When the Buses Come

Former FOP President Kevin Graham is the central author in the decline of Chicago’s police union

In hotly contested union elections, the arrival of buses on election day is an ominous sign for reformers trying to right wayward unions.

I am reminded of this lesson in the wake of the latest scandal surrounding the Chicago Police union, the Fraternal Order of Police. The governing board of the union has admitted it has hired an attorney because there is a federal investigation underway, focusing apparently on Lodge finances. The first vice president has filed charges against current President John Catanzara for allegations of financial misconduct. The state FOP was also apparently considering charges against Catanzara but rescinded them pending Catanzara’s withdrawal as a state vice president. Catanzara’s bridge to the national FOP also appears burned. Rumors circulate that the superintendent won’t even talk to Catanzara. A meeting of big city police union officials at the White House is rumored to have specifically excluded Catanzara.

For me, it all goes back to the buses, a lesson I first encountered some three decades ago in the course of trying to reform the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE), a union mired in allegations of corruption, one embedded in the Chicago political machine and with long ties the mob.

I was a doorman in those days. I had wandered into union politics after trying to help some housekeepers with a grievance and, in doing so, got to learn about the union and how Chicago truly works. In time, I joined with a collection of other workers who set their sights on ousting the union bosses and putting the actual workers in charge. Our model was the San Francisco Local, whose members had driven the union fat cats from Chicago from controlling their local and placing control into the hands of members years earlier. In doing so, they had obtained the most lucrative labor contracts in the nation, which stood in stark contrast to the ones negotiated in Chicago despite the vast riches hotels were making in the trade and tourism industry here.

So for almost a decade, I wandered the employee entrances, cafeterias, and hallways of hotels trying to convince members to join us. The highlight of those days was publishing a newsletter, English on one side, Spanish on the other. At first, employees shrugged us off when we tried to hand them one as they poured out of employee entrances at shift change, so we left stacks of the newsletter in the employee cafeterias for them to read at their leisure. When the second issue was completed, I was shocked to see dozens of employees pause outside the employee entrances, then get in line to receive a copy, many of them offering a dollar to pay for copies.

To this day, it is one of the most thrilling experiences I’ve ever had as a writer.

We became stronger, so strong that the union bosses grew concerned. In the end, though, it was naive to think that we could actually take over the union, for the machinations and resources of these union bosses seemed limitless, and there was simply too much at stake for the entire political machine to allow a truly independent, powerful union with so much sway in the industry that was the lifeblood of the city’s tax base.

In the last election, when we had the best chance of winning, I knew we were doomed when I went downtown early in the morning for the big election day and witnessed three massive, shiny buses waiting outside the union hall on Van Buren Avenue. With these buses, the bosses and their vassals could corral thousands of workers, many of whom did not understand what was going on and were being manipulated with fake promises and threats by the union bosses. Our slate, in contrast, was counting on the goodwill of busy workers to transport themselves on a workday to a voting site often quite a distance from their own.

When I saw the buses, I knew we were going to lose. Even so, we came within a few hundred votes.

After that experience, I had sworn off getting involved in union politics ever again. I became a cop with the long-term goal of becoming a detective. I also pursued my other obsession: writing. After I published my first book, I began to look at key cases in which killers had been set free on the claims of police misconduct. It was clear to me that many of the cases were fraudulent, and I began to write about them. Many cops encouraged me to run for the police union based upon the knowledge I had garnered from my research and writing and by my willingness to fight against the legal industry of suing cops, and I agreed.

I won handily in my first election, running on the slate of Kevin Graham. Graham unfortunately proved to be a dreadfully poor leader, someone unwilling to fight for the members because he was more interested in making friends with the key players in the city than advocating for his fellow police officers.

But the real failure of Graham’s presidency was a syndrome permeating the entire FOP and preventing us from ever raising the Lodge out of its moribund state into an organization aggressively fighting for its members: an absence of solidarity. Graham harnessed the talent and hard work of his slate members to get elected, then betrayed them to maintain his own power and reputation, so much so that by the end of his administration, those who had supported him, including me, were no longer willing to do so.

Even so, we had some powerful victories in which Graham played little to no role. We transformed the legal defense of the FOP into a powerhouse, winning case after case. My proudest victory was initiating the legal and contractual campaign to secure the right of arbitration for members over the kangaroo courts of the city’s civilian oversight agencies, a victory that would be fully secured after I left the FOP. For the first time, FOP members are no longer trapped in the city’s civilian oversight scam. Complaints against them can go to arbitrators, whose rulings generally drastically give lesser punishments or reject them regardless of the recommendations from the oversight agencies.

