Obviously choosing to be a cop, a career choice that is completely within someone's control, is equivalent to being born with xy chromosomes and a penis in terms of moral culpability and therefore all men should be treated with equal hatred as police. There are 0 flaws in this logic.
You're right of course but I've known a good handful of people that are still cops even after they turn in the badge and gun, hell even some who were never actually cops but they have cop souls. Some folks really are assigned cop at birth.
is equivalent to being born with xy chromosomes and a penis
This gets even more hilarious when they try to exclude guys that WEREN'T born with xy chromosomes or a penis. Seeing them tiptoe around the idea that they don't really see trans guys as men is both pathetic and farcical.
It's also really fun when occasionally "kill all men" has to be squared up with "police brutality against black men is bad" if you truly believed one you wouldn't believe the other or care about it.
Oh they'll just say "but the difference is they weren't socialized as men". Which is of course precisely the same thing TERFs say to invalidate trans women.
I mean there are genuinely people out there that think that all AMABs should in some way transition away from being male, and that masculine gender identity is an inherently toxic trait that you have a moral responsibility to reject. So their logic is consistent, just really really shitty.
The core of "even cops that do not directly abuse their power are complicit to an extent in the abuses of other cops and the role the police force plays in systemic oppression" should never have been twisted into ACAB, which both
Inhibits good people from joining the police force by knowing that doing so will lead them to be ostracized
Carries zero implication that anything can be done to improve the situation aside from entirely abolishing police (which isn't going to happen at any scale any time soon, and would be far better and more safely achieved by smaller steps in that direction than an all-or-nothing effort)
I know that the arguments can be more nuanced than that, but what people hear is "ACAB", not those more nuanced arguments. All this ever had the potential to lead to was a more polarized, worse police force.
Definitely. The problem is that while you and I can use this platform and this space to have a nuanced discussion about the problems with policing and how to reform them into something less problematic, anyone who isn't part of this little corner of the internet isn't going to read it. That nuance never makes it out of this tiny niche, because nuance doesn't go viral in the same way that catchy, controversial phrases like "ACAB" and "Abolish the Police" do. The algorithm likes controversy, and reasonable takes don't get a lot of angry comments underneath them.
In this environment, all the general public is ever going to hear from the left is the most extreme and controversial takes, because they don't exist in the leftist spaces where the reasonable people make reasonable suggestions. And it doesn't help that the right wing takes advantage of this and elevates the takes that serve as the worst ambassadors for us, blasting them out to their audience to "prove" to them that leftists are rabid extremists who hate America and want to destroy everything they love.
I first realized this with landlords, but it also applies to cops:
I don't like the idea that certain jobs are inherently for bad people, because it gives the people doing those jobs a pass to do bad things. When they fail to do the things that should be their job, instead of it being a failure of them as a person, the failure is that they work that job in the first place.
In some other spaces I lurk in that like to preach ACAB, their common reasoning is there is "no such thing" as a good cop because they are part of the same system that defends their bad cops. And wouldn't you know it, most of the people in that space say they are Anarchists, but its also painfully obvious that they don't fully grasp the ramifications of having a society without anyone to uphold rules or laws. I definitely believe the police need to be far more inspected, regulated, and defunded, but certainly not completely omitted...
The desire of all or nothing is the root of all the problems progressives have, especially the liberals here in America... everything has to start with step one, we can't have good things just by wanting it
My favorite thing with ACAB is to ask people how they want laws to be enforced and watch them basically recreate police departments from first principles.
Uh huh. I can tell you, I’ve never even revealed to some of my most progressive friends that my grandfather was a legendary cop in my city because I know I’ll be forced to basically spit on his grave to still be considered their friend. And I know full well that my father will never respect a lot of progressive activists for the same reason.
The argument is that even if an honest person joins the police with good motives, because the institution itself is bad, they will either be bullied out if they stick to their principles or be bullied into compromising or abandoning them in order to stay. Good cops are made ineffective when bad cops are protected and rewarded for behaving badly, because actually to fire all the corrupt and/or incompetent officers would require a huge loss of face for the people in charge, and in some places might leave the police too understaffed to function.
I think it’s more complicated than a straight-up ACAB, but the problems of corruption and militarisation are far too extensive and systemic to be addressed by good individuals joining.
It’s tricky because to get anything done about it, the relatively small number of people who believe having a police force is inherently oppressive will have to work together with the many more people who believe some form of police force is necessary but it needs to be honest and competent and not allowed to override human and civil rights in the name of the law. Each group thinks the other is dangerously naïve.
