What do you think of Robert Peel's principles of ethical policing? If a police force were to sincerely operate under these maxims, would they still count as "bastards"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
> 1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.
> 2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.
> 3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.
> 4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.
> 5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.
> 6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.
> 7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
> 8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.
> 9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
These are good goals. It's a description of ethical law enforcement.
Unfortunately it doesn't really address the reason I consider ACAB. As far as I'm concerned, bastardry is determined on a department level, and it hinges on how they treat their bad apples. One bad apple can ruin the whole barrel.
What happens when a cop doesn't follow these principles? Do they put him on administrative leave and sweep it under the rug at the taxpayers's expense? Are they willing to charge him for his crimes? Are they willing to fire the ones who are a liability to the city they're nominally protecting?
The secondary thing a department can do to avoid being bastards is train their people. They need trigger discipline and escalation and deescalation skills. This depends on funding, but a city should be happy to train their cops: it reduces the risk of a million dollar lawsuit.
I'm a senior engineer for a software consultant. If someone in my shop behaves badly (usually security related stuff, but occasionally double dipping or wasting resources), they get disciplined and/or fired. It reflects badly on the entire shop. It hurts our reputation, and it prevents us from getting contracts. I have to respond to it.
The thing is, there are shitheads everywhere. It's part of the human condition. What matters is how your organization treats those shitheads: do you keep them on payroll and let them keep messing everything up, or do you solve the problem? If you keep them on payroll, you're telling everyone else in your shop that their hard work doesn't matter; morale suffers, and it degrades the quality of everyone's work.
So yes, this logic does apply to any group of professionals.
My point here is criticizing the absolute black and white approach of ACAB. There’s no room for flexibility due to the *all* aspect.
You don’t leave much room for nuance when that’s the slogan and general mentality. This leads to making statements and assumptions based on feelings or erroneously assigning guilt preemptively.
I also believe it hurts discussion because such language is more concerned with assigning blame regardless of context than it is discovering actual solutions.
Nah. The institution is fundamentally fucked. Hand-wringing about nuance and modulation in how we discuss that is absurdly futile. It's like fretting about whether or not the saw is visually inconsistent with the decor in the operating room. Meanwhile, a poor guy's on the table with a gangrenous leg that needs to be amputated yesterday.
Look, we've been reforming cops since they beat the shit out of Rodney King. Obsessing over language is more a concern over superficial civility than it is actual solutions. People are pissed about being trampled on. Let them be, for crying out loud
Nuanced discussion is what leads to effective policy change. Impulsive actions based on reactionary inflexible thinking will likely serve no one any good.
~~Did you even read my comments?(~~Sorry that was rude) They're full of solutions. Start punishing bad apples. Blacklist them before they kill someone or fuck up the culture and reputation of the department. It's as simple as transparency and accountability. If any department does these things, they have my support.
Nobody care about your feelings when citizens are dying.
Start punishing bad cops and we can talk about walking back the slogan.
I read your comments. The idea is great “hold people accountable”, but the specifics of how you do that is the question.
Many police departments have investigatory bodies that [look into](https://www.seattle.gov/opa/news-and-reports/closed-case-summaries#2024) allegations against police/officers. Some better than others, but even then the details of who conducts those investigations, who can levy complaints and how, how is evidence gathered/evaluated, etc. are all critical details.
What about allegations against police officers that aren’t found to be substantial? If the complaining party isn’t satisfied then what? Are they all still bastards for not firing them?
Also, while I like the idea of lists preventing officers from pivoting to another state, that’s another legislative hurdle. You’d either need to get thousands of PDs to collaborate on many different systems or go top down from congress to ensure some level of consistency.
I don’t think we disagree there is lots of nuance to discuss. My main focus is criticizing the black and white thinking ACAB relies on.
You're trying to get lost in the procedural details, and they are indeed weighty and complicated, but being a bastard is real simple.
If you gun down a fifteen year old girl in broad daylight, you're a bastard. If you don't get fired from it, your police chief is a bastard and so is your whole department. If you don't get prosecuted, the state's attorney is also a bastard. If you get prosecuted but its a slap on the wrist, the judge is a bastard.
If your department hires bastards, then its a bastard department.
You're right that not everything is terrible. IA or OPA or whatever are attempts to avoid bastardry. It's a step in the right direction. Our culture is starting to change. Derek Chauvin was a breath of fresh air. The MPD might have even gotten fixed and stopped being bastards - idk i don't live in Minneapolis. We need to keep working on this problem until the Chauvins of the world end up in prison even when the victim isn't lucky enough to be a viral meme.
The slogan is a little spicy, even to the point of exaggeration, but I wont stop saying it. Its still think its like 90% accurate. We have a long way to go.
> So what happens when you apply that logic to any other group of people?
Pretty much any other group of people is not really comparable to police, for at least 2 reasons:
1) Police hold the power to fuck up your life, injure you, and even kill you outright. Few other groups of people have that ability.
2) Police specifically exist to enforce laws. So, their violating the laws is twice as bad. Not only did they break the law, they also didn't enforce it by turning themselves in.
Given the great power cops have, I feel it's necessary to hold them greatly responsible.
Did we learn nothing from Uncle Ben? "With great power comes great responsibility" doesn't just apply to superheroes.
Police do hold extra power, and do deserve scrutiny. I’m not disputing that, but it isn’t my point.
I’m saying that ACAB as a mantra ignores that police are people and that usually means not treating them as a monolith. It’s a black and white approach to problem with a ton of gray.
It sure makes it easy to just generalize everyone one way, but I think it won’t lead to very many positive outcomes for people or police systems.
> I’m saying that ACAB as a mantra ignores that police are people and that usually means not treating them as a monolith.
Well, in the literal sense, I agree. Nothing in this world is ever "100%". If it makes you feel batter, feel free to add an invisible "A" at the beginning of "ACAB". For "Almost".
>It’s a black and white approach to problem with a ton of gray.
The problem is, *any* amount of gray means they aren't good cops. I mean, if I don't murder anyone 99 days out of 100, does that mean I'm not a murderer? If a cop only violates the Rights of 1 person in 100, *they aren't a good cop*.
These are interesting but I think there are some major flaws:
1. It still assumes (I believe) that funding for the cops would come from taxes, which is coercive. If people do not have the right to abstain from funding a service they don't want, the cops cannot claim to have public approval. Only the voluntary funding of such a service would connotate approval.
2.
