How can thousands, millions of people doing a job be reduced to such a binary statement
The reason why most people (including myself) say ACAB is because of the system of policing, not the merits of any given police officer. Systems are inflexible and adverse to change. Individual good cops can exist, but once again, the system itself is the problem. A good cop can never fix the system, nor could a hundred, or a thousand. A million could, at best, give the illusion of a good system. People often say a rotten apple spoils the bunch, and I think that looking at policing from the perspective of individual rotten cops, or rotten cops “spoiling the bunch” is problematic when the system itself is rotten. And for participating in the system, yes, allcops are bastards.
Okay I agree with the idea of a rotten system as think that generally many legal or government institutions are rotten and self serving for the rich.
But the flaw in the argument from my perspective is that if all the decent people don’t go into the police, the ones with integrity, a moral compass who genuinely try to help people and do the right thing, then that leaves the bad apples.
So for going into a system and hoping to change it for the better, help/protect their community from criminals and the bad apples and make a real difference in lives, by that logic those people striving for better are still bastards and that just doesn’t feel right to me.
if all the decent people don’t go into the police, the ones with integrity… that leaves the bad apples
and
[good cops that] help/protect their people from … bad apples
I think this is flawed. The policing system is built in such a way that it protects the bad apples at all costs. From police unions making it difficult to get rid of the bad cops, to the laws, legal precedent, and cultural norms which make it impossible to prosecute them. In the US, police are allowed to lie to people, but they are often trusted in court, regardless if they regularly lie. The police often form a Blue wall of silence in order to protect other cops when literally perjuring themselves in the process. Qualified immunity makes it impossible for people to seek damages from individual cops when they violate their rights. While good cops might break the blue wall of silence (and they might get punished for it) and they don’t violate other’s rights and therefore are not protected in court by qualified immunity, the participation of these good cops doesnothingto address the system in the first place.
You and I both agree that there are many legal or governmental institutions that are rotten, but police fundamentally protect them and enforce their will. It is police who break strikes. It is the police that arrest protestors and activists. It is the police that hold the power to call legal protests illegal by declaring them riots. Fundamentally, the police protect the system that lets them be corrupt, and make it difficult to change it outside the impossible task of making change within electoral systems.
… protect their community from criminals …
Police are often an ineffective force at catching criminals. One of the best examples of this is sexual assault and rape. 70% of survivors do not involve the police. All the survivors I know did not call the police. They have good reason not to, 24% of them are arrested after doing so! If a person belongs to a group that is often oppressed by the police, such as gay and trans people, or a group that is criminalized, such as sex workers, there is nowhere for these people to turn in order to get justice.
In the event these people do call the police, odds are there will be no arrests. Only 5% of cases will result in arrest. Fewer will result in convictions and incarceration. (WATR Zine (this is a download link))
On a more ironic note, Policing increases crime. After NYC cops went on strike and reduced proactive policing, major crime reports fell.
So for [cops] going into a system and hoping to change it for the better … and make a real difference in lives …
While I wholeheartedly support trying to make a change for the better, and protecting and building community, I think police are a terrible way to do so. I think working outside the system is a much better way to materially help people’s lives. Organizations like Food Not Bombs helps people with food insecurity eat. Instead of joining the police which might make you destroy homeless encampments and make them worse off, you could instead volunteer at soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Joining an antifascist organization can help protect communities from fascists, but joining the police might make you side with the fascists and protect people with demonstrably harmful rhetoric, or worse, oppressive and murderous, fascist, intent
by that logic [cops] striving for better are still bastards and that just doesn’t feel right to me.
I still think it is fair to call them bastards. While it sucks to call someone with good intentions a bastard, ACAB points out that police as a whole is a flawed institution, and participating in it does not change that, it reinforces the legitimacy of it, and brings erroneous hope to people that it can be fixed from within, when in reality it needs drastic change if not total abolition.
Again no hate here just a genuine conversation
I genuinely appreciate this, ngl. I live in a very conservative area and when speaking about this, I’m used to discussion quickly devolving into meaningless argument
Even though I agree with all of this, it seems like this speaks more to an american perspective than to any other given country, and all your citations are from an american perspective as well. Though I think you could maybe make an argument on how the police are conventionally leveraged to protect private property, and private property is bad, and how if you were to take away the “protecting private property” element of their job description, you’d basically be abolishing the police. You could make that argument, along more universal lines, but that’s kind of contingent on people agreeing that both private property is bad, and that police are exclusively the protectors of private property, and nothing else.
