padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
okay one more thing
I see a lot of like, very normal-ass looking young Latina women in police uniforms, and they seem pretty sane at least from the outside. There are very few jobs out there that pay as well, and have the kinds of benefits and job security, without needing a four-year degree. That's a big deal. There are also plenty of families (of color) in poor neighborhoods who see the police as forces for good, as keeping violence from boiling over. That's not me taking their side, or using them to argue either side of the ACAB question—I'm just saying that people who view the world this way are real, and are often just normal-ass working class Christian parents who care more about stray bullets hitting their kid than whether police are overly rough in a stop'n'frisk. I went to a big officer orientation training in Queens circa 2015—granted this was NYC, before Ferguson, but it was like 70% kids of color, lotta community college kids from Staten Island, kids were worried about passing drug tests.
this is absolutely true in Chicago and I expect many major American cities with majority POC, due to 1) absolutely the economic incentives 2) the active efforts by police departments over the last few decades to, out of necessity (and sometimes legal mandate) diversify and reflect the demographics of the cities they police. it is also true that there is an inner city POC pro-police element, tho I would say it's not see the police as a "force for good" so much as a lesser evil than violent crime. even when people do want a greater police presence specifically to combat violence, they're not in favor of the police as a militarized force of occupation, which is basically what they are on the west side, and other parts of town, here. who would be in favor of that, besides cops?

a sidenote to that: no outside the hood really gives any kind of a fuck about violence until it spills into downtown and wealthy neighborhoods. I've seen it here for years. people get shot on the south and west sides all the time, but it doesn't become this huge Chicago crime is out of control issue with fucking CEOs and whoever commenting on it until yuppies in Lincoln Park or whatever start getting mugged and carjacked.

but yes, the racial issues are complicated by the fact that many more police officers now are POC. that doesn't mean however that Black and Latinx and etc cops can't enforce systemically racist and/or unjust policies. Again, it's all grist for the institution.
 
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entertainment

Well-known member
That, however, is a nonsense take. Even if I don't think it's a useful slogan or way to frame the problems with policing, it comes from completely legitimate places of rage and disenfranchisement. If someone was saying "slit all cop throats" then I would intervene, but compared to the ability that cops have had, until very recently, to beat and kill people with virtual impunity, ACAB is extremely mild.

And I'm sorry but you can get all the way the fuck out of here with that curb stomping internet tough guy talk. Especially in a thread about police violence. Aren't you Danish anyway? or some nice continental European place? I'm sure it's easy to rattle off such nonsense when it's not an issue where you live.
If you don't mean that all cops are bastards then don't say that all cops are bastards. It's this assumption that you are entitled to say one thing and mean another that pisses me off. Take some responsibility for your words please.

Unless it's obviously ironic, which my curb stomping comment obviously was.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
Also I'm not talking about some victim of police violence cursing their very existence in a fit of despair. I'm talking about people online carefully delineating these positions, people desperate to fortify their bourgeoise respectability while feeding on the glamour of radical politics
 

entertainment

Well-known member
I guess you can say ACAB and be like what the hell. That's a normal part of trying things out, see how they fit, dabbling in different opinions and subcultures. But if you go online to carefully proclaim your right to say ACAB and not actually mean it then I think you should be smothered in your sleep (ironic!)
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
I think for people like us—white liberal dudes tapped into national news and progressive politics—this is true. But I don't think it's necessarily true of many officers who come from different backgrounds. I see a lot of like, very normal-ass looking young Latina women in police uniforms, and they seem pretty sane at least from the outside. There are very few jobs out there that pay as well, and have the kinds of benefits and job security, without needing a four-year degree. That's a big deal. There are also plenty of families (of color) in poor neighborhoods who see the police as forces for good, as keeping violence from boiling over. That's not me taking their side, or using them to argue either side of the ACAB question—I'm just saying that people who view the world this way are real, and are often just normal-ass working class Christian parents who care more about stray bullets hitting their kid than whether police are overly rough in a stop'n'frisk. I went to a big officer orientation training in Queens circa 2015—granted this was NYC, before Ferguson, but it was like 70% kids of color, lotta community college kids from Staten Island, kids were worried about passing drug tests. Maybe they're all sociopaths, I don't know, but they all at least seemed normal.

I am with you though on the general principle. And imagine it has gotten worse since 2015, and will probably continue getting worse. And that these sorts of self-selection feedback loops are really nasty and dangerous. The more corrupt and nasty the police get, the more they attract nasty corrupt people, etc. Very very similar to the sort of capture that has already happened in national politics. What kind of sociopath would run for office in the US of A in our year of the lord 2023?
I thought about this and considered that anyone so out of the loop on these sort of things is also someone that would make a 'bad cop,' albeit not a psychopath. Im probably overstating the size of the discourse though. My personal barometer for how normie something is is my parents and I rememeber them responding to news of a family friend joining the police academy with the same polite 'oh,wow, interesting' that they might give to news that the job was instead rodeo clown or reiki healer.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the worst form of american gluttony
The worst form of ignorant, arrogant European bullshit about America

in case it's somehow still unclear: the premise of your original post is flawed. it is an almost useless question.

