Holding Police Officers Accountable for Misconduct: Arbitrators’ Assessment of Police Discipline and Arbitration Processes

In recent years, high profile examples of police misconduct have heightened public awareness of systematic problems in American law enforcement. One concern raised is that police officers are not consistently held accountable for their actions. As a result, the police discipline and arbitration processes have come under scrutiny by both academic researchers and journalists. Many of the reports and articles published have painted police discipline and arbitration processes as flawed and ineffective and lay the blame for this on the labor arbitrators who serve as the final decision-makers in these processes. Arbitrators are experts in contractual discipline processes, and as the final decision-makers in many police discipline procedures, they are in a unique position to assess the state of police discipline and arbitration. This article provides police arbitrators’ assessments of these discipline processes, as well as recommendations to make current processes more effective.