In any case, I wouldn’t really be willing to make so certain of a statement on the police departments of other countries. I’ve never really heard anyone say anything bad about, say, finnish police, for example. British cops, they wear funny hats, they go “oy”, and shit, I’ve not really heard anything good about them, but finnish cops? Never heard bad about them. I also think a lot of what makes the police in america bastards, is because the prison system here is so fucked up and so punitive, and so particularly bad, compared to a lot of other countries.
I also kind of like, as an aside point. What do we do about park rangers? They’re technically cops, but you wouldn’t really hear anyone thinking that we shouldn’t have them, or that they should be actively abolished. I say this to mean, you know, as with the first paragraph, what do we really mean by “police”? You’ve given a pretty good description of the fact that the police suck, but not really why, or how they could be fixed.
The counter is that the system can’t be changed due to its inherent flaws and foundations in racism and elitism. The system needs to be replaced wholesale, which as big of a proposal as that is is more realistic than changing the existing system.
I’m sorry, foundations in racism? Elitism I can see, sure. Like, doing the bidding of the upper class and stuff. And a few higher ups in the police force are really arrogant. But racism? I’ve genuinely never seen or heard of any cops being racist where I live. If anything, lots of cops here are kids of immigrants.
The actual system isn’t the problem, it almost never is. If anything what’s missing in some countries are checks and balances to keep people reigned in while they’re in positions of power.
You’re missing the forest for the trees here. And, it’s worth specifying that I’m talking the US here, I should have been clear about that before.
I’m not talking about cops, I’m talking about the system itself. Every institution in America has deep roots in racist ideology. Every single one. The constitution was written in a way that allowed for slavery. Police forces established and enforced red lining, something that is having knock on effects even today. If the policing system weren’t inherently racist, we wouldn’t have the disproportionate use of deadly force against BIPOC folks. Elitism itself in America was first for the wealthy that owned slaves, and much of our policing culture still has echoes of the force used to keep slaves in line.
There are plenty of cops that are good people, I’ve known some. But they’re still bastards because they uphold and perpetuate the system that currently exists. I always think of the line in Wreck it Ralph when thinking about this, ‘just because you’re a bad guy doesn’t mean you’re a bad guy. That’s the ‘good’ cops. They might be good people but they’re still the bad guys.
I’m not gonna pick a side here as I don’t wanna fan the flames, but I will say that I have a good deal of bones to pick with police oversight systems (or lack thereof).
However, this got me thinking: would you say the same thing about restaurant servers? By becoming a server in the U.S., are you not perpetuating a tipping paradigm that has systematically denied the working class billions of dollars of wages that un-tipped employees are entitled to? It’s fairly clear that a “good server” cannot fix the system by participating in it, and given that a server makes the same amount of money as a cop—if not more—it isn’t really fair to say that one group “needs” the job while the other does not.
No, I don’t think that participation in tipping culture is a good comparison to participating in the policing system.
The only accurate comparisons are: The system is harmful, a good server cannot fix it by participating in it, and servers materially benefit from it.
First, as shitty as it is to not participate in as a customer, tipping culture is, for the most part, optional. When a server indirectly asks me to tip as a customer, I could easily hit the custom tip button and enter 0.00$. That would be shitty on my part as I would be reducing the income of waitstaff who rely on tips. If I tip, I now have a few dollars less, and the waitstaff have a more livable wage. If a police officer asks me to get on the ground with my hands on the back of my head, I don’t have much of a choice. If I do, the police officer will likely arrest me, and this compliance is only coming at the threat of what happens if I don’t. If I refuse, then the police officer could shoot me (if he deems me a sufficient threat), taze me, pepper spray me, or otherwise physically force me to the ground and possibly injure me. Further, I could get in significant legal trouble for not following the orders, most often in the form of resisting arrest, or possibly getting charged with assaulting a police officer if I act in self defense, regardless if I act within the law. This problem here lies in the fact that there is hierarchic authority that a police officer has which waitstaff lack.
