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I explained to a police officer in my beer sharing circles during the George Floyd protests:
Damn near every kid in a high school cafeteria knows who the bad kids are and what tables they sit at. It's no different anywhere in the real world. Every cop at every precinct knows which cops are the bad ones.
Unlike a highschool cafeteria, you, as a police officer, have a civic, professional, and moral duty to do everything in your power to get those cops kicked the fuck out. And the idea that doing so might somehow harm your career? That's why "all cops are bastards." It's rotten from the top down. A few bad apples, in the case of police officers, spoils the whole bunch.
One of my friends was a cop when George Floyd was murdered. He said something like "I don't know what was in his heart so I can't say for certain that he was racist." I said well the area was 3% black and this happened to him while a crowd of people said stop, you're killing him all over suspicion of a nonviolent crime; what are the odds that this happens to a white person, then understand that white people are significantly more than 3% of the population there.
He's not a cop anymore.
My friend dated a cop. He seemed like a good guy on paper.
He was upset about the George Floyd incident and hated what that dept did. He supported the right to protest like with BLM, and was angry at the depts that were heavy handed. He was furious at the Uvalde department.
His mentality was, "those departments make us look bad. My department is one of the good ones."
Here's where it goes into ACAB.
He got extremely protective and jealous of my friend and had trackers on her car. He racially profiled and called it "street math". Every problem was because people are trash, bad cops weren't "real cops", and he was one of the "Real Cops" who was willing to take out the trash. He absolutely saw himself more like Jack Bauer and that sometimes you do bad shit to save the world.
After the breakup, she scrubbed her social media and went into hiding. And dude harassed me for info for two years.
So yeah, ACAB.
He's not a cop anymore.
Kudos to him. Shame he couldn't try and change things from the inside.
The only way you could actually do that is by a massive effort to infiltrate precincts and affect how they police by setting norms and getting rid of dissenters for decades across the country.
... You know, like the KKK did.
Genuine question. I'm not trying to make a point or anything, I more or less agree with this sentiment. What if a cop isn't "one of the bad ones" and does fight against the bad ones they see? There are medium/small town departments where that could work. Does the ACAB sentiment allow for this? Or is it so unfeasible that its not counted? What about the very few instances where this does happen? (Statistically speaking, it certainly has).
In most cases that I'm aware of, that officer has ended up leaving the police force. Sometimes they realize it's a futile effort and quit, sometimes they're basically forced off, and sometimes they end up dead under totally not suspicious circumstances. Non-bastard cops just don't usually stay cops.
The problem is that there's no real oversight AND the cops will fight to prevent oversight. They love the ability to sexually abuse children and get a slap on the wrist. They love the ability to just have more leeway with the law than anyone else. Because they are the law, and their buddies will cover for them.
Right, I know why ACAB is a thing, but this doesn't answer any specific part of my question.
If you're a "good cop" you aren't a good cop. Good people quit the force, because enforcers who only protect property are rather useless to most of us. Unless you have the will and guile to infiltrate precincts nation wide with trusted people to transform enforcers every where, you aren't changing them. Because thats what the KKK did to get us here.
How long do you think it takes for a new "good cop" to go through the meat grinder and quit or get fired?
This is not rhetorical, I genuinely want to know.
Answer with nuance: depends on the person and their mental capabilities to be around such utter corruption with a hope of changing it. Most probably quit when they realize the entire thing is just racism and capital enforcement in a trench coat.
Bandwagon answer: good cops don't join the force, they start community programs.
Then they're not cops for very long.
The last good cop was Chris Dorner.
(He sure as hell wasn't great, but everyone should know his story.)
The last good cop? I don't even know who that is, but it seems silly to label some random good cop as the last one without being able to list every current cop and whether they are good or not. He's may just be the last one to get famous.
It may be common that they're not cops for long but I know that, and that's why I mentioned smaller departments where it's feasible to not get booted for being good 100% of the time.
The whole point of that comment is that you should know Chris Dorner's story, and you skipped right over that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Christopher_Dorner_shootings_and_manhunt#Background
If that's the whole point then just say the point without couching it in an absurd hyperbole
Couldn't you say that about every profession?
Are all doctors bastards because some abuse their power to exploit their patients with unnecesary charges/procedures?
Are all teachers bastards because some sexually abuse their students?
Are all members of the military bastards because some commit war crimes?
I mean, you pick a profession and I can point to bad apples within it. If your conclusion is everyone is a bastard I don't find that to be very meaningful.
No.
Police have a monopoly on violence with qualified immunity.
Their case is unique.
Is their case unique in this context though? I guess your argument is that only a cop can bring down another cop, which is different than, say, a doctor?
But I don't understand how that refutes my point. The statement of the original "cafeteria room" post was that in every police workforce, everyone knows who the bad guys are, and silence=violence, and therefore ACAB. Well first off, i don't necessarily think that it's true that everyone knows- police officers do more work out on their own than most professions and I certainly couldn't tell you who all the bad apples are at my company where everyone works in the office all day.
But that's fine, we can make that assumption, but if we do it would surely apply to other professions as well. If everyone at the hospital knows who the bad apple pharmacists, doctors, nurses and technicians are, and people's lives are being ruined (and sometimes ended) by this corruption, doesn't that implicate everyone at the hospital? What is the moral difference between a cop not standing up to a corrupt coworker and a doctor not standing up to a corrupt coworker? If anything, police officers having a monopoly on violence makes it MORE understandable that a police officer might keep their head down- they have to worry about their physical safety and not just their career.
