“To Protect and Serve” has got to be one of the most effective propaganda campaigns of all time. The police as an institution are not, and never have been, intended to “protect” the citizenry, and they certainly don’t “serve” it; the only things they “protect” are the status quo and entrenched interests, and the only people they “serve” besides themselves are politicians. Note that the generalized term for police isn’t “citizen defense”, “crime prevention” or anything like that; it’s “law enforcement”. The purpose of the police is to “enforce” laws, no matter how evil, unjust and destructive those laws might be; to “enforce” a law is to coerce people into obeying it via the threat of violence, and to make an example of some citizens by inflicting violence on them before they’ve been proven guilty of anything. Expressed another way, the police are terrorists; their job is to inspire terror of violating the whims of politicians by inflicting violence on people who are legally innocent of any wrongdoing. This is clear not only from their demonstrable behavior (including the fact that they are rarely held accountable to the laws themselves), but also (in the United States) from multiple court rulings that the police have no duty to protect citizens. I’ve argued this many times, so I’m not going to repeat myself; instead, I’m going to quote this essay by Alex Vitale I read yesterday:
…TV shows exaggerate the amount of serious crime and the nature of what most police officers actually do all day. Crime control is a small part of policing, and it always has been. Arrests for serious crimes are a rarity for uniformed officers, with most making no more than one a year. When a patrol officer actually apprehends a violent criminal in the act, it is a major moment in their career. The bulk of police…take reports, engage in random patrol, address parking and driving violations and noise complaints, issue tickets, and make arrests for drinking in public, possession of small amounts of drugs, or the vague “disorderly conduct”…Even detectives (who make up only about 15 percent of police forces) spend most of their time taking reports of crimes that they will never solve—and in many cases will never even investigate…It is largely a liberal fantasy that the police exist to protect us from the bad guys. As the veteran police scholar David Bayley argues: “The police do not prevent crime…Experts know it, the police know it, but the public does not know it. Yet the police pretend that they are society’s best defence against crime and continually argue that if they are given more resources, especially personnel, they will be able to protect communities against crime. This is a myth“…Bayley goes on to point out that there is no correlation between the number of police and crime rates…The reality is that the police exist primarily as a system for managing and even producing inequality by suppressing social movements and tightly managing the behaviors of poor and non-white people: those on the losing end of economic and political arrangements…This can be seen in the earliest origins of policing, which were tied to three basic social arrangements of inequality in the eighteenth century: slavery, colonialism, and the control of a new industrial working class. This created what Allan Silver calls a “policed society”, in which state power was significantly expanded in the face of social upheavals and demands for justice. As Kristian Williams points out, “The police represent the point of contact between the coercive apparatus of the state and the lives of its citizens”…
As Vitale points out, none of this is obscure or even controversial among historians, criminologists and other scholars; the only reason it seems so is that the Great Unwashed, indoctrinated to obedience in state-run schools, lack both the desire to question authority in the first place and the critical thinking skills necessary to analyze the issue even if they did. Authoritarian societies rely on the great majority being controlled by fear, pandered to by lies and kept docile with bread and circuses, while the egos of the brighter and better-educated minority are stroked by telling them they’re part of an elite who must have power over the masses for their own good.
They say that traditional societies are more authoritative and so logically one would expect such populations to have more obedience and conformity as compared to more so-called modern societies. But people in places like India & China, cultures percieved to be among the most traditional today, have very little faith in the police. Many actually go out of their way to AVOID any contact with the police as far as possible.
Joining the police is the last choice for a legal source of income. And that too only when someone is deemed incapable of anything else. In India especially, the police force is seen as one of the most corrupt parts of the government according to recent studies. And the notoriously foul mouths of officers don’t do anything to make people feel otherwise. On the other hand, India also has police stations & helplines with all-female staff members, bearing in mind the potential exploitation of women who come seeking assistance.
So it isn’t all bad as long as people know to maintain safe distance
Right on. It is no simple task to change how someone views the police. I only did after discovering that most laws are unjust, but still enforced by police with guns. At some point “just doing their job” fails to be a compelling justification.
“Just doing their job” = “I was only following orders”.
The time-honored excuse of those without a moral compass, i.e. the people that are critical to keep any evil ruling class in power.
Can also be nicely seen with newer trends were law enforcement drives mass-surveillance, back-doors in cryptography, prevention of free speech (a hot topic in Europe currently), end generally want to make their job of oppression even easier in the age of technology. And then, when they actually could, say, prevent some terrorist action, they fail in the most stupid and incompetent way possible. This just underlines that preventing crime is not their job at all and that they are not actually set-up for it.
A most fascinating piece on the myth of the police’s role in society. I am Canadian and do not own a gun. Not sure if I want to, but lately, I’m beginning to appreciate the purpose of the 2nd Amendment in America’s Constitution. It’s purpose is to allow citizens to arm themselves in order to defend against mainly their own government whenever it becomes too powerful and over-reaching its authority. Your article seems to affirm my thinking on the 2nd Amendment.
The purpose of owning a gun is to be able to shoot runaway slaves. The 2nd-amendment “militias” were slave patrols. No amount of citizens armed with handguns and semiautomatic rifles will be able to protect their freedom from a state with armoured personnel carriers, tripod-mounted machine guns, and the various disgusting “nonlethal” weapons that governments have given themselves permission to deploy against their citizenry.
To continue:
The students at Kent State were unarmed. The cultists at Waco had an armoury. The same thing happened to both, once the state decided to flex its muscle. (This is how we know that Antifa, for instance, is sponsored by the state, as are “slutwalks”).
To resist a government, some dudes with weapons is not enough. They must be organised. They must be an army. A militia of a couple dozen Appalachian or Texan dudes doesn’t cut it. This is why every state is busy spying on and censoring the internet.
I remember watching video of Standing Rock, what the police were allowed to do to peaceful protesters. Some of the injuries were horrific & then 1 woman, Red Fawn – a Medic, was blatantly set up. Multiple officers had her on the ground & a shot rang out. Video footage clearly showed she was completely pinned by officers & the gun wasn’t by her. The shot went towards her feet. She was sentenced to 5 years in Federal Prison. This peaceful medic who was helping the many injured on the front line. She’s only 1 of so many Water Protectors that got jail or prison time. Her sentence was the longest. Veterans had gone up to Standing Riock to stand with the Indigenous People & others who were trying to stop oil lines from destroying sacred artifacts, graves of Ancestors & the drinking water of the Lakota Sioux, as well as any others on down the Missouri river.
Lethal force authorized there & in too many places, too many cases. Watching various instances I’ve realized (but buried in my memory) how horribly vicious this country’s becoming. That was before the worst of the racism & hate. Before North Carolina happened – I think that was the tipping point.
What do we do? What Can we do?
Maybe my locals are decent because nothing has come to set a challenge? I don’t know. I DO know I have 6 children – 5 eligible to vote. I also have 6 grandkids. What kind of country will this be for them? Bad enough this land was stolen from the Indigenous People. Are we now becoming Russia 2.0? What do we do? What can we do?!
Great article!