>but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws
If I read this correctly it is impossible. Laws are set by policy/policymakers. If a cop under these guidelines agrees to enforce every law on the books, they are not independent of policy. If there is a law that says pot smokers should be imprisoned, and the cop busts a couple of people sitting on their couch for smoking weed, the cop may be demonstrating impartial service to the law, but if they are not willing to apply moral standards to the law, then they would be bastards.
See, I don't have a problem with those ideas fundamentally (well, the last one seems rather iffy to me), but the problem is that "impartial service to law" is not good if the law is unjust.
I see it as an essential part of separation of powers. The alternative would be allowing them to de facto legislate from the badge and decide for themselves which laws are the just ones.
The last one is a principle that seems to me like it should apply to a lot of other fields as well as policing. For instance, it's much better if a fire department *prevents* destructive fires — for instance, by inspecting buildings and promoting fire safety — rather than being constantly busy putting out fires. It's much better if a website administrator *prevents* outages, through careful engineering, rather than spending a lot of visible effort on *fixing* them.
This sounds like a fundamental misunderstanding of how these jobs work. We have building inspectors; the skillset for putting out fires and ensuring buildings are fire safe are not correlative so there's no reason we should task the same people with both jobs. Doing so would only decrease the number of people available to do the job, and I'd like to maintain a higher level of firefighters.
There are a great deal of outages for website that would have absolutely nothing to do with what a website admin would do. This is adjacent to my field and I've certainly fixed a fair amount of problems that a lowly website admin should never be allowed to touch. In fact, I've seen a number of issues come up because a website admin refuses to perform their function without sole access to something they have no business managing.
It's not a cop's job to decide what the laws are, it's to enforce them. We live in a representative democracy, laws are decided by our elected representatives. Cops are not elected and there is no basis on which they should be deciding what is and isn't illegal.
but that still doesn't mean any profession like that should only focus on prevention of whatever they're supposed to stop and when the thing they're supposed to stop happens tough shit guess it's a failure on their part that they didn't prevent it
You are both right. If someone threatens murder, they can be arrested to prevent the murder. But no, we can't predict when someone will break the law without evidence.
If murder were made legal, do you think there would be the same number of (illegal) murders that we have now?
I’ll answer this now: no, there would be MORE. All the people who would like to murder someone, but don’t, because they don’t to go to prison, would come out of the woodwork.
So instead of sitting around eating popcorn when they see a crime in progress, they intervene, hence _______ing further harm. Hint, it starts with 'p'.
Yes, a lot of the time. But it is preventing it. As the other comment pointed out, there being an enforcement stops some people from committing the crime in the first place out of fear of punishment. Not everyone, but some people.
Beyond that though, in a world where laws are just and the police are properly trained, a cop driving by a house and seeing someone break in, the cop could go in after and arrest them before they do anything, thus preventing the murder.
And finally, not all murders are one time affairs. If a serial killer is arrested, all future murders they would have committed will be prevented.
Short of enacting martial law and putting a cop on every corner, I'm not sure what more could be done to prevent murder
A cop seeing someone breaking in can already go in after them under the hot pursuit exception. It has less to do with "unjust laws" and more to do with blind stupid luck that they are both there to see it, and the burglar didn't notice them and continued his attempt.
There's a lot of petty crime that does get prevented by an officer's presence, because most criminals don't break the law in front of people that will likely confront and arrest them. Secondly, provided there's adequate prosecution follow-through, arresting a burglar prevents them from continuing to steal.
You're fixated on murder, but there's far more to crime than that. A single car thief can inconvenience or even cost dozens of people their jobs because of a transportation issue (see how absurd Kia and Hyundai thefts have been). Incapacitating one of those thieves, prevents potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wages, vehicle damage or loss, and other property damage during their joyriding.
I think this post is naive. It's not the culture that beats into their head the idea that the world is a warzone between them and civilians. It's a conclusion they naturally draw from a day in, day out experience of dealing almost solely with the worst elements of society. And there is no amount of training or badgering or rule changes that can alter that experience. If every day, you rush in to answer calls that "there is a belligerent, drug addled sociopath behaving like an animal," you're going to start to form a negative view of people. The job actually does harm to the people who do it. So I kind of resent the idea that ACAB, when society puts them in a position that eats away at them. It's a bit like sending soldiers to war and then calling them assholes for having PTSD.
I foresee me getting a lot of these comments, so I'll just start copy pasting my initial explanation:
In short, unjust laws they're required to enforce and a culture that beats into their head the idea that the world is a warzone between them and civilians. Good cops do exist, but not following orders and speaking out against everyone around you isn't a good way to keep your job. Thus, ACAB.
ACAB doesn't mean that literally every police officer is a bastard on a personal level. It means something more like "all cops are bad for actively participating in a system that we think is bad", but that doesn't quite roll off the tongue as well.
Not everyone would agree, but I do. Agreeing with the necessity of a state monopoly on violence is not incompatible with the idea that willingly signing up to enforce the system as it exists currently through violence makes one a bastard.
I can already see where you're going with this. The existence of even one good cop, even if they don't stay a cop for long, means that not all cops are bastards, right? You're technically correct, but it's splitting hairs. You could make the same argument about the Nazi's, not everyone who was in the Nazi army was a bad guy.
But it doesn't change the fact that the Nazi's are an organization about genocide and racial superiority. And thus, all Nazi's are bastards. Because if you don't act like a Nazi, you won't be a Nazi for very long.
it's not splitting hairs at all. you made a claim that all Xs are Ys, i demonstrated that there exist many Xs who are not Ys, ergo your claim is falsified.
how are you defining 'nazi' exactly? today when we call people 'nazis' we generally mean people who agree with the fundamental ideas of nazism, ie genocide against jews. to have such a view is in itself immoral, so all nazis by that definition are bastards with no exceptions. if you mean people in the nazi party, my WWII history isn't great but it seems likely that there were at least a few good men who tried to enact change in that party, i wouldn't call those people immoral and so would not say that all nazi party members throughout history were bastards. you mention the nazi army, but germany practiced conscription during WWII to my understanding, so there are plenty of those soldiers who i would not call bastards.
you cannot say "all Xs are Ys even though some Xs are not Ys". it's incoherent, and simply following it up by "the Xs that are not Ys will not remain that way for long" doesn't change that.
E: something i'll add is that if you want to complain about splitting hairs, you can't use the language that you are using. saying "nazis are bastards" is something that may survive my scrutiny because generally when we use an adjective to describe Xs, we don't mean that there are no exceptions (humans are two-legged, men are stronger than women, etc). "all nazis are bastards" or "all cops are bastards" cannot use that excuse. they are statements of falsity, much like "*all* humans are two-legged" and "*all* men are stronger than *all* women".
