Police unions, such as International Union of Police Associations, Fraternal Order of Police, etc., are antithetical to the labor movement. The institution of policing is a menace to poor and working-class people generally, Black, Brown, and Indigenous people particularly. Because of its role, police unions encourage the most reactionary values, a siege mentality when it comes to marginalized communities, especially racial minorities, and they use their lobbying resources to support retrograde law-and-order policies and district attorneys who support them. This is the canvass on which police frisk, harass, beat up, and murder Black, Brown, and Indigenous people with impunity.

The labor movement, even at its worst moments when it turned inward against its best and brightest organizers by supporting loyalty oaths and witch hunts, has aspired to the opposite values: cross-racial solidarity, good pay for all workers, ending the pay gap between men and women workers, easy access to unionizing, progressive laws, and pro-worker, pro-union candidates who want to build communities, not criminalize them.

The AFL-CIO's claim that "the best way to use our influence on the issue of police brutality is to engage our police affiliates rather than isolate them" is defied by facts. "Engagement" has meant the status quo, and it's literally killing us.