"Cold and Tense": 10 Americans on How Politics Changes Relationships
Audrey Vera, 33, Oakland, Calif.
"I finally told them my girlfriend was a cop."
"I played bass in a death-rock band for almost five years. We would say that we were like family. I could go to a show and either know someone playing or know people there and feel welcomed. I am a nonbinary lesbian, and my band mates are also queer and trans, so having chosen family is huge.
"I started dating my partner in June 2020, around the time of the George Floyd murder. She works as a cop. I knew that was going to be contentious, so I kept her profession a secret. Throughout that year, they met my girlfriend and never had an issue with her. Around the time the Floyd cop had his trial, my band decided they wanted to write an 'ACAB' ['All Cops Are Bastards'] song, and I finally told them my girlfriend was a cop. They didn't talk to me for a week and then called to say I wasn't 'a fit' for the band.
"I find it all very disheartening, but mostly so because she became a cop to have an influence on changing the police work force culture and create a safer environment for women, queer and trans people. Before I met her, I never would have thought I would be romantically involved with a cop. But if I hadn't been open to unpacking my own snap judgments about people who become cops, then I wouldn't have won the lesbian lottery. It really just speaks to how much your life can get unlocked when your gut goes by what you experience of a person instead of social narratives you've been told."
I'm addition to everything else... what's up with that cop? Like, imagine being queer and "punk" or whatever and not finding a different job.
A fair amount of people think they can do better from the inside of the machine. Almost all fail in this, at least outside of small, individual interactions. They then either:
Among the last group, maybe a tiny percentage somehow win a decades-long 4D chess game and get to a position of real power while secretly retaining their initial values. But they've almost certainly compromised their values more than they think, they lack credibility with the people they say they want to help because of their entire career up to that point, they now have a bunch of long-term friends with the shit values of their organization, and they likely underestimate what bullshit will be pulled to remove them if they try to rock the boat.
All this is to say that I can understand why this type of person would want to become a cop (especially given the lack of "legitimate" options for major political change), but folks like this either wash out or give up why they took the job in the first place.
They have the arrogance to believe they can change the org when it's the org that'll change them.
Some arrogance, some optimism, some naivete, some lack of obvious better options.
Good list but you forgot option 4, get shot in the back by one of the other cops for being even a little less evil than they are
Option 5 is :dorner:
It's like hazing. To advance in the police force, you'll necessarily have committed enough wrongdoings to become a senior that you'll effectively incriminate yourself if you then effect any change.
Queer cops after stonewall, black cops after George Floyd or Rodney King (nevermind the rest of that history), it's hard to say what exactly goes through the mind of these people.
Franz Fanon wrote a bit about the psychology of colonized people working and collaborating with the colonizers. I dunno, some people get so desperate they figure they should try their chances with the people that'll kill them - but it takes a really fucked up person to not just serve the regime of oppression but be the gun wielders and boot stompers on the pointy end of the stick of imperialism.
I think the answer is simple. They're reformist minded. They think that by infiltrating oppressive institutions in significant numbers, they can change the character of those institutions more than those institutions will change their character. That revolution can be avoided and that everything can be fixed by oppressed groups individually scrapping for "representation" among inherently oppressive institutions. But the institutions always chew them up and spit them out, turning them into the modern equivalent of a Funktionshäftling. The best thing they can do at that point is :dorner:
Trot brained motherfuckers
trotsky wasn't reformist though
Yeah its a very lib brained thing to see yourself as an unchanging monad whose psyche cannot be acted upon by materialist forces (because for libs it is ideals that act upon the world).
It's also born on a misunderstanding. The idea that police force should be a force for good, but there are a few bad apples. Not that the police force have always been evil forces of legitimation because that is their singular most important purpose.