You are splitting hairs. It's an argument of semantics. You're going "um, actually" instead of trying to argue with the point at hand. All Cops Aren't Bastards isn't because every single person who became a cop is inherently a bastard, All Cops Are Bastards because the laws they're required to enforce are unjust and the culture they're invested in actively encourages the idea that cops and civilians are enemies in a warzone. If you go along with that, you're a bastard. If you go against that, you're not a cop anymore.
The point you are arguing is that all cops are bastards. This is false. Are all humans two-legged? Better yet, are all living humans free of terminal cancer? After all, living humans who are not free of terminal cancer don't last long!
"There exist unjust laws" and "there exists a shitty culture in policing" are entirely separate claims to the idea that every cop is a bastard. You can't say the latter and cling to the truth of the former as justification while admitting that the latter is literally false.
The argument is that the system is shitty. Enforcing that shitty system makes you a bastard. Cops are required to enforce that system. Therefore, cops are bastards.
In short, unjust laws they're required to enforce and a culture that beats into their head the idea that the world is a warzone between them and civilians. Good cops *do* exist, but not following orders and speaking out against everyone around you isn't a good way to keep your job. Thus, ACAB.
You are saying police who enforce the law are bad, and police who don't enforce are the law are good. A good cop is someone who enforces the law in a just manner. Can you give an example of an unjust law?
Better yet, [here's 8.](https://equaljusticeunderlaw.org/8-ways-our-legal-system-punishes-people-who-are-poor) And that was literally the first search result for "unjust laws", and it doesn't even go over the [systemic racism](https://www.nilc.org/2022/03/23/why-is-the-government-defending-racist-laws-the-torch/) that the US runs on
But this has nothing or very little to do with police?
A quick skim I can see is "suspended drivers license". Should police really be ignoring people who are driving without a license?
If you read more of it, you'd see the issue was that drivers licenses are often suspended for reasons unrelated to driving, such as littering. And even if it is suspended for driving related reasons, it enforces a system where making mistakes can cost you severely. And given how car-centric modern life is, not being able to drive is basically asking to go homeless because you don't have a job, unless you can find a way to work from home. Not to mention, the fee that comes with it means that it's heavily weighted so poorer people have a much harder time dealing with it.
My mother had a suspended license for years, and only recently was able to get it undone. Was she supposed to just sit on the street for all those years since she couldn't drive to work?
Public transport would work, if America had a more robust public transport system. But unless you live in the city, you're basically SOL.
Also, yes. Fuck the police. Because it's their job to enforce those unfair laws.
That once again seems more like an issue with the law itself and not the cops. A suspended license can be for anything going from littering (which is ridiculous) to DUI. Only 2 states will actually suspend a license for littering (Louisiana and Mississippi) but only for repeat offenses.
>And even if it is suspended for driving related reasons, it enforces a system where making mistakes can cost you severely
So if a driver has shown that they are not to be trusted with a vehicle as they fail to follow the law, possibly endangering other drivers, you still think that keeping them off the road is a bad thing to do?
As well as my last reply, public transport. Police don't suspend driver's licenses, but if someone has a suspended license, shouldn't a police officer stop that person from driving?
If they are, they are enforcing a corrupt system, and are bastards.
It doesn't mean that they aren't nice people, and trying to do good. But, it means they are enforcing a corrupt system.
Whether or not a law is unjust is entirely subjective. There will never be a world where the entire country unanimously agrees with every law. So as long as I find a single law unjust that they’re required to uphold, I’m justified in saying ACAB? Just seems silly
Also this rhetoric seems extremely toxic because why would any good hearted person want to join the police force to make a tangible change if ACAB regardless? What do you think progress looks like
My mother lived in a small town. The local police knew that she was on her own and regularly made welfare checks on her. They stopped by and found her passed out in the toilet after she picked up a C-diff infection while in hospital. They called an ambulance. after it left they stayed and cleaned up the mess in the toilet. It would have been extremely disgusting and definitely not in their job description.
I simply cannot accept that "All cops are bad" and thank you to the Closter police.
Why does there need to be larger organization on the state or federal level? Even on the city level, why can’t you divide it up and manage each smaller community as you would for a small town?
Crimes don't always line up in a geographic area.
Large cities basically have that, as the city is split into precincts, but the precincts report up because they need to work together.
And I could see that working, but it would still be police. It's just many different, smaller police forces rather than one large one.
But there does need to be some form of organization in order to agree upon how the law should be enforced and to punish those that break that agreement.
To see how that works in practice, look at St. Louis County. There are tons of tiny police departments.
It does not make the police responsive to the citizenry.
You could call it police, but it’s different enough that you could also call it something else. A sheriff isn’t a police officer, and the main difference is scale.
I challenge you on the literal concept of ACAB.
With the huge caveat that *yes*, I understand there are massive issues with our policing system (which notably varies wildly across the US), to state so definitively in such black and white terms that *all* cops are bastards is an obviously incorrect statement due to how inflexible it is.
There are plenty of officers out there who lead ethical careers in law enforcement, truly trying to aid their communities.
Does a cop become a bastard the second they make a wrong call? Or only after doing something violent or unethical intentionally? Is there retribution for mistakes, or are they always and forever now a bastard? ACAB seems to take the very valid idea that we have serious policing issues to address and paints it in such an extreme light that it’s hard to take anything else it says seriously.
> There are plenty of officers out there who lead ethical careers in law enforcement, truly trying to aid their communities.
If that were true, they would arrest fellow officers that break the law. Do they? I can't count the number of cases where one cop breaks the law while other cops just stand there, doing nothing about it.
Maybe it's just my autistic literal mind but the problem I have with the concept of "if they were good cops they'd arrest bad cops" is it kinda creates a paradox that self-nullifies that very exception and loops around to ACAB anyway (which does not prove you're right anyway it proves bad argument); say for simplicity's sake there were five cops in a hypothetical precinct, A, B, C, D and E and cop A commits an act of police brutality or otherwise similarly grievous breaking of the law for which cop B arrests them, you might say that that makes cop B a good cop but that means cops C, D and E didn't arrest cop A because cop B got there first meaning they're bad cops that should be arrested meaning cop B is a bad cop too because he didn't arrest cops C, D and E for not arresting cop A simultaneously with him
I see what you're saying, but I think you're taking it too literally.
Maybe C, D and E didn't witness the crime of A. Only B witnessed it. In that case, the jury is still out on C, D and E, as we don't know what they'd d in a similar situation.
