By JOHN LESLIE
On Aug. 15, in accordance with Pennsylvania’s Policemen’s and Firemen’s Collective Bargaining Act of 1968 (Act 111), arbitrators awarded substantial wage increases and incentives to Philadelphia police in a new two-year contract. Police officers will receive a 3% pay increase this fiscal year and the next, along with a one-time $3000 bonus. Cops will also receive an additional paid “wellness” day annually.
According to a Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) published document, the raises also include a 1.5% pay adjustment because of the “civilianization” of some existing roles through attrition, and a “1% increase in the longevity pay scale,” resulting in cumulative raises of 15% over three years. The arbitrators’ award also requires that the city make a lump-sum payment of $5 million to the FOP Retiree Joint Trust Fund within 60 days and another $5 million payment on or before July 1, 2026. Additionally, the FOP says that there is an option to reopen the contract in 2026.
A Philadelphia police recruit makes $64,982 while attending the police academy, which can last from five to nine months. Upon graduation, a police officer’s pay jumps to more than $69,000 annually. A cop’s pay can reach over $104,000 per year after two years, with stress pay, overtime, and other bonuses figured in.
This is in stark contrast to the AFSCME District Council 33 (DC 33) contract won by Philadelphia’s sanitation and other “blue collar” workers following an eight-day strike this summer. During their strike, DC 33 workers were met with stiff resistance and strike-breaking tactics from the Democratic Party’s Mayor Parker and a Democratic-aligned judge who provided injunctions.
The new DC 33 contract includes 3% raises per year retroactive to July 1 of this year, a $1500 signing bonus, as well as retaining the health-care plan, but the raises are not enough to keep up with inflation. The average annual salary of a DC 33 member is $46,000, or $22.12 per hour, and is $2000 less than the $48,387 a single person with no children would need to afford to live in Philadelphia. This is in sharp contrast to the pay won by cops.
Higher pay is supported by police supporters because of the “dangers” that are associated with police work, but statistics show that the work of sanitation workers is significantly more dangerous than that of the police. According to recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2023, the fatal injury rate for garbage collectors was 41.4 per 100,000 workers, compared to 11.3 for police officers. In fact, police ranked 18th in the number of dangerous occupations in 2020—behind loggers, construction workers, and ground maintenance workers.
Gutting accountability
One of the demands of the FOP was to curb the power of the Citizens Police Oversight Commission (CPOC), which replaced the Police Accountably Commission (PAC) in 2021. According to Axios, “the arbitrators maintained the status quo—neither further empowering CPOC (as the city wanted) nor restricting it.” Axios describes the agency as being “on life support.”
While the PAC had no real power or ability to enforce discipline against violent to abusive cops, CPOC has more power to investigate disciplinary cases–in theory. The reality of this underfunded agency is much different. In 2024, it was reported that CPOC had not investigated a single citizen complaint of police misconduct since it was created, routinely turning complaints over to Philadelphia Police Internal Affairs investigators. About 25% of the complaints included allegations against police officers for crimes including physical abuse, civil rights violations, sexual misconduct, drug use, or other violations.
Police violence costs the taxpayers millions of dollars annually, as court cases and settlements are paid to victims or their families. From 2013 to 2014, Philadelphia paid out an average of $9 million annually to settle cases of police misconduct. Since 2023, the city has paid out at least $60 million to settle claims.
Mayor Cherelle Parker campaigned for office based on a call for more cops and the return to “stop and frisk” under the guise of so-called “Terry” stops. As Workers Voice wrote earlier, the mayor has proven that “a Black woman from an underprivileged background can gain office, but that she nevertheless will uphold institutions that re-enforce poverty and practices that reinforce white racism.”
Police violence still rampant five years after George Floyd
According to a study by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and Vanderbilt University “an average of 1,769 people were injured annually in police shootings from 2015 to 2020, 55 percent of them, or 979 people, fatally. The study covered a total of 10,308 incidents involving shootings by police.” The study also notes a racial disparity in these incidents, with Black and Brown people disproportionately represented among the victims of police violence. Additionally, 23% of the victims were reported as experiencing a “mental or behavioral health condition.”
After 2020 and until last year, statistics showed that police kill more than 1100 people annually in the U.S.—while Black people have been victims as a disproportionate rate.
Philadelphia has followed the national pattern. In recent years, there have been a number of cases of police killings in the city; these include:
- Robert Jones: On Oct. 3, 2024, Jones, a 54-year-old professional roadside assistance worker, was shot four times and killed by off-duty homicide detective Christopher Sweeney. Jones had approached Sweeney’s car, which was stopped in a turning lane, likely in order to offer assistance. District Attorney Larry Krasner has declined to prosecute Sweeney despite inconsistencies in his story.
- Eddie Irizarry, 27, was fatally shot by Philadelphia Police Officer Mark Dial during a traffic stop on Aug. 23, 2023. Police initially claimed that Irizarry had lunged at them with a weapon. However, body camera footage showed that Irizarry was inside his car when Dial fired through the closed driver’s side window. Dial was later convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to nine-and-a-half months to two years in prison. He was granted immediate parole.