Perhaps the greatest disappointment was Graham’s refusal to fight the consent decree, one of the worst examples of politicizing the criminal justice system that took shape under President Obama. In my mind, aside from getting arbitration for members, fighting this consent decree was one of the most important missions of the FOP. But Kevin kept chanting “carve out language,” in response to those of us advocating fighting against the consent decree, Graham’s false claim that entering into the court case that gave life to the consent decree would put the FOP contract in jeopardy. The truth is that just the opposite was true. In the end, a judge ruled that we hesitated too long to fight the consent decree and we could no longer fight it in the courts.

This is not to say that Graham was completely incompetent. Graham appointed capable people to positions in the union, and he watched over the Lodge to make sure everything was on the up-and-up financially. The office ran smoothly. But it wasn’t enough. There were too many ominous forces working against the cops requiring a real leader.

And so, as Graham’s first term came to a close, many of those who had supported him decided they would rather have me in charge. It took several weeks to talk me into accepting a run at the presidency, but I eventually agreed. We had come too far to walk away. We decided to break the news to Kevin at an Italian restaurant a few blocks from the union hall that we would not support him for the presidency, dozens of us gathered there to tell Kevin he could run on our slate, but not for president.

I knew it would be a crushing blow for him, and I walked him back to his car, saying little that could cheer him up as we did. Afterward, I went back to the restaurant and told my fellow slate members there was no way Kevin would run with us. He would run his own ticket, which would mean a three-way race for the presidency, a scenario in which anything could happen.

As the formal campaigning took shape, I could see that Kevin believed all he had to do was beat me. His assumption was that the third candidate, John Catanzara, would never win. Kevin believed, as many did, Catanzara was too bombastic, too divisive, that, aside from his bellicose manner, there wasn’t much there and he would therefore not prevail in an election. I didn’t agree. The membership was so divided, so angry about the daily abuse they endured in the media, in the civilian oversight agencies, by the prosecutors, and with the consent decree, that a renegade like Catanzara could pull it off.

In the short time I got to know Catanzara, I privately concluded that there was no way I would stay at the FOP if he won. I would make a clean break because I was leery about how he would operate the union and I was concerned I would get dragged into something nefarious. It is no surprise to me that Catanzara is now at the center of a raging scandal about his running of the union, especially its finances.

And so, on election day, I stood outside speaking to the members who decided to vote in person, working the phones, shaking hands. But, watching Graham, I sensed something was up. Then it happened again. The buses arrived, turning eastbound on Washington from just a short distance away. Dozens and dozens of recruits from the academy poured out, still wearing their academy uniforms. It was an old union trick employed once again. Kevin had gotten his supporters at the academy to corral the most naive, uninformed members that could possibly be found to get on the bus and garner the crucial votes to defeat me, narrowly beating me by thirty-some votes. Graham puffed and preened on election night after he pulled off what many thought was an upset. I had mixed emotions, for I had been dragged into running for president kicking and screaming.

I had already planned on leaving the FOP if I lost—the thought of being set free from the Machiavellian world of the union was attractive, however much I ached to initiate some of the strategies I had been working on. But in truth, I was so fed up with Graham, there was no way I would work with him, certainly not take orders from him.

If Catanzara won? No fricking way would I stay at the FOP.

I went back to patrol and slowly prepared for my fourth back surgery, then retirement.

Kevin’s assumption that he would handily prevail against Catanzara in the run-off election proved false. Without the original members who propped him up in his first election, Graham could gather no momentum. He was a terrible public speaker and not very good on his feet. His stumbling, mumbling demeanor soured many members, who gravitated to the decisive rhetoric of Catanzara, so much so that they ignored the signs that he was a relentless braggart whose philosophy amounted to little more than setting fire to every bridge connecting the Lodge to the outside world.

In the runoff, no busloads of recruits could rescue Graham now. Kevin called me the night of the election to tell me he had lost.

“Okay,” I said. “Talk to you later.”

What a loss. We had great talent on our slate: Rich Aguilar, the best grievance guy in the state. Bob Bartlett, a tenacious fighter and expert on the contract. A stellar legal defense ready to take aim at the entire anti-police movement in the city. Dan Quaid, a potential future president of the FOP. We had able lobbyists, attorneys.

Chicago’s FOP could be fighting one crucial battle after another under a president that is the most pro-law enforcement in the modern history of the nation, but the union, is, as usual, mired in scandal and infighting, many of its most active participants motivated almost solely by keeping or attaining a lucrative spot at the FOP.

It all begins when the buses come.