Is ACAB true or false?

what is it about the slogan that you disagree with? is it “bastards”? is it “all”? something else?

This isn't the Momentum forum.

It's a simplistic slogan, not a philosophy thesis. Reality is always complex. But the job of the police is to enforce the laws set by the state and most of those laws concern the protection of the propertied class.

There was a debate about whether the police is the same worldwide years ago, likely buried in some other discussion, but one central point that emerged was that it depends. In quite a few countries, Egypt is the example I know the best, the majority of the police are actual conscripts. Poor peasants that are only doing their 3-year national service. Interesting fact: in the 80s they were paid so poorly that they rioted (with guns) in affluent areas (IIRC), the aftermath being that a lot of the guns of such conscripts are no longer have ammunition.

explainthingstome

If we call the cops bastards for upholding the law, what prevents us from calling workers bastards for supporting them? Why are the former much worse than the latter?

I don't think any kind of simplistic moralising is of much good when we are dealing with structural relationships. So I'm indifferent to the whole ACAB thing. On the other hand I'm not going to cry the next time I see it sprayed on a wall. It shouldn't be too hard to understand why.

It would be good to put together an "ACAB reading guide" or similar. Here's one starting point: https://libcom.org/library/police-case-against
and another: https://crimethinc.com/2020/05/31/what-will-it-take-to-stop-the-police-from-killing

If we call the cops bastards for upholding the law, what prevents us from calling workers bastards for supporting them? Why are the former much worse than the latter?

If a random Man Utd fan says brand Jesse Lingard is a quality player and a future England prospect at 27, that is his problem. If I have to watch Lingard on MOTD, that is mine.

Evidently, but what matters is power, its abuses and one's proximity to it.

What are you proposing?

explainthingstome

Can most of the working class be an enemy of the working class?

You seem to be getting tripped up by your own choice of language. I wouldn't really want to talk about "enemies of the working class", it's too moralistic and simplistic a way of framing it.

I am happy talking about real interests though. I think it's in the real interest of the proletariat to establish socialism. But people can act against their real interests. For example; I have a real interest in having a healthy body, so I should exercise more, but I never do.

So "Can most of the working class be an enemy of the working class?" is too melodramatic. But can people, the majority of people, act against their own real interests? - I think the answer is yes.

For communism to be established a significant proportion of the police and armed forces will have to come over, and I think they would as they and their families come from the working class. In Spain 36 around half on the police force refused to back the uprising of the generals, for example.

ACAB is an insult - to children born out of wedlock .

Someone once told me of a village cop somewhere in the UK back in the late 1960s or early 70s who refused to arrest anyone. He was sacked. I guess he wasn't a "bastard". Also Gerrard Winstanley, the famous Digger, was Chief Constable of Elmbridge, Surrey for the last 5 years of his life. Whether he arrested anyone for contravening bourgeois-cum-aristocratic property laws or not, I don't know but it would have been a terrible sell-out of his former self.

darren p

For communism to be established a significant proportion of the police and armed forces will have to come over, and I think they would as they and their families come from the working class. In Spain 36 around half on the police force refused to back the uprising of the generals, for example.

Not wanting to make everything about Spain '36, but it's a bit more complicated than that, no? Like, they refused to back Franco's uprising, but that was loyalty to the existing state, not any kind of friendliness to any working-class activity going beyond that - or to put it another way, I don't think "not all cops are bastards, sometimes they'll act like the police did in Barcelona in May 1937" is too comforting.
Similarly, looking at the current US situation, I would imagine that, if Trump loses the election, and if he refuses to accept the result, you'd get a considerable chunk of the state refusing to go along with that and backing Biden as the "legitimate" president instead. But that wouldn't make them friends to any kind of autonomous movements, or mean that they'd have any problems cracking heads when ordered to do so by nice liberal Democratic mayors or whoever.
I have to admit that I don't know too much about what happened with the cops in Russia 1917, Hungary 56, early 70s Portugal or whatever else, though. But I do feel confident in saying that, if any of them acted in a non-bastardous way, it would only have been to the extent that they broke with their role as cops, so ACAB continues to be as accurate a description of reality as you can get in four letters.

