Union membership for police officers is on the rise across the nation even as individual police departments, in some cases, face hundreds of vacancies.
The Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union, has the highest union membership in almost a decade, with 341,946 members as of Dec. 19, according to an organization spokesman. That’s an increase of almost 20,000 members since spring 2018.
“Year in and year out, we’re in a gradual growth pattern,” Fraternal Order of Police Executive Director Jim Pasco told Bloomberg Law.
At the same time, however, police departments like the one in Austin, Texas, ...