Joel Day, a candidate for San Diego City Council, has an op-ed asserting that candidates for local office should not take donations from police unions. Day writes:
Since our City Council appropriates police budgets, confirms the police chief, appoints the executive director and commissioners of the Commission on Police Practices (which have ultimate say over recommending discipline for officer misbehavior) and stands to enact structural reforms to reimagine how we use police broadly, it is just as inappropriate for police unions to endorse as it would be for generals or admirals in the U.S. military.
He notes that Canada, Australia and England ban such contributions.
Some California politicians have made similar moves. California Senator Scott Wiener announced in 2020 that he would no longer accept donations from law enforcement unions. Some progressive prosecutors, including San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin, Los Angeles’ George Gascon, and San Joaquin County’s Tori Verber Salazar, asserted in 2020 that the American Bar Association should ban law enforcement lobby contributions to prosecutorial campaigns. And Assemblymember Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) floated an idea for a bill in 2020 that would require prosecutors to recuse themselves “from investigating and prosecuting excessive force and fatal shootings by police when the prosecutor has taken campaign contributions from the officer’s labor union or association.”
San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan stated in 2018 that she would not take police union donations, but The Appeal reported that law enforcement unions nevertheless spent substantial sums to support her.