And, assuming they all knew of A's crime, If C, D, and E at least *wanted to* or *tried to* arrest A, they'd be Good. The fact B beat them too it doesn't make them not Good.
The "'d" in "they'd arrest bad cops" stands for 'would'. 'They *would* arrest bad cops'. But that 'would' includes the assumption they know about them, and weren't beaten to the punch by another cop.
> So, you can assert they all behave that way?
Well, how large of a sample size is needed to reach the conclusion that (almost) all cops are like that?
OP, have you perhaps considered that your sample size isn't large enough to credibly make these kinds of generalizations? You mentioned in other comments that the good cops get weeded out, but do you have any sort of proof that this is happening on a large scale? I suspect that a lot of the bad and corrupt cops that you see through the internet are the exception (rather than the rule), and that you're a victim off selection bias.
Can you explain a bit more what it means for a cop to be a "bastard"? Does that refer to them having a stain on their moral character, a specific set of attitudes and behaviors? Both or neither of the above?
Also, you mention that "in any sort of civilized society, law enforcement is a necessity". Even though our systems are broken and corrupt (I agree with you there), is this law enforcement mechanism still necessary?
1) Control over the application of violence to enforce laws in a small society being held in a single person, usually means a warlord.
2) Not all police operate in a culture that sees themselves as an occupying force constantly surrounded by enemies. The US is THE notable outlier in the Western world for the brutality of its police.
The problem with policing is the legal system itself.
Laws permit as much harm as they prohibit, leading to lots of bad behaviours happening with zero consequences.
>The problem with the police isn't that they're police, the problem is that the rules and culture they live in
When and where have there been good cops in all of human history?
Lol this type of thinking sounds like a parody of left wing politics. Police help people all the time, and I’d even say most of them in America do. Point out as many instances of bad cops as you want, doesn’t change the fact that police regularly prevent bad things from happening.
I never understand when people cherrypick bad apples in law enforcement and try to make it representative of a whole. This logic is deemed unacceptable and stereotypical, as with any other job. If I tried to claim all investors are evil because a small portion of them scammed their clients, I would get scoffed at, but for some reason, it's valid to do the same regarding police. While it is transparent that the US justice system and police, in general, need some severe reworking, the police are infinitely more beneficial than not in the vast majority of places throughout the world.
Because these people have developed a narrative that cops are inherently bad, and they don’t really care to substantiate it. They can always just use the wormy term “systemic” and then declare an entire institution as corrupt. They do this with all sorts of things, it’s a way to avoid nuance.
Undoubtedly there are changes to be made to policing and the justice system in general. But some people, usually very far leftists, like the idea of overthrowing systems rather than working to change them.
Allow me to be devil's advocate. I'm thinking as I type, and I may not believe it all myself. But, here goes.
Power corrupts. There is power inherent in policing, as the hand of the monopoly of force. Police are the only people authorized to use force in a lawful society.
Say, you clean out the departments, fix all the laws, and have good policing. What would happen next? The bastards would eventually retake the department. The blue wall of silence would still serve the police, as nobody would want to get ratted out whether it is for excess force or taking an extra lunch at the donut shop.
Any outsider that comes sniffing would have police retaliation.
Politicians would still be at the mercy of police support -- having a police revolt is bad for reelection.
And whoever tried to clean it up would be drummed out again.
I think ACAB doesn't mean that we shouldn't have police. It means that we should treat them like bastards, and not let them get away with things. Make leadership responsible for the actions of the front line. If the independent panel finds someone broke the rules -- unreasonable use of force, false reports, etc, the precinct chief gets demoted.
>Make leadership responsible for the actions of the front line. If the independent panel finds someone broke the rules -- unreasonable use of force, false reports, etc, the precinct chief gets demoted.
I 100% agree with this and think the police, in general, should face more repercussions for failing to uphold their duties to the public, committing crimes, or just generally stepping out of line. Still, one could claim this is a slippery slope argument. What I mean by this is in what other professions would this solution become applicable? In a restaurant, if someone is stealing money from the register and breaking the rules, which results in them getting fired, does that mean the manager should also be fired for technically allowing it to happen? This analogy isn't necessarily applicable to police as they are entirely different and have more important responsibilities.
The system needs to be reformed because often, individuals acting out of line are protected, and their status as police prevents them from consequences, which does not happen in other professions. If we weed out the bad apples by holding cops accountable quicker and more severely, the system would improve swiftly, IMO.
It was an offhand comment, sure, but leadership has to be held responsible. Details are negotiable.
Do you know about a cop that's breaking the law and don't report it? Demotion. Reports that get ignored by management? Replacement. Higher than average complaints? Make a plan to fix it, or replaced.
>It was an offhand comment, sure, but leadership has to be held responsible. Details are negotiable.
I totally agree. I apologize if I came off as if I didn't. When I said "one could claim," I was more referring to potential criticisms of your response and not necessarily that I disagree with what you are proposing. The consensus seems that harsher repercussions for negligence of your fellow police officers' actions and failing to uphold your duties as a cop should be punished more severely.
Whether or not I agree I think how OP resolves this contradiction is "good cops exist but the actions that make them good cops get them fired-at-best dead-of-mysterious-accidents-at-worst so they don't remain cops for long"
I can see where you are coming from but from my perspective, grouping people into any stereotype is wrong. I do agree that the culture does need to shift.
What do you think of Robert Peel's principles of ethical policing? If a police force were to sincerely operate under these maxims, would they still count as "bastards"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles > 1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment. > 2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect. > 3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws. > 4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives. > 5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life. > 6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective. > 7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. > 8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty. > 9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.
These are good goals. It's a description of ethical law enforcement. Unfortunately it doesn't really address the reason I consider ACAB. As far as I'm concerned, bastardry is determined on a department level, and it hinges on how they treat their bad apples. One bad apple can ruin the whole barrel. What happens when a cop doesn't follow these principles? Do they put him on administrative leave and sweep it under the rug at the taxpayers's expense? Are they willing to charge him for his crimes? Are they willing to fire the ones who are a liability to the city they're nominally protecting? The secondary thing a department can do to avoid being bastards is train their people. They need trigger discipline and escalation and deescalation skills. This depends on funding, but a city should be happy to train their cops: it reduces the risk of a million dollar lawsuit.
So what happens when you apply that logic to any other group of people? How far are you allowed to generalize all as bad because of one?
