There’s a hell of a lot wrong with the way America polices its people. It disproportionately targets Black and brown people, protects those in power and as we are seeing especially in these times, is allowed to run absolutely out of control without order or consequence. It is not merely a problem of “a few bad apples” (or hamburgers…), it is the whole system that is rotten.
Below I’ll touch on a few things, but I encourage you to dive deeper into the resources I link here and beyond.
Who do the police protect, exactly?
Qualified immunity
Defund and abolish the police
Why ACAB
Who do the police protect, exactly?
It is alleged that the police exist to “protect and serve,” but that is proven time and time again that they protect and serve their own people and their own interests. Even the Supreme Court agrees — in 2005, the court ruled that police don’t have a constitutional duty to protect someone. Nice, huh? The people we turn to when we’re in danger literally don’t even have to help or keep us safe.
And they’ve shown that they’re just fine with that. Cops aren’t sent in riot gear when white people are rioting when their sports team loses… or wins. Recently, police were sent in much higher numbers to patrol and attack neighborhoods with higher POC populations during the ongoing pandemic. Meanwhile, cops handed out masks to white NYC-ers in parks, who were decidedly NOT social distancing.
Further, there are plenty of videos and documentation of cops not wearing masks while policing minority communities, some going so far as to cough openly while on patrol. That is biological warfare.
Peaceful protests across the country were SWIFTLY met with heavy police and national guard presence. Meeting protestors fighting for Black lives is clearly more important to the police than to prevent mass spread of the coronavirus.
In one case, the police and National Guard drove down residential streets shooting canisters from their tanks at people in their own homes, not even out protesting. In another, they took the time to stop and empty out bottles of water left out for protestors in the heat. Protestors and journalists are losing their eyes and their sight from rubber bullets, they’re getting hit and run over by cop cars, they’re still having cop’s knees pressed onto their necks.
It is clear that the people in power do not want to lose their power, and they are willing to brutalize and kill their own citizens to keep it. That’s not the picture of “protect and serve” we’ve been led to believe is reality, is it?
Qualified immunity
Police officers are protected by a legal doctrine known as qualified immunity. It protects “government officials from being sued for discretionary actions performed within their official capacity.” The only way they can potentially be held accountable is if their actions violated "clearly established" federal law or constitutional rights. And to determine whether those rights/violations are “clearly established,” the court looks to see whether an official has been previously charged/convicted on that charge or whether a “hypothetical reasonable official” would have known they were violating those rights, according to Cornell Law…
This Instagram post offers a good qualified immunity example. Basically, say you were walking home from Trader Joe’s in Seattle after buying your groceries and you find yourself in the middle of a protest. Police see you, tear gas you and arrest you, assuming you’re a protestor. You lawyer up and tell the truth: you were just buying essentials and on your way home. But thanks to qualified immunity, there’s no precedent for someone walking home in Seattle having just bought their groceries from that TJ’s, and to the judge it seems reasonable that they teargassed you for being there, so your case is thrown out.
So cops can commit an offense, and are largely protected from getting sued or held accountable thanks to the law. In fact, cops have killed 7,666 people in the U.S. between 2013 and 2019, according to Mapping Police Violence. Only 25 of those murderers were convicted of something. 74 resulted in a charge, but no conviction. That leaves 7,567, or 98.7%, of killer cops who have faced ZERO charges for killing a human being. Here’s an Instagram post of what that discrepancy looks like.
There are also state laws that prevent any transparency into an officer’s record, including any disciplinary action taken against them. In New York state for example, Section 50-A (also just known as 50A) keeps “all personnel records used to evaluate performance toward continued employment or promotion” confidential unless the officer provides their written consent.
Without such transparency, officers across the country can kill a man in one county and be asked to leave to avoid much controversy, then find a job in the next county over. There have also been cases of police officers lying about their disciplinary past on their applications when joining a new police force, which only comes out after they have killed another person. This cannot be allowed to continue.
The system from which our police forces stem from and get their power was built on slavery, on racism and on white supremacy. We can no longer expect them to discipline themselves from the inside. Nor can we expect the powers that be to do better either. Prosecutors will choose to protect white officers and the white system before they grant any sort of justice for Black lives. For example, Amy Klobuchar failed to prosecute George Floyd’s killer who already had 10 complaints against him, including a fatal shooting in 2006.
Defund and abolish the police
Since the system has proven it impossible to change itself for the better, we must work towards the defunding and abolition of the police. Now, before you start to argue that we can’t get rid of the police completely, we should reform them first — there is evidence that attempts to reform police forces do not work. In most cases, reform (like body cameras and more/different training) just funnels MORE funding into police departments without the actual benefit of real change. We all lived through the push to make all police officers wear body cams. They either didn’t comply, didn’t hand over footage or highly edited any footage.
I touched on this in the previous post, Black Lives Matter (part 2), but many police departments have a godawfully MASSIVE budget, and they truly do not need any more money.
The NYPD got $5.6 billion (BILLION!) in 2019, a threshold that outspends homeless services ($2.1 billion), the health department ($1.9 billion), housing preservation and development ($1.4 billion), workforce development ($74 million) and composting ($28 million) COMBINED. For fiscal year 2021, Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed larger cuts each to summer youth employment, summer kids programming, composting and the literal department of education than he did for the NYPD. (If you’re a New Yorker reading this, contact your city council member and demand better by the people of NYC. The link above has resources to follow.)
LA Mayor Eric Garcetti recently proposed an LAPD budget of over $3 billion, while transportation and housing funds didn’t even come close to $1 billion. Thanks to the outrage over that bloated budget, paired with daily occurrences of brutality from the LAPD, the final budget ended up including $100-$150 million in cuts from LAPD funding (click here for a wild look at what that cut looks like compared to the total LAPD budget…).
What do police departments need all this money for? To meet and outnumber peaceful protests armed to the teeth. To shove old men down and walk right by them even as he bleeds from his head (and then to say he tripped & fell and to simply suspend the officers involved). To arrest essential workers who are exempt from curfew and to brag about beating up protestors once curfew hits. To bombard protestors with tear gas and rubber bullets and be paid overtime for it.
Billions of dollars are going towards violently keeping us quiet, and not just in times of protest, instead of towards medical equipment (remember the shortage of ventilators and PPE?), educational supplies (teachers are often forced to buy their own) and other goods that truly are there to help the community.
There are plenty of ways to protect communities without armed police. Plus, many crimes stem from larger issues. Rerouting the billions sent to police forces towards homelessness, food and community services can help curb the need for theft and other crimes. We do not have to settle for a violent system just because it’s always been that way.
Why ACAB
A big rallying cry at protests of late has been ACAB, or All Cops Are Bastards. To many, that may seem unfair. You know a guy who’s a cop and he’s the nicest guy you’ve ever met, a real upstanding citizen. Sure, but what’s he like at work? Do you know? He may be a good guy who doesn’t agree with the killing of unarmed Black folks, but is he doing anything about it? Is he speaking up, calling for accountability? Is he doing anything to try to change the system that lets killer cops go free? That attacks protestors with weapons of war?
The policing system he works in was built to keep Black and brown folks in line by any means necessary. The system may “work” for white folks who know the police as a safe system to turn to or for folks who value property over lives. But we cannot allow this harmful, racist system that only works for the few to stand any longer.
By now, you’ve heard it before: If you choose to be silent, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. To be silent is to be complicit. Your cop friend may be a good friend, but that doesn’t make him a good person or a good cop if he just stands by and watches while Black people fight for their lives.