1312.

okay, so before I start I want to say that I don't know exactly where I land politically. i anticipate this might going to sound like it's part of a greater, ideology but I don't necessarily believe in that as a whole. I don't know what I think about socialism, communism, or capitalism and I'm not here to peddle any of those ideas. If anything, I'm just critical of American society in general. This is just focused on why I dislike the institution of cops in america.

Firstly, I don't hate the idea of cops. In any society we need an institution to keep actual criminals at bay and investigate cases of crimes to keep society peaceful. I think that this is very obvious. However, I feel that the implementation of cops in American society is largely fucked and needs massive repeal before we reach something satisfactory. My thoughts can be broken down in to 2 pieces essentially:

Because of how corrupt the US government is, cops essentially enforce laws put in place by the corrupt upper class.
Cops themselves are largely unregulated and full of corruption within.

Point 1: Because of how corrupt the US government is, cops essentially enforce laws put in place by the upper class or that were otherwise put into place with ulterior motives.

It's no secret that lobbying is a huge, systematic issue in our government [1] and that many laws in place are there solely to serve ulterior motives. I don't have time to cover everything, so I'm going to present two case studies.

The war on drugs

From Wikipedia [2]:

The war on drugs is a campaign, led by the U.S. federal government, of drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the stated aim being to reduce the illegal drug trade in the United States. …The term was popularized by the media shortly after a press conference given on June 18, 1971, by President Richard Nixon—the day after publication of a special message from President Nixon to the Congress on Drug Abuse Prevention and Control—during which he declared drug abuse "public enemy number one".

A word from John Ehrlichman, Nixon's highest domestic policy advisor [3]:

“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

According to him. the war on drugs was started as a political tool to oppress blacks and the left. The legal policies Nixon put in place are still alive today, as weed and other nonaddictive drugs such as certain psychidelics are still illegal. The Republican platform wishes for these laws to stay in effect.

In effect, these laws are still incredibly effective at serving Nixon's interests. The ACLU, Vox, and drugpolicy.org have done investigations into the matter at different time periods, and have stated that blacks are somewhere between 2-4 times more likely to arrersted for pot use, despite also stating that blacks use pot at roughly the same rate [4, 16].

The institution of police are those who enforce these laws and drive these numbers. Police are the ones who seek out blacks and arrest them disproportionately for nonviolent crimes.

Furthermore, it has been speculated that whether intentional or by happenstance, the general arrest of all races for nonviolent drug offenses funds for-profit prisons, of which exists thousands [5]. Regardless, lobbbying efforts by private prison corporations has sprung up. A quote from source [6], which discusses the lobbying efforts against legal weed

One of the largest private prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America, has stated that keeping drugs illegal is essential to its business success. Since 2008, the corporation has spent around $970,000 per year on lobbying.

I'll leave it up to you to draw conclusions on that final piece.

———

ICE

Background from WIkipedia [7]:

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a law enforcement agency of the federal government of the United States tasked to enforce the immigration laws of the United States and to investigate criminal and terrorist activity of transnational organizations and aliens within the United States. ICE has two primary components: Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).

Immigrants move to the US for a multitude of opportunities, whether it be to escape opressive regimes or seek a better quality of life [8]. President Trump's platform aligns against illegal immigration on false statistics and facts [9]. However, this didn't stop him taking office. His executive order in January 2017 called for ICE to hire 10,000 more immigration officers [10], and has overall increased immigration arrests by 30% in that year [11].

Futher, the actions taken by ICE are unethical within themselves. ICE has done things such as infamously separating families at th border [12], putting kids in cages [13], sexually abuse immigrants (of which only 2% were investigated) [7].

Illegal immigration is illega, but isn't an unethical act. Again, people cross the border and overstay visas to seek a higher quality of life. The notion that immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate and "take jobs" is simply untrue and biased.

From source [9]:

Given the relative populations for each group, he wrote, “The arrest rate for illegal immigrants was 40 percent below that of native-born Americans.”

In addition, he wrote, the homicide arrest rate for native-born Americans was “about 46 percent higher than the illegal immigrant homicide arrest rate.”

Source [15]

As Brookings Senior Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown explains in her new Brookings Essay, “The Wall,” immigrants may not actually be “stealing” as many U.S. jobs as Trump thinks. As she put it, “the impact of immigrant labor on the wages of native-born workers is low… However, undocumented workers often work the unpleasant, back-breaking jobs that native-born workers are not willing to do.”

...

As Bahar mentions, “by cutting on immigration, the country will miss an opportunity for new inventions and ventures that could generate the jobs that the president is so committed to bring back. Thus, if the current administration wants to create jobs and ‘make America great again,’ it should consider enlisting more migrants.”

Further, immigrants pay taxes! [14]

ICE is a law enforcement agency overseen by the department of homeland security, a law enforcement agency. The enforcement of these horrible policies in the name of "protecting the country from mexicans" is driven largely by the voluntary service of deportation officers.

Point 2: Cops themselves are largely unregulated and full of corruption within.

