of their importance that has shielded them from criticism and change in their function in this society.

It has always been assumed that their work is more important than sanitation workers', for example. Liberal pension and retirement policies for police officers have been envied by other municipal workers for years.

Fringe benefits, such as free lunches and merchandise from "crime-prevention" minded merchants, have made skinny cops an extinct species.

The exuberant swaggering of our local law enforcers has resulted in all manner of outrageous conduct. Drunken police riots, such as the May 9 Federal building debacle, in which armed civilian-clad cops have vented their racist spleen, make Sexton's workers a most unsympathetic lot.

Moreover, policemen are being charged on an almost weekly basis with crimes ranging from sexual assaults to narcotics trafficking, which shows a tendency for abuse of the public trust which makes the most devout cop-lover cringe with suspicion.

The reactions of rank and file cops to the residency decision is, predictably, split along racial lines with black officers being supportive as white officers decry the erosion of their Constitutional rights.

Since crime is on the upsurge in suburbia, those who don't want to live in Detroit should hasten to apply for positions in Dearborn and the other "safe" communities on the outskirts of Detroit.

Of particular interest were the reports that the New York's Patrolmen's Benevolent Assn. was looking for Detroit to establish precedent for their battle to rid themselves of a residency requirement in that city.

New York cops have been so blindly destructive in their efforts to intimidate the people of New York that they distributed leaflets at ports of entry to the city in which they discouraged visitors from coming to "Fear City."

It look a court order to end their propaganda campaign.

The deep-seated reactionary behavior of police unions around the country has increased the vulnerability of all public employee unions in this period of financial instability for cities. Boston cops are calling in sick, using a no-overtime dispute as a cover to mask their unwillingness to enforce federal court ordered busing in that strife torn city.

Perhaps someday the cops will realize that they have more in common with the black and poor, unemployed and employed workers who are being sacrificed to the banks and big investors who have long used the cities as sources for expanding their wealth.

Now that the investors in municipal bonds and other creditors of cities, such as the utilities, are panicking over the ability of cities to pay their bills, we can see a skillful game emerging.

The bankers feel that they have lost control in wage settlements and social service costs.

Their elected officials seem to them to have no ability to hold the line against municipal workers, welfare dependents, Medicaid patients and other powerless groups in society.

Instead of focusing public attention on the utilities, the banks, Blue Cross, greedy doctors and nursing home owners and other other avaricious profiteers who benefit from the public municipal and state treasuries, a new cast of villains has been created:

Welfare cheats, instead of greedy landlords and HUD speculators who have bilked aid recipients for decades.

Municipal unions, rather than the banks which hold municipal bonds and pension funds.

Big business insists upon "fiscal accountability" and is now moving, as in New York, to assert the right of ownership that it claims over cities.

The point is that capitalist financing of public services through indebtedness to profit-making interests ultimately only benefits the rich, hence both "private enterprise" and "public services" are run for the benefit of the business community and not the workers—even racist cops.

When big business comes for the take-over in Detroit, we know the DPOA will be on the wrong side of the question, blinded by racism and hence incapable of seeing that their destiny lies with the people of this city who work harder than they do.