Page 13 - November 2017 Magazine

Reality check on policy
It seems like each day I arrive at my office, the millennial policy advisors at City Hall come up with another idea with no basis in reality in order to ap- pease an element of society whose
to arbitration. However, since the millennials’ pol- icy-making app on their phones was down that day, we were forced to go in front of a reasonable
person and have him guarantee something to your members that was already guaranteed. Obviously, we were yet again successful in this arbitration thanks to the great work of
Officers Martinez and Anderson.
The moral of this story is that no matter
how many times City Hall and the Chicago Police Department try to implement a knee-jerk policy, an arbitrator will rule on the facts of the case, not the political ramifications, which usual- ly means a victory for the Lodge. In the immortal words of Johnny Kovak played by Sylvester Stal- lone in the ’70s classic “F.I.S.T.,” “We’re coming at ’em with everything we got!” d
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sole purpose in life is to ensure anarchy. Sitting down in their R
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offices, they come up with buzz R
words like “de-escalation” and “inherent bias.” Meanwhile, out in the real world, good people are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being shot, and Police Officers are afraid to utilize lethal force for fear of being charged criminally.
As the crime rate increases faster than Usain Bolt, you can thank these “policy makers” for the demise of this great City. It won’t affect them as they will pack up their bikes, participation tro- phies and governmental studies books from the University of Missouri and move on to their next city.
The reason you have a collective bargaining unit is because of people just like this. Whenever these advisors attempt to implement one of these poli- cies, the Lodge is there to determine its legitimacy. If it violates any part of the contract or an Officer’s rights, then a grievance is filed. Once the grievance goes to arbitration, an independent arbitrator re- views the facts of the case and rules on whether the City has violated any provisions of the con- tract. Since the arbitrator has no political agenda, he or she rules on the facts, which normally results in a positive outcome for the Officer and Lodge 7.
A great example of this was a recent arbitration decision we received involving the K-9 unit. In this unit, if you have a dog, you are allotted a set amount of time during your tour for the care and maintenance of your dog. This is normally done at the start or the end of your tour. The grievance arose that many of these Officers were receiving jobs during this time and the Department, in try- ing to cut costs at the expense of our membership, refused to pay them the extra time guaranteed to them by Department Policy.
It was a very cut-and-dry case that a reason- ableperson would have realized should never go
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CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ NOVEMBER 2016 13