Inside me are two wolves. One wants to abolish the police. The other wants to implement reforms that will improve policing.
Today, and over the next few days, you’re going to hear from the latter wolf. But before that, the first wolf has something to say.
All Cops Are Bastards (ACAB). Hey now, you may be saying. Only 30% of them admit to committing domestic violence. They aren’t all rapists, murderers, thieves, liars, and white supremacists who resist reform at every turn and steadfastly refuse to do any part of their jobs which might actually be helpful. I mean, police departments did manage to clear 54% of homicides in 2020 (homicides have the highest clearance rate of any crime).
And you know what? All that is true. But you know what else is true? Every single cop is either a rapist, murderer, etc. or knows a fellow officer who is and does nothing about it. That, or they’re incredibly good at denying obvious reality.
We cannot escape the fact that every single officer in the US chooses to uphold a system that is obviously and deeply racist, fascist, misogynistic, corrupt, needlessly and excessively violent, and unaccountable.
Perhaps it’s no wonder then that last year just 26% of US adults said they have a great deal of confidence in the police.
One fundamental problem with policing is articulated in the phrase “thin blue line.” A typical example of cop unsubtley, it literally refers to the line separating “them” from “us.” In this us-versus-them system, loyalty to fellow officers trumps everything, including considerations of such middling importance as public safety and transparency.
Ultimately, I do not dream of reforming existing monopolies on violence. I dream of abolishing violence.
But I don’t think everyone needs to work on abolition. I think we need people working on all aspects of the problem, based on their interests and skills. If specialization is good enough for making pencils, it’s good enough for social change. And while some ACAB girlies are working toward abolition, I’m going to sit here at my lappy and research policy solutions for making policing less atrociously shitty.
All Cops Could Be Less Bastardly (ACCBLB).
This is the first in a series inspired by a right-leaning client asking me to write about how to fix policing. It was a fun challenge to come up with ideas that a right-winger wouldn’t immediately dismiss, but were actually supported by the data.
Violent crime is on the rise. Many people say we need to get “tough on crime.” But simply giving cops more power, more weapons, less transparency, or less accountability will only lead to more of the same rape, murder, stealing, lying, fascism, and white supremacy that we’ve seen thus far. We’ve heard this song before. Without meaningful reform and actual accountability, cops will continue to use their resources not to protect and serve the citizenry, but to benefit themselves and their fellow officers.
But the best part of this research, for me, was the finding that multiple studies link distrust in police to higher crime rates, particularly homicide. Which means we don’t need to get “tough” to tackle crime. Working to heal the rift between cops and communities can help reduce crime. And it creates far less severe negative impacts than just ramping up the status quo.
Tomorrow I’ll delve into the first policy solution for decreasing crime by reducing distrust in police: Paying cops more.
Here are all the posts in this series:
The ACAB case against proactive policing
The ACAB case for hiring more officers
The ACAB case for paying cops more
The ACAB case for public police records
The ACAB case for community policing
The ACAB case for punishing police obfuscation
The ACAB case for saying her name
Sex and the State is a newsletter at the intersection of policy and people. Like it? Upgrade to a paid subscription, buy a guide, follow me on Twitter, support me on Patreon, or just share this post 🙏
~~~~~
This ⬇️ is an affiliate link! Sign up today to support me!
Join the reading revolution! Get key ideas from bestselling non-fiction books, distilled by experts into bitesize text and audio. Explore our vast library of over 5,500 titles and stay up-to-date with 40 new titles added each month.
Share this post