Second, there is something that servers can do to make the system better outside of participating in the system laid out by their boss. While not easy, and with some risks attached, waitstaff can unionize and demand better pay, such that no tips are needed. Obviously, it isn’t super likely that the union would remove tips because waitstaff like their tips, but this act will fix one part of the system, being the part that they are not paid living wages before tips. While unlikely, widespread unionization could cause people to want to tip less knowing that waitstaff are able to subsist on wages alone and therefore impact tipping culture.
Cops don’t have this ability. I’d argue that police unions are not the same as a typical labor union. Like a normal union, they provide the workers protection from being fired, and have a positive impact on wages. Unlike a police union, police officers are called to break up the strikes of labor unions. If the police union went on strike, the only theoretical way for their employer, the state, to break it up would be using another militaristic arm of the state, be it the state reserve militia, if it exists in that state, or the military in other cases. Unlike calling the police, there is significant political capital being expended when doing this.
Another point to consider with that is which cops are fired, what leads to that happening, the impact of it, and how they are protected. Often, it’s “bad cops” rather than good cops, though both is possible. The union often steps in to protect even the worst cops from being fired. The impact of a bad cop is significantly more harmful than a bad server. A bad cop is violent, often kills or maims people, and terrorizes communities. A bad server might spit in my food, let it get cold/warm, or not deliver it at all. Short of physically hitting me (which a union will not protect them for), the most harmful thing they could do is steal my credit card details. Bad cops are fully and legally able to do much worse through civil asset forfeiture.
Lastly, and most importantly, the context of the system is vastly different. I’d argue the most harmful system that is held up by a server working a job isn’t tipping culture, but wage labor (and capitalism) itself. Just like police, anyone participating in this system cannot fix it by participating in it. Unlike police, those participating in wage labor lack the power to directly reinforce it through violent action because they lack the state’s monopoly on violence that the police lovingly wield. Any harm done by a person reinforcing this system can be offset by various acts, such as creating and participating in labor unions, creating co-ops, protesting and agitating for socialism, etc.
Police, on the other hand, not only indirectly reinforce this system by being payed wages, but they also directly reinforce this system by making it difficult to combat wage labor by breaking up strikes, protecting private property, terrorizing and killing protesters, killing organizers, etc.
Worse yet, police also directly support the hierarchic structure of the state, an unjust hierarchy, and the unjust hierarchies of white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism and cisheteronormativity. Police have always been the arm of the state that has had their literal boot on the neck of black people, suffocating their communities. When the police are not the ones to harm these communities, they often don’t do that much to prevent it from happening, or prevent it from happening in the future. Let’s not forget that about 50% of those killed by cops have some sort of disability, or their historic violence against LGBTQ people, and how LGBTQ rights were only taken by clashing with the cops at Stonewall and demanding rights. While police aren’t the sole people upholding these hierarchies, they are one of the most arms of the state doing it.
I think it’s disingenuous to have a slogan that targets individuals then claim you’re just commenting on the system when questioned.
If it’s about the system say the system sucks.
Think about it this way. As a cop, your job isn’t to help the community or to keep people safe or any of that happy wholesome crap. Your job is to enforce the law. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if the law is unfair or unethical, it’s your job to enforce it. Sure, maybe some people become cops without fully understanding this, but on some level, they must know.
The laws are made by politicians, and I’m certain that no matter your political beliefs, you can agree that most of them are crooked. Ergo, everyone who signs up to enforce their laws is a bastard. If somebody truly wishes to serve the community and save people, they become firefighters instead. It’s almost the same skillset and if you’re willing to become a cop, you shouldn’t be afraid of the danger either.
By that logic, all people in armed forces are bastards. Given that a lot of poor people end up in the forces because it’s their only option, I’m not prepared to say all soldiers are bastards. Similar logic applies to Police officers. Also I’m a New Zealander and our Police force is nowhere as corrupt as in the US
The main thing is it is about the participation in the system that makes all cops bastards. In my opinion, the good thing about this slogan is it starts discussions and debates about the system itself and how even “good cops” contribute to it when cops do something bad.
