ACAB

[WashYourHands]

I think at this point you have to be deranged to want to be a cop. Even if you are the type that beleives the talk around cops to be sensationalized and you hold the most romantic beliefs about the position with the most noble desires you are still voluntarily stepping into a spot that is so radioactive in the culture I dont think any well adjusted person would choose to put themselves through that.

A lad I went to school with went on to join the filth, pretty much ostracised henceforth. Killer fact is about ten years later he was arrested, along with 2 other clowns, for picking up a drunk and disorderly type, arrested him before taking him to an industrial estate and half beating the cunt to death. Thrown out the force, pension gone, had to move away to work etc

It attracts a cunty mindset of control which dials up the cunt factor annually without fail here. The flip is always addressing them cordially as officer. That one wee alternative to sir shows courtesy without grovelling. Always ask if you’re under caution/arrest/investigation - if none of these are a factor you‘re legally free to move on

 

[WashYourHands]

Martial enforcers<first responders

 

[Mr. Tea]

That doesn't rule out the raid though, it just makes it more interesting.

Brings a whole new meaning to "drug squad."

 

[Clinamenic]

That doesn't rule out the raid though, it just makes it more interesting.

Simple really, Tea had to assume sufficiently deep cover as an agent of Control.

 

[Mr. Naga Pickle]

yes of course i say it all the time

 

[Clinamenic]

Sometimes I don't know what to make of you @Original Pee Pee Dynamite . My discrimination algorithm is scrambled, as it were.

 

[Leo]

 

[Leo]

 

[Mr. Naga Pickle]

Sometimes I don't know what to make of you @Original Pee Pee Dynamite . My discrimination algorithm is scrambled, as it were.

Im a Junglist 🌴

 

[john eden]

It's not something I would say...

They Hate Us, We Hate Them - Corruption & Violence in Hackney - Datacide

“They Hate Us, We Hate Them” - Resisting Police Corruption and Violence in Hackney in the 1980s and 1990s by John Eden in Datacide 14.

datacide-magazine.com

 

[woops]

if we

are at the themed songs stage of the thread, "the cop" by the knife is not on YouTube

 

[boxedjoy]

my karaoke song

 

[sus]

I think at this point you have to be deranged to want to be a cop. Even if you are the type that beleives the talk around cops to be sensationalized and you hold the most romantic beliefs about the position with the most noble desires you are still voluntarily stepping into a spot that is so radioactive in the culture I dont think any well adjusted person would choose to put themselves through that.

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?

 

[sus]

if there's a steelman for ACAB I think it goes vaguely like this:

People use the [Milgram] shock studies to show that humans are, deep down, meek little sheep who want to be told what to do... But in fact, Milgram’s studies show that people really really do not want to do evil. As they work their way up the shock machine, people get more and more distressed. They ask the experimenter to stop. They want to go check on the learner, or even switch places with him. They start emphasizing the right answers when they read the questions aloud so that the learner won’t get them wrong... These people are not psychopaths or mini-Eichmanns. They don’t want to hurt anybody. So why do they keep going? I think the answer is much more heartwarming: they really want to do a good job and not make anyone mad. These are neighborly folks who agreed to help with a scientific experiment. They’ve accepted a check, so they feel extra obligated to follow through. The experimenter has been polite and professional the whole time, and now he's telling them everything will be ruined if they stop. Every prosocial norm in these people’s heads is telling them the right thing to do is keep going, except, of course, the one that says “don’t kill anybody.” But the situation is confusing and the harm feels at least a little uncertain––why would someone want to shock someone to death for science? Why would Yale [the sponsoring institution] allow this? …People are stuck between their desire to help and their desire not to harm, and in this situation, the desire to help tends to win out."

Not to say all cops are these warm neighborly do-gooder types, just that even neighborly do-gooder types find themselves easily turned into instruments of institutional will, and that even cops who we'd consider good people outside of their institution have their sense of loyalty, cooperativeness, work ethic etc leveraged on behalf o institutional will

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I don't say ACAB. Not because I weep tears for the slander of cops who aren't bastards, but because it's simply not a very useful slogan or approach. For once I agree with gus - no matter what your intentions are, they inevitably become grist for the institution. That is the salient fact. The enormous problems of American policing go far beyond individual cops being bastards or not.

That doesn't mean individual cops shouldn't be held accountable when they conduct illegal searches and detainment, violate civil rights, beat and murder people, perjure themselves to cover up their misconduct (an extremely common police practice, btw), etc. They absolutely should.

What it means is that reactionary punishment of individual officers will not solve these problems. That has to happen proactively at a policy level. Really it has to happen at a cultural level, but policy, being essentially applied culture, is much easier to grapple with. It's still extremely difficult to grapple with, but the attempt to create changes at that cultural level have been tearing this country apart for over a decade - at least - so comparatively policy is easier.