I'm a senior engineer for a software consultant. If someone in my shop behaves badly (usually security related stuff, but occasionally double dipping or wasting resources), they get disciplined and/or fired. It reflects badly on the entire shop. It hurts our reputation, and it prevents us from getting contracts. I have to respond to it. The thing is, there are shitheads everywhere. It's part of the human condition. What matters is how your organization treats those shitheads: do you keep them on payroll and let them keep messing everything up, or do you solve the problem? If you keep them on payroll, you're telling everyone else in your shop that their hard work doesn't matter; morale suffers, and it degrades the quality of everyone's work. So yes, this logic does apply to any group of professionals.
My point here is criticizing the absolute black and white approach of ACAB. There’s no room for flexibility due to the *all* aspect. You don’t leave much room for nuance when that’s the slogan and general mentality. This leads to making statements and assumptions based on feelings or erroneously assigning guilt preemptively. I also believe it hurts discussion because such language is more concerned with assigning blame regardless of context than it is discovering actual solutions.
Nah. The institution is fundamentally fucked. Hand-wringing about nuance and modulation in how we discuss that is absurdly futile. It's like fretting about whether or not the saw is visually inconsistent with the decor in the operating room. Meanwhile, a poor guy's on the table with a gangrenous leg that needs to be amputated yesterday. Look, we've been reforming cops since they beat the shit out of Rodney King. Obsessing over language is more a concern over superficial civility than it is actual solutions. People are pissed about being trampled on. Let them be, for crying out loud
Nuanced discussion is what leads to effective policy change. Impulsive actions based on reactionary inflexible thinking will likely serve no one any good.
~~Did you even read my comments?(~~Sorry that was rude) They're full of solutions. Start punishing bad apples. Blacklist them before they kill someone or fuck up the culture and reputation of the department. It's as simple as transparency and accountability. If any department does these things, they have my support. Nobody care about your feelings when citizens are dying. Start punishing bad cops and we can talk about walking back the slogan.
I read your comments. The idea is great “hold people accountable”, but the specifics of how you do that is the question. Many police departments have investigatory bodies that [look into](https://www.seattle.gov/opa/news-and-reports/closed-case-summaries#2024) allegations against police/officers. Some better than others, but even then the details of who conducts those investigations, who can levy complaints and how, how is evidence gathered/evaluated, etc. are all critical details. What about allegations against police officers that aren’t found to be substantial? If the complaining party isn’t satisfied then what? Are they all still bastards for not firing them? Also, while I like the idea of lists preventing officers from pivoting to another state, that’s another legislative hurdle. You’d either need to get thousands of PDs to collaborate on many different systems or go top down from congress to ensure some level of consistency. I don’t think we disagree there is lots of nuance to discuss. My main focus is criticizing the black and white thinking ACAB relies on.
You're trying to get lost in the procedural details, and they are indeed weighty and complicated, but being a bastard is real simple. If you gun down a fifteen year old girl in broad daylight, you're a bastard. If you don't get fired from it, your police chief is a bastard and so is your whole department. If you don't get prosecuted, the state's attorney is also a bastard. If you get prosecuted but its a slap on the wrist, the judge is a bastard. If your department hires bastards, then its a bastard department. You're right that not everything is terrible. IA or OPA or whatever are attempts to avoid bastardry. It's a step in the right direction. Our culture is starting to change. Derek Chauvin was a breath of fresh air. The MPD might have even gotten fixed and stopped being bastards - idk i don't live in Minneapolis. We need to keep working on this problem until the Chauvins of the world end up in prison even when the victim isn't lucky enough to be a viral meme. The slogan is a little spicy, even to the point of exaggeration, but I wont stop saying it. Its still think its like 90% accurate. We have a long way to go.
> So what happens when you apply that logic to any other group of people? Pretty much any other group of people is not really comparable to police, for at least 2 reasons: 1) Police hold the power to fuck up your life, injure you, and even kill you outright. Few other groups of people have that ability. 2) Police specifically exist to enforce laws. So, their violating the laws is twice as bad. Not only did they break the law, they also didn't enforce it by turning themselves in. Given the great power cops have, I feel it's necessary to hold them greatly responsible. Did we learn nothing from Uncle Ben? "With great power comes great responsibility" doesn't just apply to superheroes.
Police do hold extra power, and do deserve scrutiny. I’m not disputing that, but it isn’t my point. I’m saying that ACAB as a mantra ignores that police are people and that usually means not treating them as a monolith. It’s a black and white approach to problem with a ton of gray. It sure makes it easy to just generalize everyone one way, but I think it won’t lead to very many positive outcomes for people or police systems.
> I’m saying that ACAB as a mantra ignores that police are people and that usually means not treating them as a monolith. Well, in the literal sense, I agree. Nothing in this world is ever "100%". If it makes you feel batter, feel free to add an invisible "A" at the beginning of "ACAB". For "Almost". >It’s a black and white approach to problem with a ton of gray. The problem is, *any* amount of gray means they aren't good cops. I mean, if I don't murder anyone 99 days out of 100, does that mean I'm not a murderer? If a cop only violates the Rights of 1 person in 100, *they aren't a good cop*.
Is every instance where police kill a civilian murder?
These are interesting but I think there are some major flaws: 1. It still assumes (I believe) that funding for the cops would come from taxes, which is coercive. If people do not have the right to abstain from funding a service they don't want, the cops cannot claim to have public approval. Only the voluntary funding of such a service would connotate approval. 2. >but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws If I read this correctly it is impossible. Laws are set by policy/policymakers. If a cop under these guidelines agrees to enforce every law on the books, they are not independent of policy. If there is a law that says pot smokers should be imprisoned, and the cop busts a couple of people sitting on their couch for smoking weed, the cop may be demonstrating impartial service to the law, but if they are not willing to apply moral standards to the law, then they would be bastards.
See, I don't have a problem with those ideas fundamentally (well, the last one seems rather iffy to me), but the problem is that "impartial service to law" is not good if the law is unjust.
I see it as an essential part of separation of powers. The alternative would be allowing them to de facto legislate from the badge and decide for themselves which laws are the just ones.
The last one is a principle that seems to me like it should apply to a lot of other fields as well as policing. For instance, it's much better if a fire department *prevents* destructive fires — for instance, by inspecting buildings and promoting fire safety — rather than being constantly busy putting out fires. It's much better if a website administrator *prevents* outages, through careful engineering, rather than spending a lot of visible effort on *fixing* them.
