M³ | The Blog

All cops are bastards.

Some will read that statement and dismiss this idea out of hand. “We need cops,” they might say, “and some of them are good.”

Some cops are good people outside of their work. Some of them do good things while at work. But, in the end, the very nature of policing makes all cops bastards.

Here's a rhetorical example:

Suzanne grows up being taught that she should always help her neighbors, that she should work for her community. She's a good kid with a good heart, and she decides that she can best serve her community by becoming a cop. Little Suzy grows up, goes to school to study criminal justice, becomes a cop. Her heart is 100% in the right place.

Suzy isn't just a cop either. She's a person with a conscience. She sees injustice in the world, and it bothers her. She sees corporations poisoning politics and the planet, and she protests against that on her own time. She sees racist legislators passing racist laws, and she wants to undo them. (The laws, not the legislators—Suzy doesn't actually want to hurt anyone.) Suzy, the human being, is a good person. Everybody who meets Suzy, the person, likes her. She just wants to help everyone.

Suzy, the cop, has a job to do.

Sometimes that job entails arresting peaceful protesters who have chained themselves to the business doors of major banks whose capital is being used to proper fuck our planet. Suzy, the person, agrees with the protesters. She doesn't want to arrest them. But Suzy, the cop, has a job to do.

Sometimes Suzy's job entails clearing out encampments of unhoused people. Ripping tents so they can't be used properly, taking people's stuff and trashing it, arresting unhoused persons who are understandably upset that a squad of armed and armored officers are tearing through their things. Suzy, the person, has so much compassion for those unhoused people. If she could, she'd give every one of them a home. Suzy, the cop, has a job to do.

Sometimes Suzy's job entails evicting people of color from the homes they can no longer afford in neighborhoods that have been gentrified. Sometimes that means taking all of a person's belongings and dumping them on the sidewalk for the city's waste collection teams to trash. Sometimes that means arresting homeowners who refuse to leave, who have nowhere else to go. Suzy, the person, understands that racists and elitists have conspired to push these poor folk out of their homes with unjust and inequitable zoning laws and policies. Suzy, the person, hates every eviction she has to enforce. Suzy, the cop, has a job to do.

Suzy, the human being, is a good person. Suzy, the cop, is a bastard.

Here's another way to think about it:

We could build an all-Black police force of the most compassionate, helpful people we could imagine, but if the laws it is tasked with enforcing are written by white supremacists, that all-Black police force will end up enforcing white supremacy.

I could go on, but people reading this who can't now see my point never will.

The police do not serve us.

The police protect and serve the system—and the people in power whom that system benefits.

This is not something that reform can fix. That doesn't mean reform efforts are entirely pointless—making a shitty thing a little better is, well, better than nothing. But as long as our systems are designed to protect some people's rights before and instead of others', to serve capital rather than human beings, all cops will always be bastards.

Know more, believe less.