What does it mean when we say that all cops are bastards?
If it were an individual thing, you'd give them the benefit of the doubt, but it isn't; it's an institutional thing. the job itself is a bastard, therefore by carrying out the job, they are bastards. To take it to an extreme: there were no good members of the gestapo, because there was no way to carry out the directives of the gestapo and to be a good person. it is the same with the american police state. the job of the police is not to protect and serve, but to dominate, control, and terrorize in order to maintain the interests of state and capital.
Who are the good cops then? The ones who either quit or are fired for refusing to do the job.
Cops across the nation constantly engage in violent, hateful rhetoric on facebook, illustrating the curation of a culture of violence. luckily for us, it was tracked and collated
Police shoot people twice as often as previously thought. Keep in mind that this was self-reported, so we have no way of knowing if these numbers speak to the actual number of shootings in the US. Many of these people are completely unarmed. Police kill far, far more people than terrorists in the US.
Being a taxi driver is literally more dangerous than being a cop.
Cops are more of a danger to themselves than anyone else is to them
They've admitted to stealing as much -or recently more- than burglars through "asset forfeiture," and the rate of their thefts has been climbing yearly. Keep in mind, these numbers only articulate what's been reported. It's probable that they've stolen far more than just this.
Police are literally allowed to rape people on the job in 35 states, as they have the power to determine whether or not you consented to sex with them while in their custody.
Up to 50% of the people police murder are disabled
The police are being trained to kill as if they're an occupying army and we're an insurgency. this is an inevitability, as the military-industrial complex needs to keep expanding into new markets.
Eugenics was still alive and well in the prison-industrial complex up until very recently, and could very well be continuing for all we know, as it was forcibly sterilizing inmates as late as 2010. I honestly don't see a reason to believe it's stopped.
The police, as an institution, are so completely steeped in violence, that up to 40% of them commit acts of domestic violence and abuse
Once you're in jail, be prepared to sit there for weeks -or months or years. It's so bad that people constantly plead guilty just so they can get out. It's so bad and so common, in fact, that over a third of all exonerations come after an individual has pleaded guilty. So much for the right to a speedy trial, huh?
And getting arrested is easy. Tens of thousands of people yearly thanks to lowest bidder garbage that police departments use in order to test for illicit substances. Field drug tests are about as reliable as lie detector tests or horoscopes. They just don't fucking work. They just don't.
Think you're safe if you just follow directions? Yeah, no. And if they don't just outright kill you, they could make their instructions so arcane and hard to follow that they'll kill you for not following them, and they'll usually get away with it. He got away with it, by the way. Surprise!
They'll prosecute you for even knowing about crimes cops have committed.
Police exist to control and terrorize us, not serve and protect us. That's only their function if you happen to be rich and powerful.
And we all know that cops love shooting our pets, but how many do they really slaughter? This database has begun tracking animal killings by police. It's not perfect, as it's going to miss a ton of them, but it's a start.
The police as they are now haven't even existed for 200 years as an institution, and the modern police force was founded to control crowds and catch slaves, not to "serve and protect" -- unless you mean serving and protecting what people call "the 1%." They have a long history of controlling the working class by intimidating, harassing, assaulting, and even murdering strikers during labor disputes. This isn't a bug; it's a feature.
The police do not serve justice. The police serve the ruling classes, whether or not they themselves are aware of it. They make our communities far more dangerous places to live, but there are alternatives to the modern police state. There is a better way.
My thanks to /u/american_apartheid for curating this list