R Totale

they refused to back Franco's uprising, but that was loyalty to the existing state, not any kind of friendliness to any working-class activity going beyond that - or to put it another way, I don't think "not all cops are bastards, sometimes they'll act like the police did in Barcelona in May 1937" is too comforting.

Well yes, perhaps not the best example. I was just looking for an example and an explanation of why a group of people act one way in a certain situation and why they might act another way in another.

My point was that ordinary people have no intention of changing the system (either they like the system or they see no practical alternative). So yes, cops protect capitalism, but people vote in favour of capitalism.

So if we use support for capitalism as a measuring tool to evaluate how we should view people, then we should view a cop and a average person as very similar to each other.

You're shifting the goalposts here, from "protecting" to "support". Those are two different thing. In any case, the specific function of the police is to protect private property and capitalism, that's it. Structurally, that entire occupation has that function, is far more important than some individual voting (all parliamentary parties are capitalist). You are comparing apples to the railways. Logically, your argument just doesn't hold up no matter how often you repeat it. I mean ffs, if you really want to go down that route, at least do the tired old cliche about what jobs are all about providing ideological cover for capitalism (e.g. anything that Althusser reduce to ISAs).

darren p

Well yes, perhaps not the best example. I was just looking for an example and an explanation of why a group of people act one way in a certain situation and why they might act another way in another.

Oh yeah, that's fair enough. I would be interested if anyone does actually know more about what cops did in Russia or Hungary or Portugal or whatever, how far it was standing aside or just realising that they weren't capable of repressing the crowds and how far m/any of them actually joined in with stuff. I think I'm right in saying that I don't think there were any examples of "coppers' councils" comparable to the soldiers' and sailors' ones that emerged at the end of WWI, but maybe I'm wrong.

An old related debate; http://libcom.org/forums/news/prison-officers-unofficial-action-spreads-18112009

My point was that ordinary people have no intention of changing the system (either they like the system or they see no practical alternative). So yes, cops protect capitalism, but people vote in favour of capitalism.

Ordinary people can learn and can change, and so can cops. But they probably couldn't continue being cops.

While 50% were willing to joint the fascists, 50% sided with a leftist government. I think that's a very admirable thing to do, especially when there was a clear alternative for these cops.

I don't know much about the Spanish Civil War, but it is more significant that 50% of them chose to join a fascist coup, than that 50% of them didn't.

If 50% of my colleagues occupied the workplace and set up a free autonomous school, run on anarchist principles I would be pretty amazed at their ideological commitment. People don't generally change the status quo (as you argue yourself) so 50% of cops joining a coup is massively important.

Wojtek, you wrote that "what matters is power, its abuses and one's proximity to it". An average cops proximity to, for example, the strangulation of a black man selling cigarettes, is not a given if you ask me. I doubt it happens to a clear majority of cops.

The average cop has participated in stop and frisk or other targeted repression. The average cop has policed protests and prevented people exercising their legal rights for ideological reasons. The average cop sees racist, sexist, homophobic, classist policies and enfores them. If I show up to my former workplace and refuse to leave until they pay me the money they owe, does the cop arrest me or my former boss?

I just finished reading an interesting book called Ghettoside, about the murder epidemic of black men in LA. Obviously the hero worship of the main cop annoys me, but the basic theory is that black people are not policed. If a black guy sells loose cigarettes, or passes a bad check or forgets to go to court for a citations for not having his driving license, there is a good chance he goes to jail, if he kills or injures a black man then he probably won't. Police know that they are not providing justice, and they choose to participate in these activities. There could be lefty cops and they could, theoretically do good, but only by not doing most of what they are being sent to do.

