Came across this today, reading a history of the Minneapolis Teamsters strike of 1934, thought it was pretty concise and accurate:
Under capitalism the main police function is to break strikes and to repress other forms of protest against the policies of the ruling class. Any civic usefulness other forms of police activity may have， like controlling traffic and summoning ambulances， is strictly incidental to the primary repressive function. Personal inclinations of in dividual cops do not alter this basic role of the police. All must comply with ruling-class dictates. As a result， police repression becomes one of the most naked forms through which capitalism subordinates human rights to the de mands of private property. If the cops sometimes falter in their antisocial tasks， it is simply because they-like the guns they use-are subject to rust when not engaged in the deadly function for which they are primarily trained.
No police organization is exactly the same day in and day out. Two essential factors determine its character at a given moment: the social climate in which the cops have been operating and the turnover of personnel within the force. An unseasoned cop may tend to be somewhat considerate of others in the performance of duty， espe cially while class relations are relatively peaceful. Even in such calm times， however， the necessary accommodation must be made to capitalist demands， including readi ness to shoot anyone who tampers with private property. Otherwise the aspiring cop， if he is not kicked out of the force， will have little chance of rising beyond a beat in the sticks. By gradually weeding out misfìts along these general lines， a police department can keep itself abreast of requirements during a more or less stable period in class relations.As Kwame Ture said, the only way you can possibly "make things better by working on the inside" is via sabotage. A single person selling state secrets to the Soviet Union has done more good than every single well-meaning cop trying to change things.
I am very anti-cop and want more regulation, training, and accountability.
:data-laughing: vorshites are libs with lib aesthetics
This is the kind of thing that you could hypothetically try to do in like an indigenously staffed colonial garrison in 1905, and you might actually hypothetically get somewhere with it; but there's a reason why this doesn't work anymore.
A principled leftist cop would be fired or shot or both within a year.
even if they got in, if they exposed anything theyd end up dead in a "training exercise"
It's pretty naive to think that the police don't have counter-measures against infiltration
lol what was that one report from Florida or something of cops trying to infiltrate an anarchist group and were complaining about needing to read too many books
in any case, I think the primary contingency against infiltration is hazing and acclimation. Didn't fulfill your racist beating quota this month? Well we're going to harass you until you do.
a cop precinct going rogue and becoming a strengthening force to whatever autonomous commune that has propped up would be kind of sick.
If you could get, like, 10 of your leftist buddies and become an officer, maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe it could be an interesting propostion. but by yourself? lmaoooo holy fuck, you are an instant fash the minute you put on that uniform, it just comes with the job.
If you got a bunch of leftists together to sneak in that would only achieve something if you had something else brewing on the outside too.
This is a version of the idealist liberal fantasy that bad things happen because of bad people and that you can prevent the bad things from happening by having good people doing them.
In theory it would be better to have leftists working in the organisations of capitalist oppression like the police. You would imagine they would seeing the baton a little lighter, that they wouldn't go out of their way to fuck people over. And maybe a leftist cop would even try to do that in the beginning.
But for such a leftist cop every day would be a marathon of compromising their leftist principles. They would spend all day protecting the bourgeoisie and brutalising the must vulnerable people. Any attempt at going against the fascist culture in the police would be met with hostility by the other cops.
At best such a leftist cop would end up a disillusioned and burned out cop which is a bit better than an enthusiastically fascist one but not much and a horrible way to end up for a leftist. At worst he would persuade himself that he was one of the good guys, that he was actually helping people by oppressing them and end up becoming just as much of a fascist as all the other cops.
Systems such as the police are much stronger than the individual both in terms of raw force as well as in cultural hegemony. You are not a heroic great man whose pure and true ideals can make a difference, if you fight the system on your own the system will win decisively every single time.
Surely you could be an infiltrator cop, compiling internal evidence of heinous shit? You would feel like shit playing the part, and you'd do terrible things, but a 9 minute video of a cop choking a guy caused nation-wide riots. If you could get access to old unreleased bodycams, you might be able to do more good than one cop does evil
edit: this was the best case scenario I could think of, but like... The kind of person that could go through with it? It's not something anyone could do just because they needed a job. You'd certainly want a local support network outside who you knew could keep secrets
Adrian Schoolcraft is a case study of what happens to people like that. tl;dr they put you in a psych ward
That's what your little outside team is supposed to prepare for, real life communist spy breakout missions go!
The Floyd murder video reaction was an anomaly caused in part by quarantine meaning people were home and had the time and energy to take to the streets
There are plenty of videos of cops murking black people that don't cause nationwide protests because US workers are so drained that they simply can't do it between their 3 jobs
I know someone who would be an incredible leftist but is just a bit too mystical to really embrace materialism, so can't move past liberalism. Considered being a cop because they didn't see anything wrong in the area and it paid well, fortunately I pulled on their conscience and a better opportunity came their way.
V**sh :unity: reddit
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There are no good cops. Any one anti cop should know this. They will threaten you to join their side or leave