it doesn't matter whether individual cops are bastards are not if the system in which they operates demand that they act like bastards.

that's the essence of defunding - take $ that goes into militarization, "proactive policing", overtime and court pay, etc, and use it to invest in social programs that have the potential to reduce crime by reducing the incentives to commit crime. there is a wealth of evidence that huge, sweeping "tough on crime" policies - stop and frisk, pretextual stops, mass arrests for minor violations, criminalization of the homeless, sex workers, mentally ill, etc - don't reduce violent crime. what they do accomplish, besides swelling our enormous prison population (we have nearly as many prisoners as China out of ~1/5 the overall population), is force police officers to act like bastards whether they want to or not.

and of course, more importantly, they ruin countless lives. this is what's important.

so the idea that, compared to this enormous and ongoing wrecking ball to American society, it matters one whit whether or not cops get called bastards by some people on the internet, is fucking absurd. that's my problem with your question. you cry crocodile tears for the poor cops getting called names but you don't have shit to say about the trail of devastation they leave in their wake. go educate yourself on Laquan McDonald, Anjanette Young, the Skullcap Crew, and Joe Burge's torture program, then come back and cry more crocodile tears if you want to.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
that's the essence of defunding - take $ that goes into militarization, "proactive policing", overtime and court pay, etc, and use it to invest in social programs that have the potential to reduce crime by reducing the incentives to commit crime. there is a wealth of evidence that huge, sweeping "tough on crime" policies - stop and frisk, pretextual stops, mass arrests for minor violations, criminalization of the homeless, sex workers, mentally ill, etc - don't reduce violent crime. what they do accomplish, besides swelling our enormous prison population (we have nearly as many prisoners as China out of ~1/5 the overall population), is force police officers to act like bastards whether they want to or not.
btw if you or anyone else wants to show actual sympathy for cops, you should support those kinds of policy changes

cops aren't social workers, mental health professionals, addiction treatment specialists, etc. it's unfair to ask them to perform those roles, which is what happens when resources that could go to those areas instead go to proactive policing and militarization. at the same time, cops aren't soldiers, and making them into a militarized occupation force waging a "war" against crime causes exactly the kinds of problems you'd think it would.

unsurprisingly, there is a historical feedback loop betweeen America's difficulties in foreign wars and domestic policing that goes back decades. one of our main problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan was the failure to train and produce a competent, non-sectarian police force, both on local and national levels. consequently you wind up treating everything as a military problem, whether it is or not. then you bring that approach home to domestic policing, on both a mental and physical (gotta use all that fancy equipment for something) level, so that crime is viewed as essentially a military rather than a social problem.

again, systemic issues that have little to do with whether individual cops are bastards or not.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
btw I can't recommend We Own This City strongly enough to anyone at all interested in American policing and police reform

even though David Simon can't, I think, ultimately break free of a reformist mindset - if only we could do reform better, then it would work (The Wire's version of this was if only we could police better, it would work, but it's much hard to sell that vision post-Freddie Gray etc) - it is about as comprehensive and even-handed portrayal of the issues around police reform as you'll find in popular culture (including characters who voice the kind of abolitionist views he probably disagrees with). specifically, it shows in minute detail how cops are turned into bastards by institutional pressures, and how even cops who don't become bastards have to knuckle under to those same pressures and policies. its genius is in saying something like - yes, these were bad apples (on, what a shock, an elite semi-autonomous plainclothes tactical unit), but let's go beyond that to examine how apples go bad and what that has to say about American policing, and further, like all Simon projects, the interaction of law enforcement institutions with other institutions in American society.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
The worst form of ignorant, arrogant European bullshit about America

in case it's somehow still unclear: the premise of your original post is flawed. it is an almost useless question.

it doesn't matter whether individual cops are bastards are not if the system in which they operates demand that they act like bastards.

that's the essence of defunding - take $ that goes into militarization, "proactive policing", overtime and court pay, etc, and use it to invest in social programs that have the potential to reduce crime by reducing the incentives to commit crime. there is a wealth of evidence that huge, sweeping "tough on crime" policies - stop and frisk, pretextual stops, mass arrests for minor violations, criminalization of the homeless, sex workers, mentally ill, etc - don't reduce violent crime. what they do accomplish, besides swelling our enormous prison population (we have nearly as many prisoners as China out of ~1/5 the overall population), is force police officers to act like bastards whether they want to or not.

and of course, more importantly, they ruin countless lives. this is what's important.

so the idea that, compared to this enormous and ongoing wrecking ball to American society, it matters one whit whether or not cops get called bastards by some people on the internet, is fucking absurd. that's my problem with your question. you cry crocodile tears for the poor cops getting called names but you don't have shit to say about the trail of devastation they leave in their wake. go educate yourself on Laquan McDonald, Anjanette Young, the Skullcap Crew, and Joe Burge's torture program, then come back and cry more crocodile tears if you want to.
I actually dislike cops. Did you not read my initial post?

