Agreement between the City of Rochester and the Rochester Police Locust Club, 2008 - 2013
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Below is the labor contract between the City of Rochester and the Rochester Police Locust Club (the recognized bargaining unit of Rochester Police Department officers) from July 2008 to June 2013. The document has been added to the FOIL tab above on the website.
In a post on his blog, Kristian Williams, author of Our Enemies In Blue, writes about police unions, "Police are part of the management apparatus of capitalism. Therefore, they are not workers like other workers, and their 'unions' serve interests that are diametrically opposed to those of the working class."
Truthout also reported on a letter delivered to the "joint council of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2865 [in August 2015] calling on the AFL-CIO to end its affiliation with the International Union of Police Associations," according to the article, Black Labor Organizers Urge AFL-CIO to Reexamine Its Ties to the Police.
In Rochester, the Locust Club tore apart Rochester's first civilian review board, the Police Advisory Board of 1963, after it filed lawsuit after lawsuit preventing the board from doing its work. Michael Mazzeo, the current Locust Club president, was indicted with several others officers on federal civil rights charges in the early '90s for everything from brutality to embezzlement. His out of control lawyer, John Parinello, was able to draw enough attention to himself that his clients were eventually acquitted.
Are police "unions" truly part of the working class? If history is any lesson, the answer is no.
Current Locust Club President Michael Mazzeo