The reason why most people (including myself) say ACAB is because of the system of policing, not the merits of any given police officer. Systems are inflexible and adverse to change. Individual good cops can exist, but once again, the system itself is the problem. A good cop can never fix the system, nor could a hundred, or a thousand. A million could, at best, give the illusion of a good system. People often say a rotten apple spoils the bunch, and I think that looking at policing from the perspective of individual rotten cops, or rotten cops “spoiling the bunch” is problematic when the system itself is rotten. And for participating in the system, yes, all cops are bastards.
Okay I agree with the idea of a rotten system as think that generally many legal or government institutions are rotten and self serving for the rich.
But the flaw in the argument from my perspective is that if all the decent people don’t go into the police, the ones with integrity, a moral compass who genuinely try to help people and do the right thing, then that leaves the bad apples.
So for going into a system and hoping to change it for the better, help/protect their community from criminals and the bad apples and make a real difference in lives, by that logic those people striving for better are still bastards and that just doesn’t feel right to me.
Again no hate here just a genuine conversation
Good cops get punished for being good cops.
Yes, in the US. The commenter above was talking about more than just one country.
Here an example in the UK.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Here an example in the UK.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Here’s an example from France.
Here’s an example from Germany
and
I think this is flawed. The policing system is built in such a way that it protects the bad apples at all costs. From police unions making it difficult to get rid of the bad cops, to the laws, legal precedent, and cultural norms which make it impossible to prosecute them. In the US, police are allowed to lie to people, but they are often trusted in court, regardless if they regularly lie. The police often form a Blue wall of silence in order to protect other cops when literally perjuring themselves in the process. Qualified immunity makes it impossible for people to seek damages from individual cops when they violate their rights. While good cops might break the blue wall of silence (and they might get punished for it) and they don’t violate other’s rights and therefore are not protected in court by qualified immunity, the participation of these good cops does nothing to address the system in the first place.
You and I both agree that there are many legal or governmental institutions that are rotten, but police fundamentally protect them and enforce their will. It is police who break strikes. It is the police that arrest protestors and activists. It is the police that hold the power to call legal protests illegal by declaring them riots. Fundamentally, the police protect the system that lets them be corrupt, and make it difficult to change it outside the impossible task of making change within electoral systems.
Police are often an ineffective force at catching criminals. One of the best examples of this is sexual assault and rape. 70% of survivors do not involve the police. All the survivors I know did not call the police. They have good reason not to, 24% of them are arrested after doing so! If a person belongs to a group that is often oppressed by the police, such as gay and trans people, or a group that is criminalized, such as sex workers, there is nowhere for these people to turn in order to get justice.
In the event these people do call the police, odds are there will be no arrests. Only 5% of cases will result in arrest. Fewer will result in convictions and incarceration. (WATR Zine (this is a download link))
On a more ironic note, Policing increases crime. After NYC cops went on strike and reduced proactive policing, major crime reports fell.
While I wholeheartedly support trying to make a change for the better, and protecting and building community, I think police are a terrible way to do so. I think working outside the system is a much better way to materially help people’s lives. Organizations like Food Not Bombs helps people with food insecurity eat. Instead of joining the police which might make you destroy homeless encampments and make them worse off, you could instead volunteer at soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Joining an antifascist organization can help protect communities from fascists, but joining the police might make you side with the fascists and protect people with demonstrably harmful rhetoric, or worse, oppressive and murderous, fascist, intent
I still think it is fair to call them bastards. While it sucks to call someone with good intentions a bastard, ACAB points out that police as a whole is a flawed institution, and participating in it does not change that, it reinforces the legitimacy of it, and brings erroneous hope to people that it can be fixed from within, when in reality it needs drastic change if not total abolition.
I genuinely appreciate this, ngl. I live in a very conservative area and when speaking about this, I’m used to discussion quickly devolving into meaningless argument
Even though I agree with all of this, it seems like this speaks more to an american perspective than to any other given country, and all your citations are from an american perspective as well. Though I think you could maybe make an argument on how the police are conventionally leveraged to protect private property, and private property is bad, and how if you were to take away the “protecting private property” element of their job description, you’d basically be abolishing the police. You could make that argument, along more universal lines, but that’s kind of contingent on people agreeing that both private property is bad, and that police are exclusively the protectors of private property, and nothing else.
