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[nenjin]

I'm not arguing it is, but then I'm not the rest of all people.

[SalmonGod]

I think everyone agrees that all police who use unjustified violence against civilians they interact with on the job or otherwise abuse their power are bastards.  We can agree on that, right?

So the question is aren't there plenty of police who don't do that?  Are they also bastards?

By this point, with the issue of police violence at such high visibility, I consider any police officers who meet the following criteria to be standing in solidarity with the likes of Chauvin, and thus also bastards.

1.  Officers who have witnessed their co-workers engaging in unjustified use of force without taking immediate action to stop it as it's taking place and/or supporting efforts after the fact to bring justice against them.
2.  Officers who continue to participate in the organization instead of resigning in cases where #1 is impossible.

Those are my criteria.  They are based on choices that the people who choose to be police officers are free to make or not make.  As far as I can tell, these criteria are sufficient to label the vast majority of officers as bastards.  Especially with what we're seeing in response to the current protests.  Pretty much every large city across the country has had protests.  Almost all of them have had police exhibit violent behavior against those protests.  Any officer working on any police force in any of those cities which has had issues with violence against protesters who has not raised complaints up the command chain against it and resigned if there is a lack of response is a bastard.

And I didn't even need to get into higher level theory about what role law enforcement plays in reinforcing an unjust power structure.

[Cthulhu]

The police brutality thread on twitter is going on 400 examples, and that's just in the last four days, and just what's been recorded and sent to the thread creator.  They know they're on camera.

I feel perfectly fine saying ACAB.  Any good cop still on the force is not a good cop.

[SalmonGod]

The police brutality thread on twitter is going on 400 examples, and that's just in the last four days, and just what's been recorded and sent to the thread creator.  They know they're on camera.

I feel perfectly fine saying ACAB.  Any good cop still on the force is not a good cop.

How do I find this thread?

[Rolan7]

I think everyone agrees that all police who use unjustified violence against civilians they interact with on the job or otherwise abuse their power are bastards.  We can agree on that, right?

So the question is aren't there plenty of police who don't do that?  Are they also bastards?

By this point, with the issue of police violence at such high visibility, I consider any police officers who meet the following criteria to be standing in solidarity with the likes of Chauvin, and thus also bastards.

1.  Officers who have witnessed their co-workers engaging in unjustified use of force without taking immediate action to stop it as it's taking place and/or supporting efforts after the fact to bring justice against them.
2.  Officers who continue to participate in the organization instead of resigning in cases where #1 is impossible.

Yeah... that's pretty solid.  There's a lot of pressure on good cops to play along with the corruption - if they want to keep their jobs.  Money is a matter of survival for us, but it doesn't excuse being complicit in widespread abuse and murder.  I think I generally have more sympathy for someone dealing drugs to get by.  It's a similar calculus with a lot of variables regarding scale.

There's also the idea of changing the system from within, but I don't think that's practical on an individual basis.  The system takes good cops and makes them complicit, essentially blackmailing them.  It's not a "broken" system, it's a well-honed self-preserving tradition with goals counter to those of the general public.

[SOLDIER First]

How do I find this thread?

Here.

Content warning for occasional gore.

I also ditto the ACAB discussion. "Good cops" can resist the actions of other officers and get fired, and stop being cops, resign because they know resisting it won't work, and stop being cops, or say nothing, and stop being good.

[Cthulhu]

Still waiting for those good cops to step in

[Jopax]

It's a start I guess, now for the rest of the shitheads to resign and you can maybe start improving the next batch :V

[SalmonGod]

They're still employed as police.  They just resigned from that special unit.

But yeah...

standing in solidarity with the likes of Chauvin

The police aren't out there doing their jobs and maintaining order.  They are protesting just as much as the people are.  They're protesting against the motion to reign in their power.

Not even a matter of interpretation anymore.  They're literally, openly protesting the decision to discipline their co-workers when they commit murder on camera.

[Cthulhu]

They're still employed, just resigning from the emergency response team in solidarity with their comrades who pushed a 75 year old man (who was trying to return a helmet they dropped) onto concrete and stepped over him while he bled from his ears.

[Dunamisdeos]

I mean, this isn't really the point, but I do know officers (well, an officer) who HAS stepped in between his co-workers the way you describe. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't stop being a problem if you admit some officers are good and some are bad. It's not a point system.

The point of the situation is that officers who abuse their power, violent or no, are quite widespread. They aren't rare outliers, and our system both encourages them and protects them from any consequence. The only reason they're being caught is because people have cell phones and are forcing public attention to the issue. This has been going on for generations. It's going on right now.

If this man hadn't been caught on camera, he would have literally murdered another man in the street, in broad daylight, while his three police officer buddies watched and then went home for dinner. Frankly I don't believe there are enough good cops at this point to hold anyone back, regardless. What, were the other 3 cops the only bad guys in the force? Did they happen to be there at he same time? 3 random officers in the area, they all happened to be the murderous sort?

[Pancakes]

How does that saying go?

"If you have 1 bad cop and 99 good cops, but the good cops don't take action against the bad cop, then you have 100 bad cops." (Paraphrased)

It's not enough to expect the police to be able to keep themselves accountable; there's a reason that the main branches of government are split up the way that they are. While it is true that checks and balances don't always work, they are quite effective. It simply isn't reasonable for anyone to assume the police are genuinely following the law and not taking advantage of the power dynamic, because what is a victim supposed to do? Resist arrest? Shit, you don't even have to resist to have lethal force be used on you. The only "accountability" against this is footage of the misconduct / assault / murder taking place, and that can't bring people back to life after they've been lynched. There's a reason I feel less safe when police are around.

I understand that cops are on edge, especially in violent crime heavy areas, but that is the burden that they are supposed to carry. It's a responsibility being carried out by irresponsible people. If you have a dwarf who has anger problems and can't handle stress, the last thing you should do is deck him out in a full set of steel armor and give him a candy axe.

I just don't know any way to convert the current police force into something that would be held accountable, short of simply tearing the whole system down and starting from scratch. At this point, that would be the easiest and most effective way to go about it. How many chances are we going to give the police to get their shit together?

[Dunamisdeos]

I mean it's not like we have dozens of more effective and provably safe structures to copy from around the world.

Those don't count, because we didn't think of them first.

[Cthulhu]

It's a dangerous game.  We know from South America what happens when you fire corrupt cops en masse, a lot of cartel enforcers and leadership used to be cops.  And if that sounds too far-fetched for America, remember the FBI's been tracking organized white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement for years.  In a way, we're already there.  The US police establishment has literal terrorist infiltrators at every level.

I'm very worried about Minneapolis, not necessarily because their implementation of police abolition is bad itself, but because you're going to have hundreds of suddenly unemployed police officers with a huge incentive to fuck things up and make the effort look like a failure.

[nenjin]

I mean, logistically it probably won't work out this way, but I'd love to see a lot of fired / quit police officers arrested for committing acts of violence after the fact.