>It’s a Constitutional (and undoubtedly contractual) requirement. Police officers are employed pursuant to a contract. A contractual benefit is considered a property interest that cannot be taken away without “due process.” Hence police officers remain employed (and getting paid) until an investigation establishes they actually did something wrong. Private employers don’t need to provide due process so this doesn’t apply.
probably deleted because it's wrong; deleted before i could submit my response:
>It’s a Constitutional (and undoubtedly contractual) requirement.
you're wrong
> “Property interests, of course, are not created by the Constitution. Rather, they are created and their dimensions are defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law—rules or understandings that secure certain benefits and that support claims of entitlement to those benefits.”
so it's a matter of “legitimate entitlements”. in fact "legislature may elect not to confer a property interest in federal employment" and moreover in Bishop v. Wood SC accepted a lower court's opinion that police are employed at will even if discharge is conditional on due process.
all this and more at https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/...
The problem is that said investigations always seem to drag their feet, never going further than the paid leave, and never seem to actually get to the things that are meant to be a punishment (firing, arrest, etc).