Incidentally, Ghettoside is a very interesting book, I disagre with the conclusions, but the data and analysis is worth reading.

explainthingstome

While 50% were willing to joint the fascists, 50% sided with a leftist government. I think that's a very admirable thing to do, especially when there was a clear alternative for these cops.
---

Not to make this about Spain but %50 of the police did not side with the republic that was the breakdown of the Civil Guard whose leader also sided with the Republic. Other police forces in the country at the time had different rates of loyalty, mostly depending on which side their officers supported and where they were based. They did not join a "leftist government" they simply stood by the governing power in their part of the country, the Civil Guard in Catalonia for example fully supported the Republic whereas in Badajoz they supported the Republic at first, then the Nationalist army took over and they just followed their orders instead. While I'm sure there were exceptions as a rule the Spanish police forces seem to have just obeyed whichever faction was in power in their communities.

In the Republican zone they sided with the established authorities which was increasingly the communist party, and were used in 1937 to crush the CNT et al, so they hadn't left the old habits behind. In nationalist zones they sided with the local right wing power base. They just kept doing their jobs and following orders. The only time I can think when they actively took a partisan side was the Assault Guard which mostly stayed loyal to the Republic, however they were the police force created by the Republic, and according to some accounts were staffed almost exclusively by socialist party members, but still they were a paramilitary force who was created to break radical workers and strikes, also took part in the communist parties suppressions and after the war many of them that survived were kept on as Francoist police officers.

So while the attitudes of the police in 36 seem surprising, it really isn't they didn't really change, it was the political situation around them that did.

Worth looking at this about the 1919 strike by the filth

...there are even a few old hands from the traditional workers’ movement who still dare declare that cops are workers in uniform. For instance, the SPGB (Small Party of Good Boys, as they used to be known), stuck as they are in a past before they were born, who point to the 1919 Police Strike, which has gone down in mythology as an example of the proletarian nature of the cops. What these ridiculous people, who try to use the past to justify their present conservative attitudes, show in this is their failure both to understand the past as well as an ignorance about the present which is largely a product of lack of current experience of the cops. ... in 1919 less than 4% of UK cops went on strike.

And this was in a period of massive international revolutionary struggle against the ruling classes of the time.
Does explainthingstome have any direct experience of the filth? Does s/he really need to be spoonfed explanations as if there aren't loads of critiques of them all over the place which s/he seems to have ignored? Or does s/he just want to avoid showing his/her disgust for their social role, endlessly equivocate about something so fundamental? Would s/he feel so hesitant about saying All Rapists Are Scum? I would remind her/him that the filth get away with a lot more than rape.

explainthingstome

I guess that's true, but I don't think they are very far away from each other.

You say that I am comparing apples to railways. I'd say that I am comparing a lyncher with the audience that cheers him on.

Do you think the supporters are incapable of doing the dirty work themselves?

They might or might not be. I mean, to take another analogy, how about comparing a footballer with the audience that cheers him on? I don't think you'd say that watching a few games in the pub or even the stadium or wherever means that someone's able to compete at a premier league level. Similarly, I'm happy to passively cheer on protests in Portland, or people who take militant action against fascists, or whatever, but that doesn't in itself automatically mean that I wouldn't shit myself and run away when they pulled out the LRADs and flashbangs and teargas and rubber bullets. You seem to really want to erase the distinction between passively supporting something and actually doing it, but I don't think we can get rid of it that easily.

Anyway, to answer your main questions, I've now added this study guide to the library. I think reading through some of the texts in it, particularly Our Enemies in Blue, might be useful for you.

explainthingstome

Paul Joseph Watson and his friends bear guilt for Christchurch. Stalin bears guilt for the Great Purge. People voting on Hitler (well, a lot of them at least) bear guilt for the Holocaust. That's how I see it.

For what it's worth, mentioning Stalin brings to mind another example I was sort of thinking of. Stalin bears guilt for the Great Purge, certainly. Someone today who joins a Communist Party, or posts a "stalin did nothing wrong" meme, or whatever, might be distasteful and wrong and all that, but I think it's nonsense to talk as if they're directly responsible for the deaths that occurred under Stalin (which isn't to say that they might not be capable of making some contribution to atrocities happening today, in Syria or Hong Kong or whatever).
Also, thinking about it, as well as flattening out the distinction between "support" and "doing something", your approach also seems to be erasing the distinction between different levels of support, as if "well, I don't like them but I suppose they're a necessary evil and I can't imagine any plausible alternative being implemented in the near future" and "I love them and think they're great" were the same. Social reality is complicated and I can't see how flattening things out, so anyone who might call the police if they witnessed a burglary or were the victim of crime gets lumped into the "police supporter" category along with the most hardened Back the Blue, Blue Lives Matter fanatics, helps us understand things any better.
explainthingstome

Any particular page or chapter of said book?

