I will never ever ever calls the cops. Doesn’t matter what kind of “what if” hypotheticals you throw my way to poke holes in my statement. Its against my principles to call on police or pretend that police have my or other humans best interests at heart.

the very existence of the police is violence

"The police represent the most direct means by which the state imposes its will on the citizenry. When persuasion, indoctrination, moral pressure, and incentive measures all fair - there are the police."

-- Our Enemies in Blue by Kristian Williams

One of the most immediate and unfortunate things that anti-police organizing encounters is liberals/bootlickers being like "well what defines force/brutality?" which is of course how killer cops or even rapist cops are rarely if ever indicted

because the lines between "excessive" force and "illegal" force and therefore brutality are always blurry, subjective, and easily thrown out of court by a judge (who could also be a bootlicker)

"The state, claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, needs to distinguish its own violence from other, allegedly less legitimate, uses of force."

and what do we have at the end of this? cops pointing guns at masked protestors who are confronting non-cop fascists, deeming community self-defense as an "illegitimate use of force"

"[For police], legitimate and excessive force exist as part of the same continuum, rather than as a distinct species of action."

reading anything about cops makes me think not of johannes mehserle or peter liang but of daniel holtzclaw, the east asian-white mixed race cop who systemically raped and sexually assaulted 17 black women in Oklahoma City

when i think of police violence i think about how that man was allowed to roam black neighborhoods of Oklahoma City and terrorize black women

THIS is why ACAB and abolish police and destroy white supremacy

The thing is, the statistics about how frequently police kill unarmed people aren't enough to shock people into, you know, refusing to call the cops

Even with the rise of sites that map police violence against regular ol' people, theres still many more people who believe cops have the right to kill *shakira voice* whenever, wherever

There's a part where Williams compares how cops respond to police abuse and police brutality with the same rhetoric and patterns of response that abusers do to instances of abuse

again, little surprise that cops have the highest rates of domestic abuse

Let's be real, my entire live-toot of Our Enemies in Blue will have a general CW for all the various violences that are associated with and done by the police.

"Policing, it seems, is the only profession that both exaggerates and advertises its dangers... the overblown image of police heroism, and the 'obsession' with officer safety... do not only serve to justify police violence after the fact; by providing such justification, they legitimize violence, and thus make it more likely."

I really like this book but unfortunately its not changing my mind about cops - I already hate them

Why would "the state (meaning, here, the civil authorities)... let the police claim the means of violence as their own[?] Police brutality does not just happen; it is allowed to happen. It is tolerated by the police themselves, those on the street and those in command...

But why?

The answer is simple: police brutality is tolerated because it is what people with power want."

"When the police enforce the law, they do so unevenly, in ways that give disproportionate attention to the activities of poor people, people of color, and others near the bottom of the social pyramid. And when the police violate the law, these same people are their most frequent victims... It must become quite clear that the object of police attention, and the target of police violence, is overwhelmingly that portion of the population that lacks real power."

"So long as the police defend the status quo, so long as their actions promote the stability of the existing system, their misbehavior is likely to be overlooked. It is when their excesses threaten this stability that they begin to face meaningful restraints... Token prosecutions, minimal reforms, and other half-measures may give the appearance of change... but they carefully fail to affect the underlying causes of brutality."

- Our Enemies in Blue by Kristian Williams

One of the most important things (to me) when discussing the police and how they developed into what they are today is how there are like.. two historical trajectories - one out of England (practiced on Irish people and def colonial) and one out of the US specifically designed to further subjugate enslaved black people

historicizing matters, y'all

"The creators of the new police did not see themselves as marching inexorably towards an ideal of modern policing. Instead, they adapted preexisting institutions to the demands of new circumstances, evolving their systems slowly through a process of intervention and imitation... its direction determined by a variety of factors including political pressure, scandals, wars, riots, economics, immigration, budget constraints, the law, and sometimes crime."

So in the computer lab just now, two men in their 30s - one black, one Filipino - were getting into verbal altercations and calling each other various homophobic and racist slurs, and another patron (white man) wanted me to call security on them, but luckily i knew both of their names and was able to be like "hey is everything okay? oh really, y'all are chill? can y'all not use that language in the library AND keep your voices down?"

and just like that they apologized to each other and the situation diffused.

so there was no need to call security (or if the situation had escalated, the police) and its just lucky I knew their names

and I *wish* that it could be a ~teachable~ moment to tell ppl about how words are violent etc etc but i know both patrons and one is perhaps not at his full capacity/in need of more support than I can give so really the best thing to do is remind him to just keep his voice down, that's all

anyways i say all of this as a way to explain how the act of "calling security" should be avoided at all costs

nobody was in danger in this situation, people were just uncomfortable. everyone should feel comfortable in the library but also nobody should be punished by security for being loud in the library (loud and saying slurs)

