And there is.
But in the very vast majority of police departments, the CBA with the police union prohibits the use of this register for hiring decisions.
Have they explicitly state why? It seems strange to the uninitiated that more information about the performance of the same job would be considered irrelevant.
The issues I was pointing out are somewhat different. For example, there are unique problems if a police force tries to strike. In the private sector, there is the opportunity for other organizations to fill that void due to competition within the market. There is no such mechanism for most public services, public unions may have disproportionate power.
I'm always very wary of the arguments that somehow police are a special industry where unions are bad. I don't really see any logical reasoning put forth to support that. Just evidence on how things have gone. :(
Public services are a special industry (not unique to just police) so the dynamics of unions are different.
For one, many public services exist because they are critical to the functioning of society. You can tell this is fundamentally special case because the govt carves out special mechanisms to mitigate the risk (see the the current threat of a rail strike). Secondly, the government doesn't allow competition, so there is not the same solvency problem that a private union has to address. This second point exacerbates the first. A private police force can't just come in and out-compete the existing one to show that they can work better or more efficiently.
