As I’ve repeatedly stated over the past ten years, cops are not only not protectors of women; they are an active menace to women. They regularly stalk and sexually harass women, and that often escalates to rape, a crime for which they only rarely face any consequences even when they don’t claim the rape was “consensual sex“, a “search“, or a “prostitution investigation“. They beat their wives with horrifying regularity, and have apparently no compunctions against violently attacking or restraining women who pose them absolutely no physical threat. And yet prohibitionists want to give these deranged perverts even more power over women’s lives. For four decades I’ve talked about this, only to be repeatedly dismissed as a crank, a political extremist, or simply a whore with an axe to grind (sometimes all three). But thanks to the current zeitgeist, it has now become possible for a woman whose name isn’t Maggie McNeill to publish something like this:
…the notion that abolishing the police will have negative repercussions for women radically misunderstands both American policing and sexual violence. Police abolition need not be considered an abdication of the responsibility to protect women, but rather a way to fulfill it…police…frequently use the privileges and protections of their job to hurt women with impunity. Police households have dramatically higher rates of domestic violence than other homes, with approximately 40% [beating their wives], compared with roughly 10% of the general population. Worse, women beaten by cop partners often have no one to call: the very people they are told to seek help from are the friends and colleagues of their abusive husbands and boyfriends. And if their abuser is a cop, he has a gun, knows the locations of women’s shelters, and knows how to shift the blame to his victim if she seeks help…The police also have a tendency to commit sexual violence on the job…sexual violence is the second most commonly reported kind of police misconduct…A large, unaccountable group of primarily men, empowered to commit violence to maintain existing hierarchies of power, is not going to end the scourge of sexual violence against women. As feminists, we must recognize that the police are more likely to hurt women than to help us…
If “feminists” had spent more time listening to sex workers and less gazing into their own navels, they’d have understood that 50 years ago instead of conspiring with armed rapists against other women. But you know what? I’m not actually bitter. I’m just glad these dumb bunnies are beginning to wake up, albeit decades too late.
In 2019, The University of Washington held its 11th Domestic Violence Symposium.
https://law.seattleu.edu/2019-dv-symposium
Here’s the first paragraph of the landing page:
“A collaborative symposium promoting critical and innovative thinking for prosecution, law enforcement, civil and family law attorneys, advocates, judges, law students, social workers and child welfare professionals, corrections, mental health/healthcare professionals”
Notice the overwhelming carceral focus here. You need to get through, prosecution, law enforcement, law attorneys, advocates (essentially white women trained to not just promote, but celebrate incarceration) and law students (our carceral promoting solution solvers of the future) before you get to anything approaching a group that actually helps women (welfare professionals) before immediately returning to “corrections.”
This symposium typical in that it’s overwhelmingly defined and carried out by members of law enforcement along with their University of Washington groupies where those most likely as a group to commit domestic violence “the police” give presentations on the topic that never mentions them and are celebrated as heroes in the solution to the problem.
Aya Gruber’s recent book “The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration” is excellent and goes a long way in explaining how we got to this point. A symposiums like this is designed to promote incarceration as the magic solution yo domestic violence despite all the DV victims out there telling them such a single minded solution is actually making things worse.
I appreciate the Guardian Article you cite, but when you have an entire carceral state enterprise that not only excludes the voices of the very marginalized women most likely to suffer from domestic violence, but also incorporates in it’s ranks the very group most likely to commit domestic violence with impunity, I only see things getting worse for DV victims.
This is one of the major reasons why I recommended “No, The Police Don’t Work for You.” It is also why I don’t take soi-disant “Progressives/Leftists” seriously on the police*, or for that matter, “conservatives.” *=Ditto for sex work. Just how long will it be for someone like Heather Mac Donald, Candice Owens, or Lauren Chen gets raped/beaten/killed by a cop or sheriff?
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