[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Back with you on The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Now, join me on a little trip down to Texas. San Antonio, Texas. Now here's a few quirky facts that you may not know. Did you know President Lyndon Johnson married his wife Lady Bird right there in downtown San Antonio? Did you know that Fritos were invented in San Antonio, and of course, the five-time NBA champion, San Antonio Spurs? Well, they're actually the only former ABA team to win a championship in the NBA.

One more fact. San Antonio's Police Department has the highest rehire rate in the nation. Rehire is when a police officer is fired for something like excessive use of force or domestic abuse, but then is rehired because of union-required arbitration. Having the highest police rehire rate is not the kind of statistic a city uses to advertise its quality of life. In San Antonio, there is a grassroots organization fighting for change. ACT 4 SA.

Ananda Tomas is the Executive Director of ACT 4 SA and the former Deputy of Fix SAPD. The last May, Fix SAPD campaigned for Proposition B. That was a measure to replace the current police contract with one that would allow for accountability, transparency, and voter engagement. Now, the Prop B initiative failed to pass, but the margin of defeat was so slim. Now, those activists are reactivated and they're determined to act for San Antonio.

When I spoke with Ananda, I asked her why policing matters are so important to the residents of San Antonio, Texas.

Ananda Tomas: San Antonio is a majority Latino city, but very, very diverse. They say we're a military city USA. Lot of veterans come to retire here. We bring in a lot of diversity, but our police contract and our police union really laid the groundwork for police contracts all across the nation, and specifically, we have an issue with having one of the most unaccountable contracts that has led to us having the highest rehire rate for fired officers in the nation at almost 70% and that's due to our contract.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You're going to have to walk us through this step-by-step. First, what do you mean a rehire rate for fired officers? If you're fired, why aren't you just gone, peace out, you're gone?

Melissa Harris-Perry: Just like it exists for many unions, officers are allowed to appeal their firings. Here is through a process called arbitration where they use outside arbitrators to look over the decision from the police chief to decide subjectively if the firing or disciplinary action was too much or not. There's several options here. When an officer is fired, they can appeal, use an arbitrator. It either goes through an arbitration process, which is very costly and takes a lot of time and resources from the city and the arbitrator can overturn the police chief's decision or the police chief and the arbitrator and the officer can have a settlement agreement outside of arbitration to speed up the process, which often results in the officer being rehired.

Melissa Harris-Perry: How long has this form of the union contract been in place?

Ananda Tomas: Since the 1970s. It was brought in through a ballot initiative that had about 2% of the total voting population vote before we even had single-member voting districts, so representative voting through city council districts.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You've got a police contract. That means that-- actually, let me back up for a second one more time just so I'm making sure I'm getting all of this right. When officers are getting fired, typically, or do you even know from the data, typically, what kind of actions are causing them to be fired?

Ananda Tomas: This is for general misconduct, something that is not criminal or has gone to court. Some of these actions are for excessive force, domestic abuse, we had a case of an officer here who tried to give a homeless man a dog BC sandwich. Fellow officers turned him in, he was fired due to loopholes in the contract. When he went through arbitration, he was allowed to be reinstated. Often these officers are reinstated with back pay because of the time they have spent off of the force.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You have a contract in your city that's been in place nearly 50 years now that allows an officer to basically abuse the people he's supposed to be or that she is supposed to be protecting and serving and because it's so expensive to do a public process, then basically there's not accountability that the public can even know about.

Ananda Tomas: Correct. Also because our contract has restrictive rules on officer files, we, until recently, have not even been allowed to view the arbitration cases themselves. We can find out the results of an arbitration after it's happened, but nothing that happens in the process in between. The investigation, the recommendation from our civilian review board to the chief, none of that is accessible to the public. It has not been a transparent system for decades now.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What I love about the reason that you're here to talk to us, Ananda, is because you didn't just look at this obviously huge problem and say, "Oh, well, I guess it's that way." You've been working to change it. Talk to me about the campaigns that you've been involved in around altering this contract.

Ananda Tomas: Yes, absolutely. Under Fix SAPD, we really started taking a look at our police contract and we have two local government codes here that established our contract. One is Chapter 143 that was brought in through ballot initiative in the 1940s before most of us could vote, heavily Latino city, Black people couldn't vote, Latino people couldn't vote. That sets up municipal civil service laws that are commonly referred to as a Law Enforcement Bill of Rights. Hiring, firing, discipline, sets limitation on investigations helps establish arbitration.

The other chapters, Chapter 174, which also was brought in through ballot initiative and that establishes collective bargaining rights for our police union, but more importantly, establishes that anything in the contract can supersede local and state law, giving a further bubble and shield from any type of accountability legislation that the city or the state would want to pass on officers.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Wait. How can a union contract supersede law? Technically, how is that even possible? I can't simply write an employment contract that says, "By the way, I can do this thing to you even though it's illegal in the state."