Being a police/prison abolitionist isn't just a trendy cool thing and its certainly not a "I'm More Radical Than You" position to hold just for the hell of it

You have to be dedicated to harm reduction and taking on the responsibility of being a neutralizing force in the face of conflict, and knowing that calling security/cops can actually increase harm, trauma, etc

It doesn't have to be "don't call the cops and feel frozen and scared"

And everyone's participation in de-escalation or diffusing tension/conflict is going to vary based on their individual needs/capabilities

But we should all feel dedicated to harm reduction and taking care of each other and the people around us

WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WORLDS WE CONSTITUTE

"Relying on a slave economy, the American South faced unique problems of social control, especially in areas where White people were in the minority. Regardless of their own economic class or ethnic background, White people were haunted by the prospect of a slave revolt. They became utterly obsessed with controlling the lives of Black people, free and slave, and developed a deep and terrible fear of any unsupervised activity in which Black people might engage."

- Our Enemies in Blue

"Faced with the difficulties of keeping a major portion of the population enslaved to a small elite, Southern society borrowed from the practices of the Caribbean, especially Barbados. There, slave owners used professional slave catchers and militias to capture runaways, while overseers were responsible for maintaining order on the plantations. The weaknesses of this system led to the creation of slave codes, laws directed specifically to the governing of slaves."

^the first thing I thought of was KRS-One saying "OVERSEER OVERSEER OVERSEEROVERSEEROFFICER"

"The overseer rode around the plantation
The officer is off patrolling all the nation
The overseer could stop you what you're doing
The officer will pull you over just when he's pursuing
The overseer had the right to get ill
And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill
The officer has the right to arrest
And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest!"

"The slave patrols represented a departure from the traditional values of Southern culture, and though the patrols were created to defend slavery, their efficacy was limited by the same ideology that justified the slave system. Rather than develop more formal means of control, Southern ideology encouraged a reliance on informal systems rooted in racism."

What's ridiculous and mind-boggling about early policing in the US is that it was very much a state-by-state developed thing, where slave patrols functioned separately from the state and focused on plantations and there must have been a point where the whole thing was expanded and the "police state" actually came to be

"While originally bound up with the militia system, the [slave] patrols served in a specialized capacity distinguishing them from the rest of the militia. Furthermore, the authority over the patrols came more and more to shift from the militia to the courts, and then to the city government, implying that patrolling was regarded as a civil rather than military activity."

- Our Enemies in Blue by Kristian Williams

Chapter 2 of Our Enemies in Blue ("The Origins of American Policing") does a great job outlining how each police force/former slave patrol started as plantation-specific and then grew to a city-wide thing - and it also does a great job tracing the origins of policing in the UK to the US even if conditions were different. Having said that, it still feels like a survey (it has to, each section could be a whole book)

The main takeaway from survey-style chapters like these is

ACAB everywhere, from the beginnings of policing as a ridiculous and terrible institution

"Hiring, discipline, transfers, and promotions were all governed by the convenience of the machine organization. Hence, whenever control of the city government changed hands, turnover in the police department was sure to follow."

Ch. 3, "The Genesis of a Policed Society," is talking about how even before police became a part of state structures, there was corruption, bribery, coverups, nepotism - the whole shebang - in policing institutions ESPECIALLY in the relationships police had with political machines like Tammany Hall

(what a throwback to APUSH amiright)

"Nineteenth-century policing did not just resemble racketeering, it was unmistakable gangsterism.

... Both the protection schemes that ensured the coooperation of the underworld and the brawling gangs that controlled the polls on election day relied on - at the very least - the acquiescence of the police... The modernization of policing made possible important advances in municipal government..."

"... The police provided the means by which the power of local government could be consolidated into a single coherent system. In this respect, the rise of political machines resembled the earlier rise of the state itself."

yooo firefighters were bastards too

I cannot recommend that people read this book enough

"The development of modern police both depended on and promoted the creation of other municipal bureaucracies. In the first place, the creation of other bureaucracies allowed the police to specialize. Second, the consolidation of police forces facilitated a more general move toward bureaucratization by providing a model for these same bureaucracies to adopt."

Modernization of police = modernization of city government = modern cities are ultimately built for/around policing

"In the years preceding the rise of police departments in London and in the [US] middle-class and elite members of society attributed crime, riot, and public drunkeness to the members of the 'dangerous classes.' The image was that of a convulsively and possibly biologically criminal, riotous, and intemperate group of persons located at the base of society."

Police and policing have NEVER been the friends of those perceived to be "destroying the very fabric of society."