Police Unions Accused of Shielding Brutal Cops; FedEx Asks Washington Redskins to Change Team Name.
ALLEN: Nationwide protests against police brutality in the U.S. are putting pressure on local law enforcement leaders to reform their departments, but it is the police unions that ultimately shields many misbehaving officers from accountability. Our senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin has our report.</s>DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The words coming out of the San Antonio police officer's mouth are awful.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know what's</s>GRIFFIN: A young black man in a San Antonio Texas mall in 2018 is being arrested for trespassing. When he asked why, the officer says this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For being a</s>GRIFFIN: As shocking as it sounds, the bigger shock is the officer is still on the job.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can get out. But don't run. Do something.</s>GRIFFIN: So is an officer who uncuffed a man and challenged him to a fistfight.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- often I'm going to beat you out. That's what I'm going to do.</s>GRIFFIN: An officer who tried to give a homeless man a sandwich made of feces had his firing overturned. It took a second poop incident to get rid of him.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You react, I react.</s>GRIFFIN: These officers and many others were fired and all of them got their jobs back thanks to a police union contract and state law that leaves final punishment of law officers in the hand of an arbitrator who is often chosen in a way that favors the police. San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg has had enough.</s>RON NIRENBERG, SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS MAYOR: Now these are crimes of moral turpitude. And you would expect that in any profession that bears the weight of public accountability, that this would be a one-and-done type offense. Yet, the cases in which the chiefs' discipline has been cleared, have been overturned in these arbitration hearings, and people are rightly outraged by it.</s>GRIFFIN: Fired San Antonio police officers were able to get their jobs back in 42 percent of the cases that went through arbitration. That includes one cop who was reportedly fired six times.</s>NIRENBERG: It's egregious.</s>STEPHEN RUSHIN, PROFESSOR, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY: San Antonio is one of the most deferential to law enforcement interests.</s>GRIFFIN: Loyola University professor Stephen Rushin analyzed more than 650 police union contracts.</s>RUSHIN: We have across the country and many cities made bad deals with police unions. Bad deals that make it difficult for us to investigate police misconduct.</s>GRIFFIN: The bad deals, according to Rushin, include giving the officer 48 hours or longer before being questioned, allowing officers to see all the evidence before being questioned, ignoring an officer's past disciplinary actions, and in some cases, banning any discipline where complaints aren't filed in a timely fashion.</s>L. SONG RICHARDSON, U.C. IRVINE SCHOOL OF LAW: And frankly, police unions have much more protection than other governments or other public unions.</s>GRIFFIN: Case in point, Minneapolis. The officer charged with murdering George Floyd had a long history of complaints but was still on the force. A CNN analysis found just 1.5 percent of the thousands of complaints filed against Minneapolis police in recent years resulted in any serious discipline.</s>R.T. RYBAK, FORMER MINNEAPOLIS MAYOR: I have seen too much.</s>GRIFFIN: Former Minneapolis mayor, R.T. Rybak fought his city's police union for years.</s>RYBAK: So it's the time right now for elected officials to stop treating them like a traditional union.</s>GRIFFIN: The unions, of course, tell a different story. Detective Mike Helle is president of San Antonio's Police Officer's Association.</s>MIKE HELLE, PRESIDENT, SAN ANTONIO POLICE OFFICER'S ASSOCIATION: Is police reform necessary? Sure it is. Do we need to have transparency? You bet we do. We should always have transparency in our police departments. But the thing that we or and have negotiated for and we continue to hope for is that we just have a fair process, right?</s>GRIFFIN: Helle believes the current contract is fair, the state protections for police are balanced, and told us there is currently not a single bad cop on the San Antonio police force.</s>HELLE: There's nobody that wants bad cops on our department.</s>GRIFFIN (on camera): Do you believe him? That -- that the union doesn't want these bad cops on the force.</s>NIRENBERG: I want to believe him. But until these provisions change, then we are left in the situation where it looks like the union politics is against the general public's best interest.</s>GRIFFIN: There is already a push to change both state and federal law in regard to police reform, but experts say changing police union contracts is much tougher, requires lots of public and local political support. In Minneapolis, that is taking place right now. San Antonio's contract is up next year. Drew Griffin, CNN, Atlanta.</s>ALLEN: Shipping giant Federal Express is asking the Washington Redskins to change its controversial team name. The move comes after a group of investors sent a letter to the FedEx CEO calling on the company to cut its business ties to the NFL franchise. FedEx has a long-term contract to put its name on team's stadium. The letter calls the name Redskins -- the mascot name -- a dehumanizing word and a racial slur with hateful connotations. Pepsi and Nike, the team's drinks partner and uniform supplier receives similar letters. Neither has responded to CNN's request for comment. 20 Saudis are now on trial in absentia in Turkey in connection with the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The former security official and a former aide to the Saudi Crown Prince are among those charged. Khashoggi was last seen in October 2018 after visiting the Saudi consulate right there in Istanbul. He's believed to have been killed inside. He had gone there to get documents for his wedding. Khashoggi's fiancee took to the stand at the proceedings a short time ago. Next here, as many parents have discovered, working from home with children can be, well, difficult. Two moms shared their new normal with the world.