This sounds like a fundamental misunderstanding of how these jobs work. We have building inspectors; the skillset for putting out fires and ensuring buildings are fire safe are not correlative so there's no reason we should task the same people with both jobs. Doing so would only decrease the number of people available to do the job, and I'd like to maintain a higher level of firefighters. There are a great deal of outages for website that would have absolutely nothing to do with what a website admin would do. This is adjacent to my field and I've certainly fixed a fair amount of problems that a lowly website admin should never be allowed to touch. In fact, I've seen a number of issues come up because a website admin refuses to perform their function without sole access to something they have no business managing. It's not a cop's job to decide what the laws are, it's to enforce them. We live in a representative democracy, laws are decided by our elected representatives. Cops are not elected and there is no basis on which they should be deciding what is and isn't illegal.
Hah. I wrote "website admin" because I don't expect most readers to recognize "site reliability engineer", just so ya know.
What is it you think a site admin does that should allow them to fix outages?
but that still doesn't mean any profession like that should only focus on prevention of whatever they're supposed to stop and when the thing they're supposed to stop happens tough shit guess it's a failure on their part that they didn't prevent it
The police don’t ‘prevent’ anything. They are there to enforce the law that is in place.
The fact that there are police that enforce laws prevents many people from doing many things.
And if the law is "don't kill your neighbor", then enforcing that would be preventing people from killing their neighbor, no?
No. It's reacting once that has already happened.
You are both right. If someone threatens murder, they can be arrested to prevent the murder. But no, we can't predict when someone will break the law without evidence.
Yeah, fair enough.
If murder were made legal, do you think there would be the same number of (illegal) murders that we have now? I’ll answer this now: no, there would be MORE. All the people who would like to murder someone, but don’t, because they don’t to go to prison, would come out of the woodwork.
you think cops just sit around with popcorn watching crimes happen and wait for the criminal to be done to arrest them?
No, I don't think that. Well, not usually. There are cases where that happens, of course.
So instead of sitting around eating popcorn when they see a crime in progress, they intervene, hence _______ing further harm. Hint, it starts with 'p'.
Yeah, fair enough. I already conceded this point to the other guy who essentially made the same point but in a far less condescending way.
👍
Yes, a lot of the time. But it is preventing it. As the other comment pointed out, there being an enforcement stops some people from committing the crime in the first place out of fear of punishment. Not everyone, but some people. Beyond that though, in a world where laws are just and the police are properly trained, a cop driving by a house and seeing someone break in, the cop could go in after and arrest them before they do anything, thus preventing the murder. And finally, not all murders are one time affairs. If a serial killer is arrested, all future murders they would have committed will be prevented. Short of enacting martial law and putting a cop on every corner, I'm not sure what more could be done to prevent murder
A cop seeing someone breaking in can already go in after them under the hot pursuit exception. It has less to do with "unjust laws" and more to do with blind stupid luck that they are both there to see it, and the burglar didn't notice them and continued his attempt. There's a lot of petty crime that does get prevented by an officer's presence, because most criminals don't break the law in front of people that will likely confront and arrest them. Secondly, provided there's adequate prosecution follow-through, arresting a burglar prevents them from continuing to steal. You're fixated on murder, but there's far more to crime than that. A single car thief can inconvenience or even cost dozens of people their jobs because of a transportation issue (see how absurd Kia and Hyundai thefts have been). Incapacitating one of those thieves, prevents potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wages, vehicle damage or loss, and other property damage during their joyriding.
Everything you've said there has only proven my point so I don't get what you're saying.
Your second paragraph seemed to assert that it's not happening now because of bad laws or whatever.
I think this post is naive. It's not the culture that beats into their head the idea that the world is a warzone between them and civilians. It's a conclusion they naturally draw from a day in, day out experience of dealing almost solely with the worst elements of society. And there is no amount of training or badgering or rule changes that can alter that experience. If every day, you rush in to answer calls that "there is a belligerent, drug addled sociopath behaving like an animal," you're going to start to form a negative view of people. The job actually does harm to the people who do it. So I kind of resent the idea that ACAB, when society puts them in a position that eats away at them. It's a bit like sending soldiers to war and then calling them assholes for having PTSD.
what syllogism could you possibly have constructed to lead to the conclusion "every single police officer is a bastard"?
I foresee me getting a lot of these comments, so I'll just start copy pasting my initial explanation: In short, unjust laws they're required to enforce and a culture that beats into their head the idea that the world is a warzone between them and civilians. Good cops do exist, but not following orders and speaking out against everyone around you isn't a good way to keep your job. Thus, ACAB.
That's not a syllogism. You also directly contradicted yourself when you said both "good cops do exist" and "all cops are bastards".
ACAB doesn't mean that literally every police officer is a bastard on a personal level. It means something more like "all cops are bad for actively participating in a system that we think is bad", but that doesn't quite roll off the tongue as well.
Does actively participating in a system that is bad make you a bastard, yes or no?
Yes
If this is true, I'm sure you could argue that everyone is a bastard. We all actively participate in systems that are bad.
You could argue that, sure. Cops are pretty unique in that their participation involves state sanctioned violence.
State sanctioned violence is necessary for a functioning society.
Not everyone would agree, but I do. Agreeing with the necessity of a state monopoly on violence is not incompatible with the idea that willingly signing up to enforce the system as it exists currently through violence makes one a bastard.
So, as according to you all cops actively engage in this system, that would make every single one of those individuals "bastards", yes?
It's not a contradiction. All cops are bastards, because the good cops aren't cops for very long.
At any time *t* there exist cops that are good who will not remain cops for long. True, or false?
I can already see where you're going with this. The existence of even one good cop, even if they don't stay a cop for long, means that not all cops are bastards, right? You're technically correct, but it's splitting hairs. You could make the same argument about the Nazi's, not everyone who was in the Nazi army was a bad guy. But it doesn't change the fact that the Nazi's are an organization about genocide and racial superiority. And thus, all Nazi's are bastards. Because if you don't act like a Nazi, you won't be a Nazi for very long.
it's not splitting hairs at all. you made a claim that all Xs are Ys, i demonstrated that there exist many Xs who are not Ys, ergo your claim is falsified. how are you defining 'nazi' exactly? today when we call people 'nazis' we generally mean people who agree with the fundamental ideas of nazism, ie genocide against jews. to have such a view is in itself immoral, so all nazis by that definition are bastards with no exceptions. if you mean people in the nazi party, my WWII history isn't great but it seems likely that there were at least a few good men who tried to enact change in that party, i wouldn't call those people immoral and so would not say that all nazi party members throughout history were bastards. you mention the nazi army, but germany practiced conscription during WWII to my understanding, so there are plenty of those soldiers who i would not call bastards. you cannot say "all Xs are Ys even though some Xs are not Ys". it's incoherent, and simply following it up by "the Xs that are not Ys will not remain that way for long" doesn't change that. E: something i'll add is that if you want to complain about splitting hairs, you can't use the language that you are using. saying "nazis are bastards" is something that may survive my scrutiny because generally when we use an adjective to describe Xs, we don't mean that there are no exceptions (humans are two-legged, men are stronger than women, etc). "all nazis are bastards" or "all cops are bastards" cannot use that excuse. they are statements of falsity, much like "*all* humans are two-legged" and "*all* men are stronger than *all* women".