Ananda Tomas: Correct. The idea behind it was that if they wanted, during negotiations, to establish stronger discipline or accountability or amend certain rules like creating less restrictive officer personnel file rules, that they would be able to do that, but on the other end, on the other hand, it can also allow them to put up barriers and shields to laws that would establish better transparency and accountability. It has created this slippery slope, something meant to be a tool for justice and accountability being used as the complete opposite.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What was Proposition B?

Ananda Tomas: Proposition B was a ballot initiative to remove Chapter 174. Now, originally we were collecting petition signatures to remove both of these chapters, however, Chapter 174 only required 20,000 signatures as a cap while Chapter 143 is based simply off a percentage of the amount of registered voters in the city with no cap. That's currently closer to 80,000 signatures in San Antonio and was unattainable during our first go around, but we absolutely plan to go after that again.

This would remove the collective bargaining rights for our San Antonio Police Officers Association, meaning the contract is null and void and they would have to create a new contract under a meet and confer law, a different chapter, which would allow us to finally have a larger say in the creation of that contract and create one that allows for more accountability, transparency, and absolutely stronger police discipline.

Ananda Tomas: I'm going to listen to a clip of John or Danny Diaz, who's president of the San Antonio Police Officers Association. He's speaking here to News for San Antonio and has a somewhat different perspective on it. Let's take a listen.

Danny Diaz: We have over 600 officers that have 20 years on or more that could retire. That's not including the young officers. There's no guarantee that the city is going to give us the same pay or even less. We're at the city's mercy. Same thing with the insurance, they're taking away insurance. We don't know what the city will give us.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Is that accurate that the work that you're doing here around accountability could also lead to a mass exodus of police who might retire and also might leave them without insurance, which does not seem fair?

Ananda Tomas: This is part of the tactics that police unions have used for decades here, scare tactic for voters. There's no evidence that officers would leave in droves without a contract. The city has no incentive to not hold a contract with great benefits with great pay for officers because public safety is such an integral part of our system.

The 600 officers he's talking about that are eligible for retirement, that's any given year. Many officers and folks in other industries are up for retirement and choose to stay for whatever reason. It was just a false claim that officers would leave in droves if we lost collective bargaining, because suddenly the city would try to not pay officers or give them insurance, even though they're city employees. There's no basis for this.

We do have other cities under meet and confer in Texas. They tend to have more officers per capita and the same or better pay and benefits. That's what the facts and the data and the evidence show.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Why not want to go to meet and confer then? What is this that--? Is it simply about being able to be protected even in the context of bad acts?

Ananda Tomas: Yes. The collective bargaining rights do set up a negotiation process that will favor the police union always. It grants them more power and a simple difference really between collective bargaining and meet and confer is collective bargaining requires both parties to meet, where meet and confer the parties must choose to meet, but there is never a time where a city would not meet with their police officer's association or police union when these are needed services around the city that we rely on so heavily.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You didn't win this time. What did you learn?

Ananda Tomas: Yes. We learned a lot about fighting disinformation from our opponents. We learned a lot about being able to take these complex issues and topics of collective bargaining and contracts and legislation that has pages and pages and pages long and condensing it in a way that is digestible to your everyday voter. We learned a lot about resources. The Police Officers Association here ran a million-dollar campaign against us, a grassroots organization that had not even been around for a full year yet.

One of our founders didn't even know who our city council member was until she became active and involved and looked into this. They poured resources and disinformation into this. We've definitely learned that we need to go heavier on fundraising, but also just that voter contact and using the narratives of folks that have been abused by police or lost loved ones here, amplifying those stories because it does get the hearts and minds moving and I absolutely think we can do this next go around.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, if you don't live in San Antonio, but you're looking to the city for advice or strategy or hope, what can other people learn from your experiences?

Ananda Tomas: Do the research. We spent about three months before we ever collected our first petition signature. Every state, every city, every county is different on petition rules. Whether it's notarizing every page of a petition or the language that needs to be on there, walking through these laws to fully understand them to be able to put it into digestible sound bites, and we learned a lot about coalition-building.

I highly recommend that anybody trying to do this or similar work reaches out to community partners, organizations, it really does take a village to take on the power structures that exist everywhere we live, and so just be brave. We faced intimidation throughout the campaign, so I also would like to amplify the need to have those safety protocols in place, and just know that if you're agitating someone that much it's because you're doing the work and you're right where you need to be.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ananda Tomas is Executive Director of ACT 4 SA. Thank you for joining us today and promise me that you will keep us up to date on what happens next.

Ananda Tomas: I absolutely will. Thank you so much, Melissa.

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.