As the wave of protests over incidents of police brutality and racist policing enters its second week, progressive California politicians are rethinking their financial relationship with the unions that represent law enforcement officers.
On Thursday, state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, a Democrat, announced on Twitter that he would no longer be accepting campaign contributions from police, sheriff and prison guard unions. He promised to donate roughly $20,000 he has received from such labor groups to date to nonprofits that serve Bay Area youth.
Sen. Lena Gonazalez of Long Beach, also a Democrat, responded with a tweet of her own: “Same!”
Earlier this week, three county prosecutors and George Gascon, who is campaigning to become district attorney of Los Angeles, wrote a letter to the state bar association urging the organization to prohibit D.A. candidates from receiving campaign contributions from law enforcement unions.
“Policing is in need of serious reform and it’s important to me that my constituents understand that I am willing to fight for that reform,” Wiener said in a phone interview today. He noted that he was inspired by New York state Sen. Michael Gianaris, who announced he would be redirecting contributions from police officer unions to bail funds and nonprofits. He was joined by seven other lawmakers.
Wiener said he had heard from other California legislators expressing interest in following suit, but declined to name names, saying that he would rather leave it to them.
I hope and pray that this is the beginning of the end of what I call a “Cop Culture” in this country. They’re finally cancelling the TV show “Cops”. They have temporarily gotten rid of “Live PD”, and I hope that becomes permanent. Enough with our worship of cops!!!!
I really hope this is finally it…what happened to that poor man in MN may have been the shot heard around the world – or at least around the entire USA.
Well Good that Sen Wiener is returning money received from Police, Sheriff and Prison Guard…maybe he will now be more open-minded and give more attention to the placing of so many registrants into Tier 3 on the Tier Registry? One can hope Sen Wiener and others will see the right path now that their way may have become less cluttered with any prior obligations, due to the acceptance of donations.
I’d be so stoked to see the CCPOA’s contributions to the governor and anyone else get rejected. Filthy dirty prison guards are wanna be cops that couldn’t make the cut, with way too much political influence, but I’m not bitter…
Be careful not to get distracted. The police don’t make the laws. The punitive culture we live in and the oppression from the registry are not designs of the police but of the politicians. Assembly woman Lorena Gonzales would like nothing more than to have every one of us living under a freeway overpass or to be indefinitely incarcerated. She has tirelessly defied rulings of the superior court, state supreme court and federal district courts that ruled in our favor. Agenda driven politicians are the problem, and one of their tactics is to deflect the blame. People like Lorena Gonzalez will throw the police under the bus and, as she did with the tired registry, attempt to make back door deals to sabotage it and keep us under the boot heel. She laughs while every one is focusing on the police while people like her made the policies.
for my annual registration and occasional residency checks the police have always been respectful to me, as I have to them. We can both tell in each others eyes that this is an annoyance. Want to defund some of the police funds? Think how much money is wasted on the registry. Does Lorena Gonzales have any plans of cutting that to save untold money? Ha, don’t be ridiculous. It seems the state assembly and Governor Newsome could save hundreds of millions of dollars by abolishing the this baby sitting. No, the police only enforce the idiocy pushed through by the legislators. Please keep our focus on reclaiming our civil and constitutional rights which have illegally been taken from us by legislators, not the police,