I mean, if your problem is that you don't think people are providing enough evidence to back up their arguments, then you might be best off reading through the whole thing and seeing if that sways you at all. But, for what it's worth, here's the chapters that the study guide recommends, together with associated questions, so feel free to concentrate on the ones that sound most relevant or interesting to you:
The creation of police forces - Chapter 3.
- Summarize Williams’ account of the development of police departments alongside the development of capitalism, white supremacy, and state bureaucracies. How did the function and administration of police forces change along with society?
- Williams complicates the view that police are simply hired thugs for the white ruling class. How do different sections of the capitalist class and middle classes compete to have their interests served by police, in Williams’ account?

White supremacy and class rule - Chapters 4-5
- What is your understanding of the police role in capitalist society, so far? Why might fulfilling this role also require upholding white supremacy?
- How has policing upheld white supremacy and racism in the past? How did policing shift with the Civil Rights movement, and how does “color-blind” policing uphold white supremacy today?
- What role does Williams’ believe police have played in the struggle between capital and labor? As Williams says, labor struggles are more institutionalized today–do police still play the same role? If so, how? If not, what role do they play now?

“Blue power” and police unions - Chapters 6 and 9
- Are the police part of the working class, for Williams? What are their interests? When police fight for their own group interests, is this good or bad for working class people?
- When and why do police unions come into conflict with local city governments? What are the possible endgames of these conflicts?
- How might a powerful social movement fuel, intervene in, or redirect conflicts between police and the government?

Toward abolition - Afterword
- Does rolling back police power, and establishing alternatives for community safety, require a major political crisis? If so, what might such a crisis look like in the U.S. today? If not, how could these goals be achieved prior to a crisis?
- Do localized campaigns to remove police from schools, demilitarize police departments, disband notorious police units (etc) bring us closer to the goal of abolition? How?

Also,
explainthingstome

As we all know, "all cops are bastards" is a universally accepted slogan!

I'm guessing that this is sarcasm, but if so it's worth pointing out that it's probably the most popular communist/communist-compatible slogan of our times, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the single most graffitied phrase in the world - I certainly imagine it's probably among the top 10 - and so on. This is one of the things I find most confusing about your posts, they all read as if the US wasn't being shaken by a huge anti-police rebellion that's been reflected worldwide.

I will try to come back to this later because it takes time to write a decent response, but in the mean time, just read a bit of a James Baldwin essay about antisemitism that made me think of this thread:

We hated the policemen, not all of whom were Jewish, and some of whom were black. The poor, of whatever color, do not trust the law and certainly have no reason so, and God knows we didn't. "If you must call a cop," we said in those days, "for God's sake, make sure it's a white one." We did not feel that the cops were protecting us, for we knew too much about the reasons for the kinds of crimes committed in the ghetto; but we feared black cops even more than white cops, because the black cop had to work so much harder--on your head--to prove to himself and his colleagues that he was not like all the other niggers.

explainhingstomesoicanabstractlyrefuteitwithsomedebatingsocietyacrobatics:

One article mentions that 300 people dying in custody during 10 years. Does 300 rapes committed by a specific ethnic group during 10 years prove to us that we can't trust most of them? Obviously, the answer is no

You're seriously comparing an ethnic group with a professional state institution? A comparison would be better with a gang or an extended family. So if the Johnson family/gang killed or raped 300 people in 10 years and not a single member of the Johnson family/gang explicitly condemned these murders or rapes, and none of them were ever prosecuted and found guilty of them, it would be wrong to say All Johnsons Are Bastards ?

You say you have no direct experience of the filth. If you got arrested the conversation might become a bit interesting. For the moment, your comments are about as useful and lucid as a virgin's comments about sex.