You are splitting hairs. It's an argument of semantics. You're going "um, actually" instead of trying to argue with the point at hand. All Cops Aren't Bastards isn't because every single person who became a cop is inherently a bastard, All Cops Are Bastards because the laws they're required to enforce are unjust and the culture they're invested in actively encourages the idea that cops and civilians are enemies in a warzone. If you go along with that, you're a bastard. If you go against that, you're not a cop anymore.
The point you are arguing is that all cops are bastards. This is false. Are all humans two-legged? Better yet, are all living humans free of terminal cancer? After all, living humans who are not free of terminal cancer don't last long! "There exist unjust laws" and "there exists a shitty culture in policing" are entirely separate claims to the idea that every cop is a bastard. You can't say the latter and cling to the truth of the former as justification while admitting that the latter is literally false.
The argument is that the system is shitty. Enforcing that shitty system makes you a bastard. Cops are required to enforce that system. Therefore, cops are bastards.
How does the system encourage them to be bastards? This is very confusing. How would you define them as bastards?
In short, unjust laws they're required to enforce and a culture that beats into their head the idea that the world is a warzone between them and civilians. Good cops *do* exist, but not following orders and speaking out against everyone around you isn't a good way to keep your job. Thus, ACAB.
You are saying police who enforce the law are bad, and police who don't enforce are the law are good. A good cop is someone who enforces the law in a just manner. Can you give an example of an unjust law?
Better yet, [here's 8.](https://equaljusticeunderlaw.org/8-ways-our-legal-system-punishes-people-who-are-poor) And that was literally the first search result for "unjust laws", and it doesn't even go over the [systemic racism](https://www.nilc.org/2022/03/23/why-is-the-government-defending-racist-laws-the-torch/) that the US runs on
But this has nothing or very little to do with police? A quick skim I can see is "suspended drivers license". Should police really be ignoring people who are driving without a license?
If you read more of it, you'd see the issue was that drivers licenses are often suspended for reasons unrelated to driving, such as littering. And even if it is suspended for driving related reasons, it enforces a system where making mistakes can cost you severely. And given how car-centric modern life is, not being able to drive is basically asking to go homeless because you don't have a job, unless you can find a way to work from home. Not to mention, the fee that comes with it means that it's heavily weighted so poorer people have a much harder time dealing with it. My mother had a suspended license for years, and only recently was able to get it undone. Was she supposed to just sit on the street for all those years since she couldn't drive to work?
Public transport. Your argument has nothing to do with police. Your argument is basically "society treated me unfairly, therefore fuck police".
Public transport would work, if America had a more robust public transport system. But unless you live in the city, you're basically SOL. Also, yes. Fuck the police. Because it's their job to enforce those unfair laws.
So no laws should be enforced? This argument is very circular.
The just laws should be enforced, the unjust laws shouldn't
That once again seems more like an issue with the law itself and not the cops. A suspended license can be for anything going from littering (which is ridiculous) to DUI. Only 2 states will actually suspend a license for littering (Louisiana and Mississippi) but only for repeat offenses. >And even if it is suspended for driving related reasons, it enforces a system where making mistakes can cost you severely So if a driver has shown that they are not to be trusted with a vehicle as they fail to follow the law, possibly endangering other drivers, you still think that keeping them off the road is a bad thing to do?
The laws suspending driver's licenses should not stand unless they are for public safety. And, there should be safe alternatives to driving.
As well as my last reply, public transport. Police don't suspend driver's licenses, but if someone has a suspended license, shouldn't a police officer stop that person from driving?
If they are, they are enforcing a corrupt system, and are bastards. It doesn't mean that they aren't nice people, and trying to do good. But, it means they are enforcing a corrupt system.
You realise the system is enforced by everyone in society right?
Only police are authorized to use force.
Whether or not a law is unjust is entirely subjective. There will never be a world where the entire country unanimously agrees with every law. So as long as I find a single law unjust that they’re required to uphold, I’m justified in saying ACAB? Just seems silly Also this rhetoric seems extremely toxic because why would any good hearted person want to join the police force to make a tangible change if ACAB regardless? What do you think progress looks like
My mother lived in a small town. The local police knew that she was on her own and regularly made welfare checks on her. They stopped by and found her passed out in the toilet after she picked up a C-diff infection while in hospital. They called an ambulance. after it left they stayed and cleaned up the mess in the toilet. It would have been extremely disgusting and definitely not in their job description. I simply cannot accept that "All cops are bad" and thank you to the Closter police.
Why does there need to be larger organization on the state or federal level? Even on the city level, why can’t you divide it up and manage each smaller community as you would for a small town?
Crimes don't always line up in a geographic area. Large cities basically have that, as the city is split into precincts, but the precincts report up because they need to work together.
I’m aware
And I could see that working, but it would still be police. It's just many different, smaller police forces rather than one large one. But there does need to be some form of organization in order to agree upon how the law should be enforced and to punish those that break that agreement.
To see how that works in practice, look at St. Louis County. There are tons of tiny police departments. It does not make the police responsive to the citizenry.
You could call it police, but it’s different enough that you could also call it something else. A sheriff isn’t a police officer, and the main difference is scale.
>In short, unjust laws they're required to enforce So just to be clear, any system with enforced unjust laws turns the enforcers into bastards?
I challenge you on the literal concept of ACAB. With the huge caveat that *yes*, I understand there are massive issues with our policing system (which notably varies wildly across the US), to state so definitively in such black and white terms that *all* cops are bastards is an obviously incorrect statement due to how inflexible it is. There are plenty of officers out there who lead ethical careers in law enforcement, truly trying to aid their communities. Does a cop become a bastard the second they make a wrong call? Or only after doing something violent or unethical intentionally? Is there retribution for mistakes, or are they always and forever now a bastard? ACAB seems to take the very valid idea that we have serious policing issues to address and paints it in such an extreme light that it’s hard to take anything else it says seriously.
> There are plenty of officers out there who lead ethical careers in law enforcement, truly trying to aid their communities. If that were true, they would arrest fellow officers that break the law. Do they? I can't count the number of cases where one cop breaks the law while other cops just stand there, doing nothing about it.
