Police have traditionally protested anti-police rhetoric by making fewer arrests. Right now that's exactly what the public wants.

• When facing opposition, unions in many industries have traditionally used work slowdowns as a protest tactic. Law enforcement is no different.
• During a period at the end of 2014, following the killing of two NYPD officers, the number of arrests in the city was cut in half. The writing of traffic tickets and summonses dropped off nearly completely.
• Last year when Officer Daniel Pantaleo was fired for his role in the killing of Eric Garner, felony arrests slowed down again.
• This tactic may inadvertently support the movement calling for police reform and even disbandment.

When New York City police officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were shot dead in their patrol car in 2014, unions blamed the killings on anti-police rhetoric by some politicians. In the following two weeks, the rate of arrests and citations issued by the department dropped drastically.

From the last week of December 2014 into the early weeks of 2015, arrests in the city fell by half, and criminal and traffic summonses dropped more than 90 percent, the New York Times reported at the time.

Last September, when NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo was fired following a five-year investigation into the killing of Eric Garner, arrest totals and summonses plunged again.

Historically when NYPD officers feel like they're being opposed, officers will protest with work slowdowns.

But in an era when the public is calling for police reform and disbandment, work slowdowns might be giving reformers exactly what they're asking for.

"I think they're over a barrel right because the whole point of this movement is that we don't want their help because it's not helping," Alex Vitale, professor of sociology and Coordinator of Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, told Insider. "For them to say, 'Well, screw you. We're not going to help you. We're not going to do anything anymore,' is just making our point for us."

While New York state law forbids work slowdowns or stoppage by police and other public employees, it is a tactic that NYPD officers have engaged in for years during times of unrest, Vitale said. While slowdowns within other agencies, like transportation workers, have resulted in unions being fined and union leaders facing jail time, police unions have escaped penalty, even when a reduction in work had been clearly documented, Vitale said.

In the past, the slowdowns have come every couple of years, usually following a time of communities protesting the NYPD on issues related to policing, Vitale said. On occasion, there will even be a slowdown during heated contract negotiations, he said.

The idea behind them is that if officers stop doing their jobs, crime will explode in the city, and the public will realize their worth, Vitale said. Following the 2014 slowdown, though, social scientists found that wasn't the case.

Instead, they found that civilian complaints of major crimes dropped by about 3% to 6% during the slowdown.

Analyzing crime and arrest data from New York for the journal Nature Human Behaviour, Christopher M. Sullivan and Zachary P. O'Keeffe found that crime in the city dropped by about 3% to 6% during the 2014-2015 period where the NYPD slowed their proactive policing.

"For the two weeks when there was a very marked reduction in misdemeanor arrests, traffic citations, and stop and frisk encounters, crime continued to go down," Vitale said.

Outright calling for a work slowdown is illegal, but unions have gotten away with suggesting them

During the 2014 slowdown, police unions denied it had been officially sanctioned.

During last summer's slowdown, Patrick Lynch — the longtime president of the Police Benevolent Association — urged officers to "proceed with the utmost caution" in light of the firing of Pantaleo.

"We are urging all New York City police officers to proceed with the utmost caution in this new reality, in which they may be deemed 'reckless' just for doing their job," Lynch said at the time. "We will uphold our oath, but we cannot and will not do so by needlessly jeopardizing our careers or personal safety."

Joe Giacalone, a former NYPD sergeant and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said unions in New York know better than to call for a slowdown in explicit terms but some officers might "do things on their own."

"The unions have to be very careful because if you call for a work slowdown or a work stoppage you can be violating the law. In New York, the unions are not going to say that," Giacalone told Insider. "Without any union leadership, a cop who is just fed up is going to say 'you know what, I'm not writing summonses. I'm only making arrests if it's mandatory."

The killing of George Floyd —a Black man in Minneapolis — has prompted anti-police brutality and anti-racism protests around the world. Politicians, leaders, and demonstrators have been vocally critical about systemic police behavior and policy.

While usually, this is the kind of rhetoric that might result in a slowdown, Vitale told Insider he hadn't heard of one yet.

"I haven't seen anything, but we have seen a lot of angry police union officials stomping their feet about a lack of support," Vitale said.

The future of slowdowns, whether sanctioned or not, is unclear

A spokesman for the New York Police Benevolent Association declined a request from Insider to talk about police slowdowns as a tactic and whether it's something likely to continue in the future.

Vitale thinks that, at least for the time being, the use of even unofficial work stoppages as a protest tactic by police will cease.

"I think certainly in this moment, who knows what will happen in the future," he said. "I think this protest has been carried out with tear gas and pepper balls, not with work slowdowns."

"What's troubling is this idea that if police don't get their way, then they're just going to abandon us," he added. "And in a way they're making our point for us, which is, as it turns out, we don't need them to be safe most of the time."

Giacalone disagrees.

He believes that the nationwide protests will lead to officers starting to go into "self-preservation mode" that will likely to lead in an uptick in crime and loss in city revenue.

"Cops not writing summonses is usually very effective," he said. "You usually get someone to stand up because it affects the city finances greatly."

As for actual policing, officers will continue to show up when people call 911, but there could be a decrease in proactive policing in communities — not out of an official protest, per se, but because officers are fearful of ending up in a newsworthy situation involving allegations of brutality, he said.

Officers will respond to situations when called, but may "have blinders on" when patrolling the streets, possibly looking the other way when observing criminal activity they previously would have responded to, he said.

"In this atmosphere now, anyone who is out there proactively doing stuff, I think you need to really make sure all your Is are dotted and all your Ts are crossed," he added. "Like everything else, if you're doing good police work and you're following the rules of the law, all this stuff could be avoided."

Instead of a work slowdown, though, unions and departments should focus their efforts on rebuilding community relations, Giacalone said.

For years, the tense relationship between many communities of color and the police have prompted many Black Americans to avoid calling the authorities when crime or conflict is happening. A 2015 Gallup poll found that 57% of whites survey said they had confidence in the police, but only 42% of nonwhite respondents felt the same. In a 2018 piece for Pacific Standard, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones described a situation where someone fired off a gun nearby. While some might immediately alert the local authorities, her group realized that"calling the police posed considerable risks," she wrote.

"I think that police unions and police officers themselves need to be very careful about how they position themselves because, right now, they have zero goodwill. It's going to take a long time to build that back up," he said.

"What Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd set police-community relationships back 50 years, as far as my opinion. I don't know if we're ever going to recover from it because it's a horrible incident."

Expanded Coverage Module: black-lives-matter-module