Current Events > Essay from a former cop on why ACAB

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop-bb14d17bc759

It's a really insightful read of a former cop. Some excerpts but I feel the whole thing is worth reading:

In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainees shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. Thats how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. Thats why no one is changing things from the inside. They cant, the structure wont allow it.

One of the most important thought leaders in law enforcement is Col. Dave Grossman, a killologist who wrote an essay called Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs. Cops are the sheepdogs, bad guys are the wolves, and the citizens are the sheep (!). Col. Grossman makes sure to mention that to a stupid sheep, sheepdogs look more like wolves than sheep, and thats why they dislike you.

This they hate you for protecting them and only I love you, only I can protect you tactic is familiar to students of abuse. Its what abusers do to coerce their victims into isolation, pulling them away from friends and family and ensnaring them in the abusers toxic web. Law enforcement does this too, pitting the officer against civilians. They dont understand what you do, they dont respect your sacrifice, they just want to get away with crimes. Youre only safe with us.

Understand: Police officers are part of the state monopoly on violence and all police training reinforces this monopoly as a cornerstone of police work, a source of honor and pride. Many cops fantasize about getting to kill someone in the line of duty, egged on by others that have. One of my training officers told me about the time he shot and killed a mentally ill homeless man wielding a big stick. He bragged that he slept like a baby that night. Official training teaches you how to be violent effectively and when youre legally allowed to deploy that violence, but unofficial training teaches you to desire violence, to expand the breadth of your violence without getting caught, and to erode your own compassion for desperate people so you can justify punitive violence against them.

https://youtu.be/HZ3SSNJIQ2k

Policemen ain't doing this for money, that's for sure.

But but but thin blue line

Because my experience therefore every experience

Naysaspace posted...

Because my experience therefore every experience

-_-

There's probably now millions of examples as to why that's true, but most people simply can't or won't get it or they like what police are doing.

Accounts like this are important to emphasize that arguments like "more training / more funding / better pay" are smokescreens. The process is deliberately designed to make terrible, violent cops. Giving them more money won't change that.

Blightzkrieg posted...

Accounts like this are important to emphasize that arguments like "more training / more funding / better pay" are smokescreens. The process is deliberately designed to make terrible, violent cops. Giving them more money won't change that.

It also shuts down the "Be the change you want to be" argument. Because people do try to change the system from within.

They always fail.

Naysaspace posted...

Because my experience therefore every experience

damn dude, +1000 AMP. go outside and stop shitposting lol

Naysaspace posted...

Because my experience therefore every experience

There's literally a news story about an officer getting beaten to death by coworkers for trying to report a gang rape right now and they were trying to cover it up to protect the bad ones.

Naysaspace posted...

Because my experience therefore every experience

His first-hand account carries more weight than some guy on a dying Internet message board.

Naysaspace posted...

Because my experience therefore every experience

Nobody is being asked to shift their views on police based on one account from a former police officer. This is one of many pieces of data.

I just Read through the article, skimming parts i wasnt interested in but ended up reading most of it.

Power corrupts and the police just arent properly trained to handle the kind of power communities grant them. Its like to beat a monster, law enforcement becomes the other monster.

Its almost like with the authority and power given to Police Officers, they need to be held to a higher standard, not a lower one...

Proto_Spark posted...

Its almost like with the authority and power given to Police Officers, they need to be held to a higher standard, not a lower one...

The essay *is* anecdotal but I'm pretty sure someone with more knowledge of research would find studies backing up the writer's observations as organizational trends.