In any case, I wouldn’t really be willing to make so certain of a statement on the police departments of other countries. I’ve never really heard anyone say anything bad about, say, finnish police, for example. British cops, they wear funny hats, they go “oy”, and shit, I’ve not really heard anything good about them, but finnish cops? Never heard bad about them. I also think a lot of what makes the police in america bastards, is because the prison system here is so fucked up and so punitive, and so particularly bad, compared to a lot of other countries.
I also kind of like, as an aside point. What do we do about park rangers? They’re technically cops, but you wouldn’t really hear anyone thinking that we shouldn’t have them, or that they should be actively abolished. I say this to mean, you know, as with the first paragraph, what do we really mean by “police”? You’ve given a pretty good description of the fact that the police suck, but not really why, or how they could be fixed.
The counter is that the system can’t be changed due to its inherent flaws and foundations in racism and elitism. The system needs to be replaced wholesale, which as big of a proposal as that is is more realistic than changing the existing system.
I’m sorry, foundations in racism? Elitism I can see, sure. Like, doing the bidding of the upper class and stuff. And a few higher ups in the police force are really arrogant. But racism? I’ve genuinely never seen or heard of any cops being racist where I live. If anything, lots of cops here are kids of immigrants.
The actual system isn’t the problem, it almost never is. If anything what’s missing in some countries are checks and balances to keep people reigned in while they’re in positions of power.
You’re missing the forest for the trees here. And, it’s worth specifying that I’m talking the US here, I should have been clear about that before.
I’m not talking about cops, I’m talking about the system itself. Every institution in America has deep roots in racist ideology. Every single one. The constitution was written in a way that allowed for slavery. Police forces established and enforced red lining, something that is having knock on effects even today. If the policing system weren’t inherently racist, we wouldn’t have the disproportionate use of deadly force against BIPOC folks. Elitism itself in America was first for the wealthy that owned slaves, and much of our policing culture still has echoes of the force used to keep slaves in line.
There are plenty of cops that are good people, I’ve known some. But they’re still bastards because they uphold and perpetuate the system that currently exists. I always think of the line in Wreck it Ralph when thinking about this, ‘just because you’re a bad guy doesn’t mean you’re a bad guy. That’s the ‘good’ cops. They might be good people but they’re still the bad guys.
I’m not gonna pick a side here as I don’t wanna fan the flames, but I will say that I have a good deal of bones to pick with police oversight systems (or lack thereof).
However, this got me thinking: would you say the same thing about restaurant servers? By becoming a server in the U.S., are you not perpetuating a tipping paradigm that has systematically denied the working class billions of dollars of wages that un-tipped employees are entitled to? It’s fairly clear that a “good server” cannot fix the system by participating in it, and given that a server makes the same amount of money as a cop—if not more—it isn’t really fair to say that one group “needs” the job while the other does not.
It’s a curious predicament.
No, I don’t think that participation in tipping culture is a good comparison to participating in the policing system.
The only accurate comparisons are: The system is harmful, a good server cannot fix it by participating in it, and servers materially benefit from it.
First, as shitty as it is to not participate in as a customer, tipping culture is, for the most part, optional. When a server indirectly asks me to tip as a customer, I could easily hit the custom tip button and enter 0.00$. That would be shitty on my part as I would be reducing the income of waitstaff who rely on tips. If I tip, I now have a few dollars less, and the waitstaff have a more livable wage. If a police officer asks me to get on the ground with my hands on the back of my head, I don’t have much of a choice. If I do, the police officer will likely arrest me, and this compliance is only coming at the threat of what happens if I don’t. If I refuse, then the police officer could shoot me (if he deems me a sufficient threat), taze me, pepper spray me, or otherwise physically force me to the ground and possibly injure me. Further, I could get in significant legal trouble for not following the orders, most often in the form of resisting arrest, or possibly getting charged with assaulting a police officer if I act in self defense, regardless if I act within the law. This problem here lies in the fact that there is hierarchic authority that a police officer has which waitstaff lack.