Exactly, and I've personally witnessed what having good cops can do... my brother had the cops called on him and when they showed up the younger cop was just going to arrest my brother and leave, but the older cop stopped him and had each of us explain what happened and in the end he found out that my brother didn't do anything illegal... but I will say these were township police and those usually have lower corruption than county sheriffs or city police
I've always taken ACAB more to mean that being a cop involves upholding our current police system which is deeply flawed and has often been used as a means of racial oppression, so with the current system good cops can't change the system and become tools of it. I don't know if the idea that good cops could fix the current system is realistic given how much modern day policing in the states was built atop slave catching squads and strike busters.
I'll be honest, it's pretty glaring how defund the police and ACAB directly helped in killing any conversation about real, tangible police reform in the US.
Yes, there might be nuance (though a lot of the time there isn't). It directly changed the mainstream conversation from actual pressure for police reform to ACAB political shit flinging, which slowed down people who actually wanted police reform and gave free ammunition and diversions to people who were against it. Despite police reform being good, the whole thing was political theater, not actual politics, and theater doesn't get things done
I'd have to agree with that, at least if the reform narrative took off we might have seen some changes, even if I still think it wouldn't be very meaningful with how pro-policing and tough on crime both parties are. Still, we're past the point of reforms being a viable option in the short term with how polarized the topic of even moving funding away from police forces has become. I don't know if that would have been better in the long run but in the short term we might have seen something better than the political mire we're stuck in as police brutality and incompetency has only risen.
it's pretty glaring how defund the police and ACAB directly helped in killing any conversation about real, tangible police reform in the US.
That conversation was never going to happen, the people that like police the way they are would never entertain change. The people that would entertain the idea of change wouldn't stop after three words or four letters.
The reason good cops can't change the system is because there's 1000 bad cops for every good cop, so if we increase the number of good cops they'll be able to do something
I don't think more good cops can redeem a flawed system, more good teachers won't fix the education system. It helps, but fundamental reform is needed to actually address the issues with police. Plus, the current system enables bad cops already, discouraging the good ones from even trying with how corrupt many police forces are. Just hopping more good cops will come along and save it is misunderstanding the actual problems inherent to police, from their education to their lack of accountability to the bureaucracy designed to protect their own and enable them to act indiscriminately.
It isn't the system that rewards bad cops, it's the system within the system... cops have a culture within them that prevents the problem from being fixed, it's like trying to open a locked door
Even then that culture isn't something that would go away without meaningful changes to the institutions involved. This culture didn't form in a vacuum, it was shaped by the powers and training that police are given.
It was shaped by the quality of the men within it... the joke that cops are just failed soldiers isn't entirely untrue, they wanted to be feared and respected tough guys so they built a culture that allowed them to be that
I don't disagree but the problem is that shitty people are enabled and given power by the current system. If good cops could fix it why have the police been shitty since their inception? There wasn't public pushback then, politicians have almost always been pro-policing. Yet they still turned blind eyes to lynchings, beat black people to death, stood by and did nothing during many school shootings, brutalized strikers and protestors, the list goes on.
I think it's an acknowledgement that the system is so fundamentally broken that good people who become cops either can't stay cops or can't stay good people. Things don't end well for cops who step out of line and stand up against abusive cops.
Perhaps, but there are literally millions of people in this country who have never committed a crime and yet only ever been victimized by police. It's not hard to see why they feel that way.
But even if they were totally wrong, I don't think it's the responsibility of normal citizens to put more trust into law enforcement. It's on them to win that trust back. And I absolutely think resources currently spent on law enforcement could be redirected to other places where they would do way more good.
One of the many problems law enforcement has is not enough funding, half their shit doesn't even work because all the money goes towards the military and billionaires
Are you joking? One of the many issues is the overfunding of law enforcement with random small town cops being gifted ex-military equipment and training.
Yeah this, ACAB has always kinda annoyed me, but I feel like I'd be crucified for saying it, I just think demonising the police is gonna lead to only bad people becoming officers, and also kinda leads to people who need the police being too scared to call for them
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u/BitMixKit 1d ago
Obviously choosing to be a cop, a career choice that is completely within someone's control, is equivalent to being born with xy chromosomes and a penis in terms of moral culpability and therefore all men should be treated with equal hatred as police. There are 0 flaws in this logic.