Police forces willingly serve to uphold racist, classist systems
9/2/21 by Colin Mangan
Since the June 2020 nationwide uprising against police brutality, a slogan has entered the political lexicon: “all cops are bastards,” sometimes sanitized as “all cops are bad.” When we say “all cops are bad,” we mean that all police officers, without exception, are knowingly complicit in upholding a system which dehumanizes and subjugates people of color, people with disabilities and other historically oppressed groups. Moreover, we are also referring to the culture of secrecy, fear and violence espoused by police officers, individually and collectively, which amplifies and protects the aforementioned injustices, i.e., the “blue wall of silence.” That all police officers are guilty of these charges is without question, as reflected by a multitude of statistics and studies on the issue.
According to a May 2000 U.S. Department of Justice report, 84 percent of police officers said they have witnessed police officers in their department use “more force than is necessary” to make an arrest, and yet 61 percent of the time, fail to report said incident. A May 2019 report by the American Economic Journal “reviewed 50,000 allegations of officer misconduct in Chicago and found that officers with extensive complaint histories were disproportionately more likely to be named subjects in civil rights lawsuits,” and yet departments “fail to adequately investigate” said abuses. Across the country, police departments have vehemently opposed efforts at police reform and have instead politically supported the most reactionary elements of American politics. This attitude is best illustrated by the endorsements of former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election by the Fraternal Order of Police and the Police Benevolent Association of New York State — two of the largest police unions in the country supporting the most overtly racist U.S. president since Bill Clinton.
What these data points reflect is that police officers, by virtue of their occupation, are complicit in maintaining a culture of secrecy and violence that only works to serve and protect police officers themselves. But the maintenance of this “blue wall of silence” has far more systemic material consequences.
We understand the “state” not only as a sociopolitical entity but also through the classic Weberian definition as a “monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.” As a state apparatus, police not only represent the most reactionary sociopolitical elements of society, but function to maintain the existing social order — to discipline the working class and, by extension, maintain the rate of accumulation.
In the context of U.S. history, policing has always served to undermine and subjugate the working class. Modern police departments as bureaucratic rational-legal institutions first evolved from Southern slave patrols and have continuously been transfigured to suppress other proletarian movements. After the official abolition of slavery in 1865, these slave patrols, along with elected sheriffs and constables, were consolidated for the purpose of maintaining the public order — a task which not only entailed the continued repression of people of color but also the emerging industrial proletariat. During the Gilded Age, notably during “major strikes and riots in 1867, 1877, 1886 and 1894” according to an In These Times article, police worked to suppress labor organizations and protect the interests of businesses through the subjugation of the labor force. In the 1960s and 1970s, local, state and federal authorities not only became the frontline defenders of the Jim Crow system but also worked to suppress other movements, such as the anti-war movement, communist organizations and the LGBT rights movement in both the United States and Canada.
Policing today has likewise become increasingly militarized, with policies such as the increased use of surveillance and no-knock warrants, as well as the criminalization of homelessness, mental health, misdemeanors and survival measures such as prostitution, allowing for the increased militarization and criminalization of entire communities.
Policing is, and has always been, an instrument of class rule used to maintain bourgeois control and divide the proletariat. Although police officers themselves are proletarians, or wage workers, they also make up the most reactionary elements of the political superstructure. This is made possible by two factors: the racialized process of proletarianization in the United States and the cooperation between the military and federal authorities with state and local police departments. Likewise, police serve to maintain racial segregation that defines American economic life.
The reason that all cops are bad is not simply because they uphold these structures of socioeconomic and political injustice, but that they do so with both agency and extreme prejudice. This dynamic was laid bare most clearly in the wake of the June 2020 nationwide uprisings against police brutality as police violently cracked down on antiracism protests, instigating violence against protestors and journalists alike. It is reflected in police unions’ opposition to any kind of meaningful reform effort and support for the most overtly racist elements in American political life, in the daily brutalization of Black and brown communities, in the widespread violence against people with disabilities and the economically impoverished and in the near-total absence of accountability, with “98.3 percent of killings by police from 2013-2020 [not resulting] in officers being charged with a crime,” according to Mapping Police Violence.
These are not mere blanket allegations on the nature of policing, but carefully collected statistics and histories made possible by decades of both mainstream and radical scholarship. While the goals of abolition and a more just, equitable society have yet to be achieved, movements such as Black Lives Matter have successfully brought the structural nature of these issues into the forefront and have laid bare the inherently racist and violent nature of these injustices.
This is why policing can never be “reformed” — not just because the police themselves vehemently oppose any proposal which limits their ability to dominate the citizens they supposedly serve and protect, but because class domination is the very function police serve. That being said, officers still have agency in these matters, and every time an incident of police violence occurs, those officers choose to remain complicit in upholding the structures which perpetuate violence. Their complicity should not be forgiven nor forgotten.
Colin Mangan is a junior double-majoring in philosophy and sociology.
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