Lack of accountability

The US governmnet is divided into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. They serve to oversee different aspects of the government's involvement in society and provide checks and balances to stop each other from overstepping their powers. However, no such department exists for law enforcement. To report a compliant about an officer, one must go straight to their police department and it is "dealt with internally", meaning it is hardly dealt with at all. In fact, across the country, only 3-6% of complains were actually sustained and carried out on [19]. It is incredibly unrealistic to state that that 94-97% of police complaints are truthfully false. Further, A compilation by In The Now who attempt to actually report complaints to police are often dismissed and threatened by police officers [19]

Further, there is a greater phenomenon named the "Blue Wall of Silence", a term used to denote an informal rule for police officers to not report their colleague's misconducts [17].

One can sue the police, but most don't have the resources to start a civil lawsuit. The people are largely helpless in dealing with police overstepping their bounds.

Individual misconduct

Studies by the National Center for Women and Policing have shown that around 40% of cops commit domestic violence [20,21]. Further, only 19% of the 123 departments investigated indicated that officers would be terminated for their conduct after a 2nd sustained allegation. Remember that only 3-6% of complaints are sustained.

Further, many police from withtin the force have self-reported staggering amounts of abuse of power. A survey by the Police Foundation (n=908) found that 67.4% of cops agreed or strongly agreed to the statement that "An officer who reports another is likely to be given the “cold shoulder” to good policing. is not worth it. by fellow officers". Further, 61% of cops disagreed or strongly disagreed to the statement that "Police officers always report serious violations involving abuse of authority by fellow officers" [23].

———

ACAB doesn't mean that every single cop out there is a racist pig. ACAB is a general statement associated to all of these criticisms as a whole [24]. There are cops that act ethically individually. But, these cops enforce the laws of point 1 no matter what they do, as that is their job. Both "good" and "bad" cops are required to arrest people for bullshit laws. How a cop could undergo years of training and be ignorant of, or, to any degree, ignore what I have listed here is beyond me.

I focused largely on the oppression of minorities and immigrants by cops. This is only a small glimpse of it based on only like 1-2 hours of research; there's far more to be found not only against minorities but in other areas of police enforcement as well.

Other disputations

Y’all should go to a police station and actually meet the people that serve you guys. That’s not the norm in the real world. I’ve met dozens of cops and some of my friends parents are cops. Saying “fuck cops” puts them under that umbrella and it’s fucked up because they’re nice people. Have y’all ever personally met a police officer?

I personally think this is a flawed way of thinking. Does meeting 5, 20, 100 nice cops dispute the statistical evidence? I don't think so.

‘Acab’ is like some stupid chant that’s counterproductive. We aren’t living in the kkk and Jim Crow era when that actually was the norm. It’s unrealistic to think that it’s like that now. If ya actually think that then y’all have to be sitting in one corner of the internet that is influencing you in an unrealistic way to how the real world is.

Institutional racism is still a widespread issue in the country [26]. I highly recommend you read into this. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism#United_States)

Both you and I live in peaceful surburban towns. I don't see it (in my town, I do when I visit family), and you don't see it. It's not taught in schools beyond the 1960's-80's. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It's all about perspective.

That’s like saying all Muslims are bastards because some decided to be terrorists and bomb other nations. It’s stupid.

You don't choose to be Middle Eastern. You choose to be a cop. And if anything, 73% of terrorist attacks from 2001 (post 9/11) -2016 were from far-right extremists [27]. A total of 119 deaths were recorded from terrorist attacks from 2001 (post 9/11) to 2016 [27]. Thousands have died to police shootings within that time, much more than those who have died to police in countries other than the US [25]. If you want to know what cops provably do, re-read this paper.

Works Cited

Point 1

Point 2

Lack of accountability

Blue Wall of silence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_of_silence
In The Now police complaint compilation https://twitter.com/IntheNow_tweet/status/1123723776280092673
Low police discipline https://www.huffpost.com/entry/internal-affairs-police-misconduct_n_5613ea2fe4b022a4ce5f87ce (its huffpost but they sourced)

Individual misconduct

Police beat their wives http://womenandpolicing.com/violencefs.asp
Police beat their wives x2 (cites [20]) https://kutv.com/news/local/40-of-police-officer-families-experience-domestic-violence-study-says
I witnessed abuse of power https://medium.com/s/powertrip/i-was-a-cop-for-18-years-i-witnessed-and-participated-in-abuses-of-power-8d057c18f9ee
Police foundation survey https://www.policefoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Weisburd-et-al.-2001-The-Abuse-of-Police-Authority.pdf

History of ACAB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.C.A.B.
More police killings in the US https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries

Other general

Institutional racism in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism#United_States
73% were far right https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683984.pdf

1312.

Point 1: Because of how corrupt the US government is, cops essentially enforce laws put in place by the upper class or that were otherwise put into place with ulterior motives.

The war on drugs

ICE

Point 2: Cops themselves are largely unregulated and full of corruption within.

Lack of accountability

Individual misconduct

Other disputations

Works Cited

Point 1

Lobbying

War on drugs

ICE

Other

Point 2

Lack of accountability

Individual misconduct

Other Cop-related

Other general

Report Page