I grew up in a working class area and anti-police sentiment was completely normal. People didn't necessarily plan to get rid of them and probably didn't even think that it was possible. A bit like taxes or something.

People don't choose to be born, they do choose to become cops.

jef costello

People don't choose to be born, they do choose to become cops.

And, equally, you can't get fired from a racial/ethnic group, Scottish people don't have to attend annual reviews where they demonstrate how they've met their haggis-eating KPIs or whatever, but people do have to perform certain behaviours to stay in their jobs or else they get fired. That's why it's not an inaccurate generalisation to say All Receptionists Answer the Phone and Greet Visitors, or All Academics Write Stuff, or All Taxi Drivers Drive Taxis or whatever.

explainthingstome

[Do most cops in Britain take part in or become witnesses to really awful situations (like the beating of a homeless guy)?

Pretty sure the bar for being a "bastard" is a lot lower than you seem to be putting it. Your original question was "are all coppers bastards, true or false?". Isn't "ACAB" more like a statement of values, rather than a question of empirical fact? (Though of course people hold values because they believe certain things are facts - in this case the structure and function of the police being some of them).

This thread appears to be going in circles, I just watch this video though on police that I found very well made and clearly argued.

https://kolektiva.media/videos/watch/2dded130-d97e-41a3-b5c3-fff8e2ea96c3

explainthingstomeeventhoughiwontbeinfluencedbythem:

you could continue to post aggressive replies

No aggression from me could outdo your masochistic aggression towards yourself in the form of the little logo (or whatever it's called) by your name of an armchair that says 'this is my life'.

explainthingstome

You know that the best way to make someone stop bothering you on the internet is to ignore them, right? Or you could continue to post aggressive replies and get those sweet upvotes.

For what it's worth, whatever NA's motivations for posting here are, I don't think their main aim is or ever has been to be popular with libcom posters.

What does police violence look where you live? Have there been many instances? I haven't read anything about my city or even my country that much.

I don't know where you live, but I would be extremely surprised if police brutality isn't an issue there. Admittedly, I've not heard that much about police violence in Vatican City, but that could just be ignorant on my part. Anyway, I'm not sure what the point is of answering your question, because I strongly suspect that no matter how much I list you'll just say "well those are just individual examples we can't draw any general conclusions from them", but if you want to learn more about British police behaviour then I'd recommend these as a few starters:
https://libcom.org/library/come-and-wet-this-truncheon-dave-douglass
https://pasttenseblog.wordpress.com/?s=police
https://libcom.org/tags/uk-riots
https://uffcampaign.org/
https://www.inquest.org.uk/
https://netpol.org/
http://npolicemonitor.co.uk/
http://lcapsv.net/
http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/
https://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/
https://otjc.org.uk/about/
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jun/28/long-road-justice-hillsborough-inquest-timeline

I think explainthingstome is defending a position rather than openly discussing.

I used to not be anti-police, I thought it was bullshit posturing (and for some people it is) I read Police Riots by Rodney Stark and the Scarman (?) Report on the Broadwater farm uprising and they had a big effect on my view of the cops. And of course discussion with anarchists and communists.

Years back I got a copy of the scarman report from work for a mate to digitise, it doesn't seem to have made it to libcom. I had a look online and couldn't find it.

R Totale has posted this, which is intereting
https://marx.libcom.org/library/what-do-we-do-when-cops-fuck

"well those are just individual examples we can't draw any general conclusions from them"

Oh I actually have one of those, back in the day when student life was ending and we were all looking for jobs a friend of mine became a police cadet, the rest of my friends were in the TA apart from one who got a job at a local off license. I was going to join a TA engineering regiment to learn a trade, but when I got to the barracks I noticed it was a Para engineers regiment, so I gave it a miss.

Anyway, of my social circle my friend who joined the police quickly became very, very, bitter and quick to violent outbursts. Even acquaintances who had seen some combat in Afghanistan were shocked at some of his antics. He told me all about his training and even let me read some of the training materials while he was still a cadet. It was enlightening, in addition to pelting them with CS gas, they made the cadets be the riot shield walls while the older coppers pelted them with petrol bombs (the bottles were only filled up to a quarter) and drummed into their heads the ideology of policing.

