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Welcome to part four of the catch-up series. This is all about the police.
I’ve said a lot – a lot – that the American system of law enforcement is a trainwreck, and policing as we know it is beyond reform. A big part of that is how sincerely, how completely our police do not want to reform anything – police in cop forums openly mock reform attempts and training – and instead, close ranks almost without fail.
I insist that there are no good cops as long as the ‘good’ cops protect ‘bad’ cops – and they always do.
Things were bad before the Trump era. Since 2016 they’ve gone heavily MAGA, even in cities like bugaboo-to-all-rightists Seattle. In far too many cases, they’ve gone out-and-out fascist. The “warrior cop” mentality, encouraged by Republicans for years, was unbelievably corrosive, setting the stage for… well, where we are now.
The problem is that the problems are on so many levels, and they absolutely fight the very concept of fixing anything whatsoever. Their idea of “fixing” things is doing more of what they already do, with more money, more weapons, and more military vehicles. For a lot of communities, they aren’t “police” so much as they are “occupying paramilitary,” and they act accordingly.
At the political level we have things like the “Constitutional Sheriff” movement, a movement of a right-wing sheriffs deciding that – much like “Sovereign Citizens” – laws they don’t like don’t actually apply to them or need to be enforced. Sure, there’s always been prosecutor discretion, and police discretion, and that’s not inherently bad. But I hope I don’t have to explain that to anyone that this is not that. These guys work with groups like the Oath Keepers, who were involved in the January 6 insurrection. A lot of them are into the Great Replacement racist conspiracy theory. And that’s not even getting into the Space Laser freak guys.
Now, that’s very high-visibility and high-flashiness, right? Those are countryside, red-state matters, aren’t they?
No. Not really. It was Seattle’s PD taking trophies from their victims and flying TRUMP flags in their break room this year, after more than a decade of absolutely ineffective reform.
But yes, there many different levels of systematic corrosion. The political posturing level is simply one of many. Really, it’s the lower-visibility day-to-day systematic abuse that causes the most harm.
Sometimes it’s using illegal surveillance technologies in ways they promised not to by policy – even when it violates the law.
Sometimes it’s statewide practice, like shown in the “Kansas Two-Step” case, wherein Kansas State Police Tell Court It’s Too Much To Ask For Troopers To Respect The Constitution in interrogating people they stop. Sometimes it’s monetary – police departments have stolen more property via “asset forfeiture” than thieves regularly since 2015. Sometimes it’s very individual, like in this case, where a woman was forced to do her own detective work when an LAPD officer stole her debit card.
Sometimes it’s combinations of abuse; police lie constantly, including on the stand, including under oath, with impunity and without repercussion. Here’s a recent case of systematic purjury, rare in that it got caught and that something’s coming from it. Here’s another case, where they attacked a Black lawyer mostly known for defending them, probably because he was just another Black man. Here’s another one, where they killed somebody at a traffic stop, lied about everything that happened – and I do mean flat out lied – and then whups video showed they killed the guy in three seconds flat for no goddamn reason, most of al not for any of the reasons they lied about having.
Sometimes it’s petty. Sometimes they abuse and humiliate a handicapped veteran until he loses bladder control and pees himself, and then they laugh about that.
Sometimes they brutalise a community, using dogs to attack residents, bragging about violating rights, taking – again – trophies. The trophy-taking – and it is very much a thing – reminds me of serial killers, but maybe that’s just me.
Often – systematically – they racially profile, usually get away with it, occasionally lose another lawsuit, and then blow it off because they face no repercussions. After all – it’s the taxpayers who pay the bill. “Administrative leave” is otherwise known as a paid vacation, and if somehow they actually get fired and not reinstated, they just go to another bureau and get picked up again, because so-called good cops fold ranks to protect the bad cop.
As for out-and-out police crimes against the citizenry, well. Those are almost never charged, much less prosecuted. And with qualified immunity, it’s almost impossible to get a conviction. And they work very, very hard to make sure that doesn’t change, targeting prosecutors who don’t help, or worse yet, who might go against them when they themselves are the ones violating the law.
If you think you can reform that, then how do you reform this?!
I can bring in all the examples I want, but it all comes down to one fundamental question:
How do you “reform” people who do not want to be reformed, and mock and fight reform at every step?
The answer is very simple.
You fucking don’t. You just don’t. You raze it to the ground, assign as many functions to other institutions as you can – like people did with ambulance service decades ago, moving it from incompetent police resentful of the work to competent medical professionals who actually wanted to be there – and when you’ve done as much of that as you can you start. the fuck. over. with law enforcement.
This has been known as “defunding the police.” It hasn’t really happened. As slogans go, it was pretty shit, playing into the hands of the right.
But as policy?
There’s no reforming this. It’s time to raze the law enforcement system to the ground, and start over.
And defunding the police is a pretty damned good idea.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