Stop and frisk, the criminalization of youth of color under an "anti-gang" umbrella, etc in conjunction with things like mandatory minimums, have created a huge and profitable private prison industry. After Michael Brown was murdered, a DOJ investigation found that Ferguson MO had more outstanding warrants than residents. Think about that. Almost 80% of the town's residents had an outstanding warrant. The vast majority were for absolute bullshit, either traffic violations or the criminalization of virtually any behavior, including the amorphous "failure to obey". It was, in fact, a legally sanctioned scam to extract money from poor people. And Ferguson was only unusual in being more high-profile, and possibly more extreme, than many American police departments that engage in exactly the same behavior.

Obviously something like that goes beyond any individual cop being or not being a bastard. It certainly gives free rein to the bastards to indulge their worst tendencies, but even nominally "good" cops wind up enforcing the same fucked-up policies.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

The only thing I can't excuse is this bit where people go "You have to understand that when we say ACAB we don't actually mean that every cop is a bad person..." Those are the people we need to curb stomp.

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.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I'm sure it's easy to rattle off such nonsense when it's not an issue where you live.

let me be clear: not, or hardly ever, an issue for me, because I'm white and not a drug addict (the only white people on the west side of Chicago likely to get hassled by cops). but I live about a mile and a half from where the CPD had it's secret, illegal detention facility in Homan Square. I live in the city where Laquan McDonald was murdered and the CPD tried to cover it up - which, btw, led to a DOJ report that found the CPD had a culture of excessive violence, especially against people of color. I live in a city where an "elite" tactical unit much like the one in Memphis that murdered was disbanded because of, surprise, rampant corruption and brutality.

these are not abstract issues here

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

a DOJ report that found the CPD had a culture of excessive violence, especially against people of color

not to continue quoting myself, but because it's illustrative - this report led to a consent decree, which is a list of specific actions and deadlines for police reform, overseen by an independent monitor assigned by a federal judge. i.e. the federal government, in the form of the DOJ, steps in when a police department is unable to police itself. they are pretty common in large American cities. Baltimore got one after Freddie Gray. other cities that have or have had them - Los Angeles, Albuquerque, New Orleans, Oakland, etc.

in other words, it is a regular occurrence for large American police departments to be so out of control that the federal government has to launch investigations and force them to clean up their acts. this is again, reactionary, just at a higher level, "punishing" individual departments instead of individual officers, but it still gives an idea of the scope of the problems.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Plenty of horrible, corrupt cops, systemic in some cases well beyond the "bad apple" theory. At the same time, you never read an article or see a tweet about a cop who just does their normal job in a satisfactory manner. Because why would you, it's not news. All we see are bad stories, since that's what sells/gets clicks.

gods love you leo, and your heart is in the right place, but this just completely misses the point

not because it's untrue, but for the reason gus and I said, i.e. it's not that cops are systemically bad, it's that the system in which cops operate is bad. their "normal job in a satisfactory manner" is, frequently, enforcing a bunch of terrible policies. like, it's definitely less bad if they can do that without falsely arresting or beating or killing someone, but it's not good. just less bad.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

one more personal anecdote and that'll be it from me

many years I ago I used to train at this dojo in Oakland. it was the dojo that was notorious for being welcoming to women, trans people, etc as well as punks, which especially 20 years ago was pretty unusual because most jiujitsu spots were rife with cops. one guy I trained with was a British Sikh who'd emigrated. real nice guy, a bus driver with two kids (he'd married a Mexican-American woman, classic Bay Area combo). we got to be friendly and he me invited to go with him to his gurdwara one weekend. I'm totally irreligious but always up for an interesting experience, so I said sure. on the way there, he confessed to me that he'd applied and been accepted to the police academy. he asked me not tell anyone at the dojo, because he was aware of how anti-cop the vibe was there and he thought people would ostracize him.

then he explained to me why he wanted to become a cop. he told me that as a kid, growing up in England, his parents had had a corner store - a British stereotype, I'm aware - and that they'd had problems with racist NF types in the whatever, late 70s-early 80s, and that as a kid (he was probably about 10-12 years older than me) he'd seen cops come and take his parents reports after the vandalism or intimidation or idk and help them with it in some way. it made him want to become a cop someday. the purest possible motive. he said he was nervous to tell me because I thought I'd judge him, so this was like his justification.

I remember very clearly being like look, your heart is in the right place, but you realize that's not what you're going to be doing as a police officer, right? in fact, you're going to spend the large majority of your time enforcing policies built on systemic racism, not combating racism. if you want to combat racism, you'd be vastly better off doing some kind of community organizing (and nowadays I might say, and/or run for local office or otherwise get to some place where you can actually influence policy). you'll have a mandate to constantly arrest people for bullshit. you'll probably get into situations where you have to crack heads.

idk what happened to him, we lost touch after I moved away, but if he did become an Oakland police officer then he was in a department that, like Chicago, eventually got a DOJ consent decree to curb things like violence and systemtically racist pretextual traffic stops. And he likely wound up cracking heads while on riot duty after a BART cop killed Oscar Grant. you know what he almost certainly didn't do? help convenience store owners combat racist skinheads.

so there you go. the farthest thing from a bastard, best of possible motives, worthless before a fucked-up institution.