Second, there is something that servers can do to make the system better outside of participating in the system laid out by their boss. While not easy, and with some risks attached, waitstaff can unionize and demand better pay, such that no tips are needed. Obviously, it isn’t super likely that the union would remove tips because waitstaff like their tips, but this act will fix one part of the system, being the part that they are not paid living wages before tips. While unlikely, widespread unionization could cause people to want to tip less knowing that waitstaff are able to subsist on wages alone and therefore impact tipping culture.
Cops don’t have this ability. I’d argue that police unions are not the same as a typical labor union. Like a normal union, they provide the workers protection from being fired, and have a positive impact on wages. Unlike a police union, police officers are called to break up the strikes of labor unions. If the police union went on strike, the only theoretical way for their employer, the state, to break it up would be using another militaristic arm of the state, be it the state reserve militia, if it exists in that state, or the military in other cases. Unlike calling the police, there is significant political capital being expended when doing this.
Another point to consider with that is which cops are fired, what leads to that happening, the impact of it, and how they are protected. Often, it’s “bad cops” rather than good cops, though both is possible. The union often steps in to protect even the worst cops from being fired. The impact of a bad cop is significantly more harmful than a bad server. A bad cop is violent, often kills or maims people, and terrorizes communities. A bad server might spit in my food, let it get cold/warm, or not deliver it at all. Short of physically hitting me (which a union will not protect them for), the most harmful thing they could do is steal my credit card details. Bad cops are fully and legally able to do much worse through civil asset forfeiture.
Lastly, and most importantly, the context of the system is vastly different. I’d argue the most harmful system that is held up by a server working a job isn’t tipping culture, but wage labor (and capitalism) itself. Just like police, anyone participating in this system cannot fix it by participating in it. Unlike police, those participating in wage labor lack the power to directly reinforce it through violent action because they lack the state’s monopoly on violence that the police lovingly wield. Any harm done by a person reinforcing this system can be offset by various acts, such as creating and participating in labor unions, creating co-ops, protesting and agitating for socialism, etc.
Police, on the other hand, not only indirectly reinforce this system by being payed wages, but they also directly reinforce this system by making it difficult to combat wage labor by breaking up strikes, protecting private property, terrorizing and killing protesters, killing organizers, etc.
Worse yet, police also directly support the hierarchic structure of the state, an unjust hierarchy, and the unjust hierarchies of white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism and cisheteronormativity. Police have always been the arm of the state that has had their literal boot on the neck of black people, suffocating their communities. When the police are not the ones to harm these communities, they often don’t do that much to prevent it from happening, or prevent it from happening in the future. Let’s not forget that about 50% of those killed by cops have some sort of disability, or their historic violence against LGBTQ people, and how LGBTQ rights were only taken by clashing with the cops at Stonewall and demanding rights. While police aren’t the sole people upholding these hierarchies, they are one of the most arms of the state doing it.
I think it’s disingenuous to have a slogan that targets individuals then claim you’re just commenting on the system when questioned. If it’s about the system say the system sucks.
Think about it this way. As a cop, your job isn’t to help the community or to keep people safe or any of that happy wholesome crap. Your job is to enforce the law. That’s it. It doesn’t matter if the law is unfair or unethical, it’s your job to enforce it. Sure, maybe some people become cops without fully understanding this, but on some level, they must know.
The laws are made by politicians, and I’m certain that no matter your political beliefs, you can agree that most of them are crooked. Ergo, everyone who signs up to enforce their laws is a bastard. If somebody truly wishes to serve the community and save people, they become firefighters instead. It’s almost the same skillset and if you’re willing to become a cop, you shouldn’t be afraid of the danger either.
By that logic, all people in armed forces are bastards. Given that a lot of poor people end up in the forces because it’s their only option, I’m not prepared to say all soldiers are bastards. Similar logic applies to Police officers. Also I’m a New Zealander and our Police force is nowhere as corrupt as in the US
I elaborated a lot more on this in a different comment.
The main thing is it is about the participation in the system that makes all cops bastards. In my opinion, the good thing about this slogan is it starts discussions and debates about the system itself and how even “good cops” contribute to it when cops do something bad.
I don’t agree but I appreciate the point you’re making.
Do you want to be heard or do you want to be understood?
Shouting ACAB might give you attention but it won’t help in changing anyone’s mind. The opposite is true.
All Carsalesmen Are Bastards!
Defund the dealerships!!!
true fuck legal scamming