And if your argument is that, due to their nature of their job, police officers have an obligation to confront their coworkers that doesn't apply to other professions, that doesn't make sense to me. Morally, it's the exact same regardless of your job description.
It's the qualified immunity part that's tripping you up. Any of those medical professionals you named require higher education and licensing, and malpractice insurance for the highest levels. The licensing boards will revoke your ability to ever work in your profession again if you fuck up, and you will be personally liable in addition to the institution you work for. Cops kill people and get a paid vacation. Then you can't sue them because of qualified immunity. If for some reason the cop loses his job he just goes to the next city over and starts fresh.
So you're saying that qualified immunity makes it easier to get away with things. I 100% agree.
But there are still absolutely doctors and teachers (just sticking with my original examples but this applies to every profession) who get away with terrible things for years and years, often with a blind eye from their coworkers. Morally I just don't see any difference. The actions done by these doctors and teachers are just as destructive to society, and so are the consequences of their coworkers not coming forward.
And you can't blame police in general for qualified immunity. That's just a legal concept derived from the US constitution. Yeah, corrupt officers and corrupt departments will absolutely exploit them as much as they can but I don't see what it has to do with ACAB.
And doctors and teachers one exposed will never work in their choose profession again
Qualified Immunity is against the law.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-immunity-supreme-court.html
The 1982 SCOTUS made it up to protect cops
Interesting read. But even if the article is correct, all that means is that there was a clerical error over a hundred years ago. The Supreme Court ruled on the law as it has been documented ever since. They didn't make anything up.
I think you raise a very good point here.
It's fine if you don't understand how it refutes your point. It does. I'm not here to explain to you what qualified immunity is since that clearly went over your head.
You'll probably continue to respond in an effort to get the last word in. Just know I won't be bothering, cause I ain't here for ya.
Qualified immunity makes it harder to arrest cops, but what does that have to do with whether or not a police officer chooses to try? Qualified immunity is just a legal concept, it's not like police departments made it up to protect themselves, that's not how laws work. Anyways, as I said before the difficulty in getting cops arrested actually makes police officers who don't report their colleagues more understandable (the case might not go anywhere so don't even try).
Thats fine if you don't want to reply, I'm not really trying to argue with you individually I more just want to present my view along side yours for everyone who reads the thread.
Qualified Immunity is against the law.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/us/politics/qualified-immunity-supreme-court.html
Doctors and teachers don't have a culture of lying to protect each other from imposing state sanctioned violence.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_of_silence
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_perjury (police have the term "testilying")
Cops have a unique place in society that makes the consiquences of the lack of self-policing even worse.
The military is an interesting one and a pretty decent comparison. It's worth acknowledging that a decent number consider all of the military to be complicit in bad stuff. There is at least a bit more accountability but there are plenty of cases where people have suffered massively for trying to whistle blow. I'd say the military is better than police tho
There have been plenty of cases where shit got covered up in the military rather than The UCMJ being followed, and someone being prosecuted. That said, we have ROE. The absolute cowards in US Law "Enforcement" are not officers of any type, and they don't wait to confirm that they are being shot at before opening fire. If anyone in the military discharged their weapon because of a fucking acorn falling, we would be summarily discharged. Probably a general discharge under dishonorable conditions as long as no one was killed.
....yeah the blue wall is pretty effed I'm not here to defend it. Although I did read there are signs it might be starting to "crack", like the George Floyd trial.
I just... I get frustrated when people say things with zero nuance like ACAB. Even if you hate cops in general there are at least a few good ones. Plenty of officers give their lives to try to save innocent people, and although they aren't common there are absolutely officers who testify against each other and report each other.
Absolutely. I think for me it really comes down to where you serve. I come from a city in Germany where notoriously a few people died on accident just after being released from the police station (wink wink). I think in this case, all the cops who worked on this station are complicit in murder, they should be in prison and they shouldn't be cops. But that doesn't mean that a police officer who works in a different part of the country has anything to do with the police people in my city. I think this argument can lead to some really problematic conclusions very quickly.
Plenty of officers give their lives to try to save innocent people
All teachers aren't bastards because that's not a flaw in the teaching system and they're going to jail when they do shit like that.
The corporations behind hospitals and our medical system are entirely bastards. Doctors are sometimes bastards but they're not in charge of policing each other.
I can't speak to the military these days because I've been out for a while. But yeah, there was definitely a time when a whole bunch of shit went down and they were protecting wrongdoers instead of turning them over to the authorities.
However, cops have a duty to arrest fellow cops when they do illegal shit. Teachers can't arrest teachers. Doctors can't arrest other doctors.
Instead what has happened time and time again is that they shield fellow officers. Want to kill black folks, rape kids, beat your wife, and strong arm motorists into sucking your weiner? Be a cop. The whole department will hide your crimes. Civilians are the enemy. IA is the enemy. If you do get caught and it makes the news you get paid vacation. If it's too bad you go get the same job in the next town over once the press blows over. But don't be a good cop because you'll be stuck in the basement doing paperwork and given the most shit assignments they have.
ACAB, and there's something on your nose. Is that shoe polish or were you all the way up in their intestines? I conclude that since you enable that shit that you're a bastard.
Thanks for your analysis, king. Do you think perhaps any of the 800,000 police officers in the united states might have joined for humanitarian reasons, i.e. to protect their community and stop criminals? Maybe just a couple?
Also morally I maintain that their is no difference between a doctor or engineer not turning in a coworker and a police officer doing the same. Teachers and doctors can't arrest each other but they can absolutely get each other arrested. The rest is just semantics.