BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Tue Jun 16, 2020 6:38 pm
ACAB does sound more like you're talking about all cops in general though.
That ignores the point. If 1 bad cop kills a man by stepping on his neck, and 3 stand by and watch, all four are bad. If 1 bad cop shoots a man in the back, and a police union representing that cop gets him reinstated without dissent, every cop that sat idly by and allowed that to happen rather than demanding better from their union is complicit. If one good cop tries to report corruption and malfeasance and
the entire department organizes to punish and exclude that cop until they're driven out of the force, every cop still there is, professionally, a bastard.
And you dig further and further down and realize... this is the nature of policing. It's always been like this and is designed to be like this. All Cops Are Bastards because the entire system is designed to reward bastards and those who let bastards get on with their bastard business, and punish everyone who dares interfere with that system.
And really, find some retired cops. Get them talking about their day to day. Betcha you get an
awful lot of stories of how to lie to a judge to make a ticket stick, or pulling someone over to meet a quota, or a real ripper of a story about terrorizing homeless folk so the street cleaners could come through.
We could be sympathetic perhaps. Some of this shit is cops put in a no win scenario. If some semi-homeless person keeps going into McDonalds to harass the employees and they keep calling the police, because that's what they're supposed to do... what the fuck are cops supposed to do exactly? Arrest them? They're just loitering. Haul them off to the hospital? You can't force someone to be examined and go through a drug regimen.
That's one beauty of Defunding the Police as a first line of action: if we're shrinking a police force, the first thing we do is relieve them these duties they can't perform, and shuffle resources to groups who have specialized training and, perhaps, can.
