I think theres a factor the left overlooks a lot, which is police identity politics.
They come to identify with their job through media, the trauma of the violence they do brings them closer together, they express their desires as an identity group through guilds and brotherhoods (so called unions), lobby as a group, and provide a single narrative to the media, even when it contradicts the interests of the powerful, like in the Mike Brown murder.
It's a kind of false consciousness that drives a lot of police behavior. If we want to do anything about police brutality (short of abolition, which is preferable) we'd need to stop making shows about them, stop giving them media, bust their unions, and break their departments into 20 different mini departments (one for parking, one for traffic direction, one for shooting dogs, you get the idea).
To stop police terror, we'd need to break their solidarity and their conciousness.
I think theres a factor the left overlooks a lot, which is police identity politics.
They come to identify with their job through media, the trauma of the violence they do brings them closer together, they express their desires as an identity group through guilds and brotherhoods (so called unions), lobby as a group, and provide a single narrative to the media, even when it contradicts the interests of the powerful, like in the Mike Brown murder.
It's a kind of false consciousness that drives a lot of police behavior. If we want to do anything about police brutality (short of abolition, which is preferable) we'd need to stop making shows about them, stop giving them media, bust their unions, and break their departments into 20 different mini departments (one for parking, one for traffic direction, one for shooting dogs, you get the idea).
To stop police terror, we'd need to break their solidarity and their conciousness.
These are all great points.