When he went on patrols and house visits he told me all sorts of stories about the people who lived on the estates as if they were from another planet. I think the worst thing he did before I lost contact with him was after he policed a free festival. He looked depressed, and when we asked him what was wrong he told us he'd had a bollocking from some superior officer because he and four other police had been caught on camera by reporters beating a drunk guy up. I never saw it appear on the local news, so I guess they quashed it. But what really stood out and shocked us, was that the reason they beat the drunk up was because the guy laughed at their helmets.

Seriously, a bloke who had to much to drink laughed at their helmets, so four police officers (well one was still a cadet) slapped him around in a crowded public party. And he didn't see why we were giving him a hard time about how he shouldn't have done that.

He was never a pacifist but his attitude and world view did a complete transformation, and it only took about a few months before the changes were notable.

A side-note question concering the way some have reacted to my comments: how would most people become anarchists? Would they adopt anarchism without interacting with anarchists or would they have to be "converted" by anarchists through dialogue?

I.e. is it a waste of time to speak to people who do not agree with the most basic anarchist ideas?

To answer the last question first: not at all, but pick the time and place when it makes sense. But, in my experience dialogue is necessary, but not sufficient. Doing something is. For example, showing up at picket lines or protests to provide support, workplace or school actions (whatever they may be), or do something like Food not Bombs which will put you in contact with a lot of people (the food is an excuse to connect) etc. Even then, you don't break out the anarchist talking points right away (unless they ask), again pick the appropriate time and place for when you think they'd be more receptive to anarchist ideas, and they will be more receptive if you've struggled with them, been a good workmate, support etc. Nothing is more tiring than some anarcho that is constantly shouting slogans or going on about the agricultural output in Aragon during the Spanish Revolution.

As Guy Debord said in "The Society Of Armchairs" -

In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, policed life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles consumed from the comfort of your armchair. Everything that was directly lived has receded into mere watching and judging from afar. The images of cops detached from every aspect of their social function and practice merge into a common stream in which the unity of an understanding of them can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of cops regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudo-world that can only be looked at from an armchair. The specialization of images of cops and their world has culminated in a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The armchair is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving.

As Marx said in "Theses on ACAB" (thesis ll) :

"The question whether cops are bastards or not is not a question of theory but is a practical question. You must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of your thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking cops are bastards that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question "

As someone else said:

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"

explainthingstome:

I'm relatively young

There are kids of 10 who understand the simple expression ACAB. There are adults of 100 who don't. As Tina Turner said

"What's age got to do with it?"

I will try to get around to writing a proper reply to this thread at some point when I get time, but just posting this link for now, since it seems relevant: The deep history of police

Also, for a somewhat different perspective, there's this from the Invisible lot:

Since within the governmental apparatus the police have the function of ensuring individual submission in the last instance, of producing the population as a population, as a powerless, and hence governable, depoliticized mass, it was logical that a conflict expressing the refusal to be governed would begin by laying into the police and would adopt the most popular slogan: “Everybody hates the police.” Escaping its shepherd, the flock could not have found a better rallying cry. What is more unexpected is that this slogan, appearing in the demonstrations following the killing of Remi Fraisse at Sivens eventually reached all the way to Bobigny after the police rape of Theo, as a slogan of “young people” there, thrown in the face of the uniformed brutes who were eyeing them from a raised metal passageway turned into a mirador.

“Tout le monde deteste la police” expresses more than a simple animosity towards cops...

The slogan “Everybody hates the police” doesn’t express an observation, which would be false, but an affect, which is vital.

Reddebrek

He was never a pacifist but his attitude and world view did a complete transformation, and it only took about a few months before the changes were notable.

