Nothing surprising here. Violent enforcers of capital descended from slave patrols.
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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Another example of why there are no good cops.
because good ones never get the chance to be good.
Bad tree with a few good apples
If your only job is to go home at night, clock in, go home, clock out again later. If you think about it, by deliberately not doing your job as a cop, fewer people are getting killed.
I can’t recall if it was in the Behind the Police miniseries or a more regular Behind the Bastards episode, but there was a breakdown of how even once you’ve completed the police academy, you have to train for a year (IIRC) under a training officer, and if the TO thinks you’re not cut out for the force, you are not permanently hired, and other forces will probably not give you a chance. TOs, by the bye, are typically drawn from officers who have been taken off normal duty due to numerous complaints, like the ones made by people who have been harassed or assaulted by cops.
It’s not just the academy, the whole system selects for bastards.
Interesting. So no more will I advocate for:
“PEB”
(Policing Enables Bastards)
Nor the too distracting “ALL CAB” (“wait but only sith…”)
But the “select” language, seems powerful if can be backed up across many sources
I had a friend who went through a whole arc of wanting to be a cop. She had pretty much an identical experience I had to squint at the name and photo to be sure this wasn't a post she had made.
Being a woman was a huge setback from the get-go anyway, casual police brutality training notwithstanding.
She never quite got my criticism of wanting to be a cop (She wanted to fix policing by example) nor my lack of surprise when she spent a year wasting her time being tested and strung along by cops who were never going to hire her. (You have a master's degree FFS! You're not what they're looking for!)
(She wanted to fix policing by example)
Might be possible to whistleblow against one corrupt officer if you play dumb until getting hired? Which would be an acceptable use of time for some, though perhaps (or “super likely”, w/e) activism elsewhere has greater ROI
Edit: hey scale this up. Every Lemming plays dumb and gets hired. We each report one rotten apple. Wouldn’t this at least annoy some sleaze out there and cause a very slight delay as they reshuffle their cops?
(Obvy you need a despicable crime on video and luck etc)
Meanwhile they also teach them next to nothing about, nor verify their understanding of the laws they will be tasked with enforcing, and many absolutely do not understand the law at all.
They also don't want people who are too smart:
9/8/2000 (!)
https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
What about the roles where intelligence is required, like investigation, forensics etc. Are there no Sherlock Holmes fans in the police?
I remember hearing this. Seems the smarter you are, the more likely you are of realizing something doesn't seem right and chances of quitting increase.
Holy shit.
Meanwhile they also teach them next to nothing about, nor verify their understanding of the laws they will be tasked with enforcing, and many absolutely do not understand the law at all.
Which is why I will continue to tell people to ensure that the police et al (including ICE) don't get to go home at night, if they get in the way of democracy.
They do this with teachers too, selecting only the subservient and weeding out the critical thinkers.
Yes absolutely. More generally "guard labor" is a huge proportion of servants under capitalism: cops, military, prison labor, security guards, surveillance, teachers, psychiatrists, etc.
I went to a technical college that had a police training program. Technical colleges sometimes have the reputation of being glorified high schools. That's mostly unfair, but there were three guys in some of my classes who were determined to make it that way. Give you one guess as to what program they were in.
I wouldn't trust those three to be security guards at a shopping mall.
I'm not an anarchist looking for the abolition of police as a concept.
But the institution of policing in America needs a Truth and Reconciliation commission. Complete top to bottom scrapping and rework. And a lot of pigs need to go to prison for a long time.
Why abolish fundamentally violent and corrupt organizations when you can collaborate?
Most privileged take.
Also, stop calling them cops
This "cop" word has this cool power connotation
Call them police officer, that is what they are
Also get rid of the police Union as it currently is because apparently it is a major reason for a lot of the systemic issues being faced.
I have no problem with unions per-se, but when police officers break rules, they need to be held accountable and that simply doesn't happen most of the time because of the unions and even when held accountable, it's a slap on the hand and worst case, work in the city next door.