- In October 2020, Thomas “TJ” Siderio, 12 years old, was shot four times in the back and killed by a member of a notorious plain-clothes police unit that was popularly known as the “cowboys” for their free-wheeling and unsafe methods in making arrests. Some charged that the “cowboys” conducted warrantless searches and physical brutality, and planted guns on suspects. Video showed that Sidero had had a gun, but that he had dropped it in the street well before he was shot by Officer Edsaul Mendoza.
- Also in October 2020, Walter Wallace, Jr, 27, was fatally shot by Philadelphia police officers Sean Matarazzo and Thomas Munz during a “domestic disturbance” call. Wallace, who was allegedly experiencing a mental health crisis, was holding a knife when shot by cops. It was Wallace’s family, not police, who called for an ambulance after the shooting.
- Aaron Rainey, 36, was gunned down by Philly cops while experiencing a mental health crisis on March 20, 2025. Rainey’s supporters in the community are demanding the release of body cam footage. Following the protests over the police killing of Walter Wallace Jr., the city and police department had promised to avoid another such situation by equipping police with tasers—which can result in death but are less lethal than guns. In Rainey’s case, the cops claimed that they had tried using their tasers, but found them to be ineffective. One of them then made the decision to shoot Rainey, slightly wounding a fellow officer in the process. Following a press conference by the Philadelphia Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (PAARPR), Philadelphia DA Krasner refused to meet with Rainey’s family. The district attorney’s staff claimed that he wasn’t in the building amid reports that he was seen leaving through a side door.
What is the role of police under capitalism?
The police and military are the organs of state violence dedicated to the preservation of the capitalist state and enforcing the power and privilege of the ruling class through violence and intimidation. Police are essential to the maintenance of the system through strike-breaking, the targeting of oppressed nationalities, and feeding poor people into the prison industrial complex. In this role, police are given what is called qualified immunity, which grants government officials immunity from civil suits unless the official is found to have violated “clearly established” law. In this atmosphere of impunity, Philadelphia police have been exposed for corruption numerous times.
Policing in the U.S. is rooted in the racist development of capitalism in this country from slavery through Jim Crow segregation. In part, the origins of U.S. police lay in the slave patrols tasked with keeping Black people under control. While many cops have working-class origins, they are not part of the working class. By taking the job of police officer, they leave the working class and cross over to the side of our class enemy. As Leon Trotsky expressed it, “The worker who becomes a policeman in the service of the capitalist state, is a bourgeois cop, not a worker.”
Police and prison-guard “unions,” which act to protect cops from any sort of accountability for their actions against workers and oppressed peoples, are reactionary organizations that should have no place in the labor movement. Philadelphia’s FOP has a long and sordid history of covering up police crimes, including its defense of the MOVE bombing in 1985. Recently, there have been credible allegations of corruption inside the FOP bureaucracy.
The militarization of police is nothing new and has paralleled the growth of the national security state, which spies on activists and has framed up Muslims and political activists. The militarization of police and increased domestic surveillance has been a bipartisan project supported by both capitalist parties.
Under Trump, the organs of state repression are growing in strength and power. Using the framework he inherited from years of bipartisan support for repression, Trump has significantly increased the size of U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE), an unaccountable political police being used to terrorize immigrant communities. Combined with the growth of federal police and Trump’s use of the military for domestic policing, the increased militarization of local police forces can be seen as part of the increasing authoritarianism of the state in the US.
On April 28, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) titled “Strengthening and Unleashing American Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens.” This EO increases the protections for abusive police, elevating their defense against lawsuits and prosecution to the federal level. Additionally, the EO increases support for police from the federal government. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), “The federal government wants to train your state and local law enforcement to be more aggressive, reduce the legal mechanisms you have to hold police accountable for misconduct, and provide financial and legal support to officers accused of violating your rights. The federal government will invest more in prisons, despite the U.S. already having the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy on Earth.” The EO also provides more military equipment to local law enforcement.
Fighting back
Obviously, we must fight here and now for police accountability. In that fight, we can’t rely on bourgeois politicians and institutions. Demanding accountability of police and repressive forces at all levels, local, state and federal, is one aspect of a broader fightback against the increasing authoritarianism we face. This struggle should be seen as part of the broader fight to protect democratic rights, including our unions, free speech, and the right to organize. Given the treachery of some Democrats, it’s clear that we need to build broad, democratic mass movements independent of the capitalist parties.
Ultimately, the capitalist state apparatus, including its repressive organs, must be done away with and replaced by popular institutions of community safety organized and controlled by the working class and oppressed people.
Photo: Philadelphia police inspector Joseph Bologna strikes a Temple University student during a George Floyd protest in June 2020. Bologna was charged with assault; last year, a jury found him not guilty. (Cellphone image on Twitter)