Yeah, I think this point is vital, imo it's hard to overstate the importance of the things we do over and over again for 8 hours (or however long) a day and the people we're around in shaping our worldview. Like, obviously not in a crudely determinist way where all workers are automatically fully communist or anything, but I think you can definitely talk about, for instance, a "retail/service worker's mindset". Among other things, that means that you can't relate to each customer as if you were fully encountering another human being, you just have to treat them as units to process to try and get them served and on to the next customer as quickly as possible so you don't get overwhelmed (the fact that many service workers are also explicitly required to perform friendliness and interest as part of their job might complicate this but I don't think it cancels it out). Similarly, thinking about taxi drivers or bus drivers, I'm sure they probably relate to urban space differently in some ways than other people, because the streets are the raw materials for their job.
This is relevant to the ACAB question because, if I'm right that being a shop worker gives you a shop workers' mindset in some ways, then being a cop also gives you a cop mindset, which includes, as a minimum, seeing everyone as a potential criminal/suspect who you may be justified in using violence against at any moment. And I suspect that, whatever hypothetical cops could potentially be like, actually existing cop mindsets are likely to contain a whole lot more toxic elements. Which I guess is basically just a long-winded way of saying that I think your anecdote's important and revealing - it's not (just) that bastards become cops, it's that being a cop makes you a bastard.
explainthingstome

So, I actually talked about this with some people I know now and although there wasn't any mention of anything as severe as murder, they did mention several things.

One was about how a cop had beaten up someone they know (or kind of know) just for being drunk and rude. And there was no evidence (except his friends watching it happen) that he wasn't resisting, so nothing could be proved. Another thing that they mentioned was that it was known within the police that some cop had sexually abused several arrested women and that his boss only gave him a warning. But there were no real consequences for his behaviour.

The impression I got from the people that I was talking to was that most cops were not active in the misdeeds but silently complicit. But they also gave me the impression that they think that the rate of complacency about racist and sexist behaviour etc weren't that bigger compared with many other civilian professions.

If so, we kind of live in a society of bastards, and the cops are only somewhat worse than like half of the population. My view on both the police and ordinary people have become more negative. It's somewhat of an eye-opener of how ignorant one can be simply because of a lack of experience or dialogue with witnesses, especially when these things never get reported, or brought up by the news.

I'm glad to hear that you've been discussing and learning with people offline. (Again, no irony or sarcasm intended there). I think one of the important differences between police misbehaviour and non-cops behaving in harmful ways is again the role of the police as an institution, the institution that is supposedly meant to prevent/investigate/punish misdeeds. Anybody can do bad things, but only cops can do bad things in the knowledge that the people in charge of investigating any crimes they commit will be their coworkers.
explainthingstome

Several questionable assumptions here:..
- no police support BLM (according to The Hill, half of the cops in a survey supported them. Could easily give a wrong impression but I wouldn't automatically call bs on it).
I might have misunderstood some people's views. Maybe, even if cops never shot an unarmed black man or raped a woman or beat up a homeless guy, they would still be bastards for enforcing the law. At the same time, ordinary people are not bastards because they're just supporters and not the executioners. I disagree, but whatever.

Again, I think it's important to look at the role the police play in moments of heightened social tension and confrontation, and again I'd mention that the US right now gives a very helpful example of what I'm talking about. To go back to your earlier point about whether cops "support BLM", I think that phrase is so vague as to be virtually meaningless - you get a really really clear example of that with what happened in Buffalo, where "On June 3, Buffalo, New York, police officers were filmed kneeling with protesters outside City Hall. One day later, in a now-viral video, two officers pushed a 75-year-old man to the ground during a protest outside City Hall, seriously injuring him and resulting in both being arrested."
So, just to look at the city of Portland, for example: I don't think it's fair to say that "all ordinary people in Portland are bastards", because there's a whole diverse set of ways that people are responding to the protests there, ranging from supporting and joining in to throwing explosives at them and everything in between. But are there any instances of police refusing to join in with the repression? And if not, does that mean that we can make generalisations about Portland police, even the ones who might take a knee or say that they support BLM?
Finally, I was going to say that Verso are doing free ebooks of both The End of Policing and Police: A Field Guide and that those books might also be useful if you want to read up further on the subject, but they now seem to not be free. They are still 70% off, so if you read ebooks they might be a worthwhile investment, or if you really don't want to pay for them I imagine that there may well be free PDFs available somewhere.