You've also got to demilitarise the police. End 1033 and claw back every iota of military gear. End killology training. Fund social workers to replace many of their duties. Etc etc etc too many things to name. It's so bad that anything approaching adequate reform sounds insanely radical
This is it IMHO, as long as the problems pile up (or get made up) and don't get solved by police, they're allowed to spend more and more public money on armored vehicles and other crap that doesn't help the community. This spending is what allows them to be both incompetent and wasteful or downright dangerous. "Follow the money"; who earns from all this?
We had that in our European country and it was pretty amazing. Police corruption dropped a shit ton as they were not above the law anymore.
Imagine a world where the top priority of the police team (not “force”) was to help and support the people. “Help” includes stopping confirmed bad guys but also includes finding the homeless a safe place to sleep.
Send all police trainees to social work school.
What a world that would be.
Part of what I would call the PSA - Public Service Agency, so named due to the consistency with Public Service Announcements - would be patrol vehicles (Ford Transit Connect, RIP) that are marked with attention grabbing (not camouflaged) vehicles that help citizens with daily public issues.
• Need some assistance / instructions on how to get unemployment or other public assistance? We got you covered.
• Need some basic first aid and / or a call for an EMT? We got you covered.
• Need some information about how to get jobs, update a resume, or understand your skill set? We got you covered.
We need to remove most of the police from the streets, and inject the streets with helpful people who want to improve the cities, and help to mitigate the issues that cause a rise in crime.
We need to build a system of citizen empowerment.
I think you're right but for the wrong reasons - I think it would be an absolute net positive effect but I still think the lines should be drawn between policing and social work and healthcare issues. Fair warning, I'm from the UK which has it's own issues with policing but nothing on the clusterfuck scale as it is across the pond.
Sending police officers (and ambulance staff, maybe even coastguard - in the civilian sense, not the American branch of the military) to do two or four weeks of social work attachment would work wonders. It would provide a great insight into the difficulties and behaviours of those in social or mental crisis, and give more soft tools to recognise and resolve issues.
That said, it shouldnt be policing agencies going to social work or mental health calls in the first place. People in crisis are often acting irrationally or unpredictably due to the very nature of the crisis they're experiencing, and when a lethal weapon is an optional available to the responders, then you'll have a less than spectacular outcome on occasions.
Ideally, additional funding should be centered around social work and mental health teams - perhaps having first responders for both so you don't have cops wading in with the best of intentions, and confronting something they aren't the best people to be dealing with - where a mental health ambulance or a social work rapid response team would bring a welfare call to a far safer conclusion.
I absolutely get that my view is very UK-skewed but if you keep putting armed cops into situations like that - then the public will get hurt, cops will get hurt, the taxpayer coughs up a fortune in legal costs .. all of which could fund better ways to respond to the homeless, the stressed, the neurodiverse, and other non-criminal issues that people phone in with good intentions.
Aww man, you made me cry a little bit for what could be.
Start by removing Qualified Immunity.
While this is definitely needed, I don't think it's a starting point.
IMO, a good place to start is instituting policies requiring LEOs/PDs carry liability insurance. Similar to doctors and other medical practices (in the US). An officer is found guilty or misconduct or violating a citizen's right? Penalties are taken out of their insurance and their premium increases. Can't afford the premium? Guess who's looking for a new job?
The way I see, the pigs can keep their criminal immunity, but civil matters will have a more direct financial incentive for them to behave like they have morals.
That's another "market economy" solution.
Maybe start with the training. It's ridiculously short in the US compared to European countries where the training takes usually multiple years, before you're allowed to go on your own
Longer training isn't going to help, they need better training
Makes sense. Make them a liability that not even the most corrupt officials wouldn't want to help because it'd be too costly.
Fight police with capitalism!
Get rid of pensions, pay them more, and require a full year of (quality) training.