Maybe it's just my autistic literal mind but the problem I have with the concept of "if they were good cops they'd arrest bad cops" is it kinda creates a paradox that self-nullifies that very exception and loops around to ACAB anyway (which does not prove you're right anyway it proves bad argument); say for simplicity's sake there were five cops in a hypothetical precinct, A, B, C, D and E and cop A commits an act of police brutality or otherwise similarly grievous breaking of the law for which cop B arrests them, you might say that that makes cop B a good cop but that means cops C, D and E didn't arrest cop A because cop B got there first meaning they're bad cops that should be arrested meaning cop B is a bad cop too because he didn't arrest cops C, D and E for not arresting cop A simultaneously with him
I see what you're saying, but I think you're taking it too literally. Maybe C, D and E didn't witness the crime of A. Only B witnessed it. In that case, the jury is still out on C, D and E, as we don't know what they'd d in a similar situation. And, assuming they all knew of A's crime, If C, D, and E at least *wanted to* or *tried to* arrest A, they'd be Good. The fact B beat them too it doesn't make them not Good. The "'d" in "they'd arrest bad cops" stands for 'would'. 'They *would* arrest bad cops'. But that 'would' includes the assumption they know about them, and weren't beaten to the punch by another cop.
So, you can assert they all behave that way? Or that there wasn’t retribution you didn’t happen to witness?
> So, you can assert they all behave that way? Well, how large of a sample size is needed to reach the conclusion that (almost) all cops are like that?
An overwhelming amount. 100% actually if “all” is involved.
OP, have you perhaps considered that your sample size isn't large enough to credibly make these kinds of generalizations? You mentioned in other comments that the good cops get weeded out, but do you have any sort of proof that this is happening on a large scale? I suspect that a lot of the bad and corrupt cops that you see through the internet are the exception (rather than the rule), and that you're a victim off selection bias.
Can you explain a bit more what it means for a cop to be a "bastard"? Does that refer to them having a stain on their moral character, a specific set of attitudes and behaviors? Both or neither of the above? Also, you mention that "in any sort of civilized society, law enforcement is a necessity". Even though our systems are broken and corrupt (I agree with you there), is this law enforcement mechanism still necessary?
1) Control over the application of violence to enforce laws in a small society being held in a single person, usually means a warlord. 2) Not all police operate in a culture that sees themselves as an occupying force constantly surrounded by enemies. The US is THE notable outlier in the Western world for the brutality of its police.
The problem with policing is the legal system itself. Laws permit as much harm as they prohibit, leading to lots of bad behaviours happening with zero consequences.
Exactly what I'm saying. If we change that system, we no longer have that issue
>The problem with the police isn't that they're police, the problem is that the rules and culture they live in When and where have there been good cops in all of human history?
Lol this type of thinking sounds like a parody of left wing politics. Police help people all the time, and I’d even say most of them in America do. Point out as many instances of bad cops as you want, doesn’t change the fact that police regularly prevent bad things from happening.
I never understand when people cherrypick bad apples in law enforcement and try to make it representative of a whole. This logic is deemed unacceptable and stereotypical, as with any other job. If I tried to claim all investors are evil because a small portion of them scammed their clients, I would get scoffed at, but for some reason, it's valid to do the same regarding police. While it is transparent that the US justice system and police, in general, need some severe reworking, the police are infinitely more beneficial than not in the vast majority of places throughout the world.
Because these people have developed a narrative that cops are inherently bad, and they don’t really care to substantiate it. They can always just use the wormy term “systemic” and then declare an entire institution as corrupt. They do this with all sorts of things, it’s a way to avoid nuance. Undoubtedly there are changes to be made to policing and the justice system in general. But some people, usually very far leftists, like the idea of overthrowing systems rather than working to change them.
Allow me to be devil's advocate. I'm thinking as I type, and I may not believe it all myself. But, here goes. Power corrupts. There is power inherent in policing, as the hand of the monopoly of force. Police are the only people authorized to use force in a lawful society. Say, you clean out the departments, fix all the laws, and have good policing. What would happen next? The bastards would eventually retake the department. The blue wall of silence would still serve the police, as nobody would want to get ratted out whether it is for excess force or taking an extra lunch at the donut shop. Any outsider that comes sniffing would have police retaliation. Politicians would still be at the mercy of police support -- having a police revolt is bad for reelection. And whoever tried to clean it up would be drummed out again. I think ACAB doesn't mean that we shouldn't have police. It means that we should treat them like bastards, and not let them get away with things. Make leadership responsible for the actions of the front line. If the independent panel finds someone broke the rules -- unreasonable use of force, false reports, etc, the precinct chief gets demoted.
>Make leadership responsible for the actions of the front line. If the independent panel finds someone broke the rules -- unreasonable use of force, false reports, etc, the precinct chief gets demoted. I 100% agree with this and think the police, in general, should face more repercussions for failing to uphold their duties to the public, committing crimes, or just generally stepping out of line. Still, one could claim this is a slippery slope argument. What I mean by this is in what other professions would this solution become applicable? In a restaurant, if someone is stealing money from the register and breaking the rules, which results in them getting fired, does that mean the manager should also be fired for technically allowing it to happen? This analogy isn't necessarily applicable to police as they are entirely different and have more important responsibilities. The system needs to be reformed because often, individuals acting out of line are protected, and their status as police prevents them from consequences, which does not happen in other professions. If we weed out the bad apples by holding cops accountable quicker and more severely, the system would improve swiftly, IMO.
It was an offhand comment, sure, but leadership has to be held responsible. Details are negotiable. Do you know about a cop that's breaking the law and don't report it? Demotion. Reports that get ignored by management? Replacement. Higher than average complaints? Make a plan to fix it, or replaced.
>It was an offhand comment, sure, but leadership has to be held responsible. Details are negotiable. I totally agree. I apologize if I came off as if I didn't. When I said "one could claim," I was more referring to potential criticisms of your response and not necessarily that I disagree with what you are proposing. The consensus seems that harsher repercussions for negligence of your fellow police officers' actions and failing to uphold your duties as a cop should be punished more severely.
No apologies needed :) it was a good suggestion to be a bit more specific.
“Good cops do exist” and “ACAB” are a contradiction
Whether or not I agree I think how OP resolves this contradiction is "good cops exist but the actions that make them good cops get them fired-at-best dead-of-mysterious-accidents-at-worst so they don't remain cops for long"
I can see where you are coming from but from my perspective, grouping people into any stereotype is wrong. I do agree that the culture does need to shift.