You are allowed to have a high stakes political showdown but create your own thread please! This one is mine and it is for casually poking fun at each other's political posturings, or of course for working out the nuances of the police question in a forgiving and low-pressure environment.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I actually dislike cops. Did you not read my initial post?

You are allowed to have a high stakes political showdown but create your own thread please! This one is mine and it is for casually poking fun at each other's political posturings, or of course for working out the nuances of the police question in a forgiving and low-pressure environment.
So basically, you want to arse about a bit and strike a pose, and padraig has ruined this by having considered and informed opinions on a serious topic.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
So basically, you want to arse about a bit and strike a pose, and padraig has ruined this by having considered and informed opinions on a serious topic.
I don't think that's fair. Everything I've said here is sincere, apart from the very obvious jokes about violence, which, if you found them in bad taste, I do apologize.

These are my views as I've mentioned them:

I think it is fine to say ACAB if you mean it
I think it is fine to say ACAB even if you don't really mean it
I don't think it's fine to proclaim ones right to consciously and strategically use ACAB as a political slogan without having to defend the literal meaning of the words. That annoys me because smells of a sense of entitlement, of bending the rules of discourse to your advantage, of wanting to identify with radical political slogans without really having the guts to stand behind the words.

Padraig thinks this is a nonsense take. That's fair but I do find it meaningless to keep engaging with someone who tells me to fuck off, accuses me of caring more about bad words against police than victims of police violence, says I'm crying crocodile tears for the police (I still don't really understand how he got that). That's not the kind of tone I had intended for the thread so I thought it best if we could direct that stuff to another one.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I actually dislike cops. Did you not read my initial post?

You are allowed to have a high stakes political showdown but create your own thread please! This one is mine and it is for casually poking fun at each other's political posturings, or of course for working out the nuances of the police question in a forgiving and low-pressure environment.
@Mr. Tea basically already said it, but this a deadly - literally - serious issue. there is zero posturing involved. it is the exact opposite of forgiving and low-pressure.

insofar as it goes I agree that saying something like ACAB to accrue social capital without meaning it is morally objectionable. I also think that it is an issue of vanishingly small importance next to the reality of institutionalized police violence and misconduct.

also, bc you seem to still somehow not understand it: whether or not you or I or anyone else personally likes or dislikes cops should be irrelevant. what's important is what cops do and how that effects the people in the communities they police.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
also, less important, but tbc when you post a thread you don't own the thread. if I start a thread and people take it another direction, I don't demand people play by my rules or leave. if you write something in a space for public discourse, don't be surprised when discourse ensues.

could I be a little less prickly? probably yeah. but I have extremely limited patience for lighthearted banter and foolishness when it comes to the police. I'm not going to apologize or tone it down.

America has a history of recurring majoring uprisings directly tied to police violence against POC going back decades (so does England ofc if not for the same extent), the last of which nearly tore the country apart two years ago. If you want low-pressure, casual banter, pick another topic.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
@Mr. Tea basically already said it, but this a deadly - literally - serious issue. there is zero posturing involved. it is the exact opposite of forgiving and low-pressure.

insofar as it goes I agree that saying something like ACAB to accrue social capital without meaning it is morally objectionable. I also think that it is an issue of vanishingly small importance next to the reality of institutionalized police violence and misconduct.

also, bc you seem to still somehow not understand it: whether or not you or I or anyone else personally likes or dislikes cops should be irrelevant. what's important is what cops do and how that effects the people in the communities they police.
Ah come one. What is this? You want to go around the room and let everyone say how serious an issue police violence is? Everyone, literally everyone agrees. Of course I understand that whatever I'm on about is meaningless compared to people dying. Fucking ridiculous to just assume that I don't because I don't actively state so in some disclaimer or because I don't handle the subject with the mandatory solemnity.
 

droid

Well-known member
It may be worth considering that Padraig has had to deal with armed and extremely aggressive cops his entire life, and probably has friends or acquaintances who have been the victims of police violence. In Europe, the cops can easily ruin your life, but if youre relatively law abiding and non-political (and certainly if you're the right demographic) then theyre probably not going to beat you up or kill you, and for most people the risk of being murdered by a random cop as you drive down the street is extremely low.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
It may be worth considering that Padraig has had to deal with armed and extremely aggressive cops his entire life, and probably has friends or acquaintances who have been the victims of police violence. In Europe, the cops can easily ruin your life, but if youre relatively law abiding and non-political (and certainly if you're the right demographic) then theyre probably not going to beat you up or kill you, and for most people the risk of being murdered by a random cop as you drive down the street is extremely low.
Sure but I just don't like this behavior, this thing where if you air some meaningless pet grievance indirectly related to a serious topic, some finger wagger is going to appear in your face going 'you know, people are actually dying, but I guess you don't care about that', making nasty little accusations based on some hunch about what you're about. That's what I mean about forgiving or low-pressure: not actively assuming the worst about each other.
 
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