Over the summer, a still from a surveillance camera showing a
police officer kicking a handcuffed woman in the head went viral on
Facebook and email. The text below the picture read, “Rhode Island
police officer Edward Krawetz received no jail time for this brutal
assault on this seated and handcuffed woman. Now he wants his job
back. Share if you don’t want this to happen.” The allegation was
wild enough to pique the
interest of the rumor-debunking site Snopes.com, which
determined that the story was, in fact, true.

In 2009, Officer Edward Krawetz
of the Lincoln Police Department arrested Donna Levesque for unruly
behavior at a casino in Lincoln, Rhode Island. While seated on the
ground with her hands cuffed behind her, Levesque kicked Krawetz in
the shin. Krawetz responded by cocking back his right leg and
nailing Levesque in the side of the head, knocking her over. In
March 2012, Krawetz
was convicted of felony battery despite his claim that he
kicked Levesque in “self defense.” The 10-year sentence he received
was immediately suspended, and Krawetz was ordered to attend anger
management classes.

But he wasn’t fired from the Lincoln Police Department. Under
Rhode Island law, the fate of Krawetz’s job as a cop rested not
with a criminal court, or even his commanding officer, but in the
hands of a three-person panel composed of fellow police
officers—one of whom Krawetz would get to choose. That panel would
conduct the investigation into Krawetz’s behavior, oversee a
cross-examination, and judge whether Krawetz could keep his job.
The entire incident, in other words, would be kept in the
family.

The same was true for Rhode Island Police Officer Alfred
Ferretti after he followed two women home while in uniform and
exposed himself; for Officers Robert Neri and Robert Lobianco after
they were found having a threesome while on duty; and for Officer
Nichalas Laprade after two women reported that he stared at them
while masturbating as he drove down I-95 in his personal
vehicle.

All of these Rhode Island cops, and many more like them across
the county, were able to keep their jobs and benefits—sometimes
only temporarily, but always longer than they should have—thanks to
model legislation written and lobbied for by well-funded police
unions. That piece of legislation is called the “law enforcement
bill of rights,” and its sole purpose is to shield cops from the
laws they’re paid to enforce.

The inspiration for this legislation and its similarly named
cousins across the country is the Police Officers’ Bill of Rights,
introduced in 1971 by New York Rep. Mario Biaggi (D), at the behest
of the Police Benevolent Association. Having once been the most
decorated police officer in the country, Biaggi didn’t need much
convincing to put forward the union-friendly bill.

Biaggi pushed for the POBOR until March 1987, when he received
two indictments back-to-back. The first was for accepting a paid
vacation from Brooklyn Democratic Leader Meade H. Esposito in
exchange for using federal funds to bail out a company in
Esposito’s neighborhood. A second indictment handed down three
months later charged Biaggi with extorting $3.6 million in cash and
stock options from a small Bronx machine shop called Wedtech. Both
charges resulted in convictions and Biaggi’s resignation from
Congress.

While Biaggi’s bill never made it through Congress, police
unions didn’t wait for city managers or police department
higher-ups to write their own. Benevolent associations in Maryland
successfully pushed for the passage of a police bill of rights in
1972; Florida, Rhode Island, Virginia, New Mexico, and California
followed suit before the 70s were over. The 1980s, 90s, and 2000s
saw still more states adopt police bill of rights at the behest of
police unions.

The rights created by these bills differ from state to state,
but here’s how a typical police misconduct investigation works in
states that have a law enforcement bill of rights in place:

A complaint is filed against an officer by a member of the
public or a fellow officer. Police department leadership reviews
the complaint and decides whether to investigate. If the department
decides to pursue the complaint, it must inform the officer and his
union. That’s where the special treatment begins, but it doesn’t
end there.

Unlike a member of the public, the officer gets a “cooling off”
period before he has to respond to any questions. Unlike a member
of the public, the officer under investigation is privy to the
names of his complainants and their testimony against him before he
is ever interrogated. Unlike a member of the public, the officer
under investigation is to be interrogated “at a reasonable hour,”
with a union member present. Unlike a member of the public, the
officer can only be questioned by one person during his
interrogation. Unlike a member of the public, the officer can be
interrogated only “for reasonable periods,” which “shall be timed
to allow for such personal necessities and rest periods as are
reasonably necessary.” Unlike a member of the public, the officer
under investigation cannot be “threatened with disciplinary action”
at any point during his interrogation. If he is threatened with
punishment, whatever he says following the threat cannot be used
against him.

What happens after the interrogation again varies from state to
state. But under nearly every law enforcement bill of rights, the
following additional privileges are granted to officers: Their
departments cannot publicly acknowledge that the officer is under
investigation; if the officer is cleared of wrongdoing or the
charges are dropped, the department may not publicly acknowledge
that the investigation ever took place, or reveal the nature of the
complaint. The officer cannot be questioned or investigated by
“non-government agents,” which
means no civilian review boards. If the officer is suspended as
a result of the investigation, he must continue to receive full pay
and benefits until his case is resolved. In most states, the
charging department must subsidize the accused officer’s legal
defense.

A violation of any of the above rights can result in
dismissal—not of the officer, but of the charges against him.

Because of these special due process privileges, there’s little
incentive for police departments to discipline officers. In most
cases, it’s more financially prudent to let a District Attorney or
outside law enforcement agency do the heavy lifting, and then fire
the officer if he’s convicted. This is the only “easy” way, under
police bills of rights, for departments to get rid of bad
cops–which essentially means the only way to get rid of bad cops
is if some other law enforcement agency can make a felony charge
stick. This is the biggest problem with law enforcement bills of
rights–they encourage police departments to let external forces
determine what behavior is unacceptable. That’s eventually why
Rhode Island’s Krawetz resigned his post.

But Rhode Island is by no means an outlier.