this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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US Authoritarianism
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OP shows 2 cops dragging a student by her hair for protesting a genocide.
In what world are these people not outlandishly and cartoonishly evil?
Like even if you ignore that they uphold an unjust system designed to protect capital and oppress the working class, as we're seeing in 4K on campuses across the country, and we saw in 2020, individually, "outlandishly and cartoonishly evil" is an apt descriptor for people who respond to protests against state violence by beating the shit out of teenagers.
That's actually a really good question
I think generally it boils down to an "enemy" mentality. If you're a cop, a decent fraction of your job is getting violent with people who are resisting what you're doing because they don't want to go to jail. I think once someone slots into that "enemy" category, then it immediately becomes comfortable to do something horrendous to them; even if, like this woman, they didn't do a damn thing wrong. So the end result is lending strength to state oppression.
I don't think the solution to that is to get rid of all the cops. What are you going to do if someone tries to murder you? Any city in American that wanted to get its city council together and just disband the police force is able to do that; I don't think it's a unanimous capitalistic plot that they don't; it's that they genuinely fulfill an important function.
I also don't think the solution is to have cops, but make them the enemy and be hostile to them all the time and defund them to punish them and decide that they're a part of your city's infrastructure that's just always the enemy all the time. That's part of what I don't like about this meme -- it's like, who cares if it's true, I just know these are always shitty people so any shitty thing I want to believe about them becomes a good thing to feel and so let's get busy on hating them.
I do think strong oversight of the police is a good thing. I think bodycams and the culture of charging police with a crime (sometimes 😕) when they commit a crime changed policing in a massive way that isn't really recognized. There are still big problems for sure. I also think sending people who aren't police to e.g. mental health calls, places where the "let's catch the bad people" model isn't going to be what is needed, is a really good thing.
But I think in general, exactly the same mentality that leads this cop to drag this woman around by her hair ("well fuck it, she's a suspect, she's coming with me and who cares whether it gets done in a humane fashion, because that type of person is always the enemy") actually roots back at the core to a very similar mentality to that that says "I'm going to bitch at the cop on this traffic stop and be antagonistic for no reason" or "all bad statistics about cops are true, all good statistics about cops are false" or etc etc, you know that type of person is always the enemy, you get the idea.
I have no part in this, because I don't live in the US, but basing your argument on a picture of two (one?) cop being a dick, does not make all cops dicks. They may be, but this picture shouldn't be proof of it as you imply on this comment. No pictures are being taken of cops doing the job properly, let alone being shared online. Besides that, one bad cop does not make all cops bad. This may be turning into a Bear/Man discussion so I will leave it at this
My point is, yeah they might be dicks, but I think that it is fair to point out false facts and arguments even though they support a notion that is true
1 bad cop, protected by 9 "good" cops is 10 bad cops. It doesn't matter which one in particular has you in a choke-hold, all of them are necessary for that one to do what he is doing.
As mentioned i have no part in this or any knowledge of what you are reffering to. Just pointing out that the initial argument based on one pictures of one cop is not proof enough to make all cops bad. But i guess i am in the wrong sub to argue stuff like this
One thing I like to do is ask people for examples of police misconduct, and then point out that the overwhelming majority of the examples they cited involved the cops getting arrested or prosecuted by their fellow officers for what they were doing. Not all, obviously.
The person elsewhere in this thread who cited domestic violence among police conformed exactly to that pattern - they cited a 2015 study that went over a bunch of different examples of domestic abuse by cops, and in pretty much every one the cop was being prosecuted for what they'd done.
You don't have to agree with me of course, but I think this is part of the big change that's gone unnoticed in the culture of policing even in the short time since Eric Garner and that era -- it used to be that cops would protect each other even for very major crimes; I think that that's becoming a lot less true now.
ACAB. But i agree if only to not have the wind knocked out of my sales because the 40% are domestic abusers is weak and especially easily countered in an argument on why ACAB. And its a weak argument that is wholly unnecessary to establish ACAB.
Yeah, agreed. There are tons of valid reasons to criticize the police (or, I would say, demand accountability from them in keeping with the amount of power they're granted by the legal system). But just framing something deliberately slanted because you want to make them look as bad as possible doesn't seem like a good addition to that list though.
It is all their cops beating their spouses that in fact make them look bad, not our framing of the beating of spouses by cops.
Yes the 40% number cannot be confirmed, but I think the number is much higher based on literally every interaction I have had with police especially white male police.
Like y’all seriously gonna bet on the number of cops who beat their spouses and family as being under 40%? I am sure they dont consider it abuse, heck as they backhand their spouse as hard as they can for not doing the dishes they are probably always thinking in their head “I mean I slammed the police car door on the head of drugged out homeless person way harder just today and the homeless person didn’t complain like this, this is normal, my spouse is just weak and needs to be punished until they harden up”