You Can't Fix What Isn't Broken

The violence is the point. 

The terror, the humiliation, the death, that's the way the job is supposed to go. It's why cops get so mad when people question their killings, no matter how unjust or murderous. You wouldn't fire the guy at the movie theater for handing you a ticket, so why should you be mad when they kill someone?

Our only option is to completely dismantle policing as we know it. The military hardware confiscated and destroyed, the unions disbanded, the penalties for engaging deadly force immediate and punative. 

We've become so attached to the idea that police are a necessary component to social safety that we ignore why crime happens in the first place. Crime is the result of societal failures to provide necessities like housing, healthcare, food, etc. etc. so people get desperate to fulfill them. The idea that police are essential crime fighters only works if you assume that crime is a problem on an individual level so it's the cops job to catch 'em all like Pokémon. 

What we have to come around to is that we don't need them. If we address the things that cause crime in the first place, we can drastically cut down our police forces because there literally won't be as much for them to do. 

If we don't, police are just going to keep killing people. They'll keep killing, keep brutalizing, and treat any attempt at accountability as a direct attack on the foundation of the job. If they keep telling us that if they can't get away with killing whoever they want whenever they want they can't do the job correctly, shouldn't we take that to heart?

The most important thing to take away from these events is that there is no compromise to be made. To compromise is to recognize the legitimacy of the other side, which is unacceptable. How can you legitimize three cops doing nothing while listening to a man beg for his life? What legitimacy is there to breaking down a door in the middle of the night and killing an unarmed woman in her bed? What possible justification could there be for clapping in solidarity for your colleagues who left a man to bleed to death on the sidewalk?

I don't care if a cop is in your family or your friend who you grew up with is one or your neighbor is one and they're good people, alright? This isn't about them. It doesn't matter if they're individually a good person. Assuming that they are, it's human nature to identify with their own group against an outside threat. 

And that's the fundamental problem. Even if you believe that cops aren't our enemy, we are obviously theirs. We are an unruly, chaotic horde that is forever threatening to swallow them whole. The only way for them to be safe in our presence comes from our complete and total submission, anything else is to invite the collapse of society. 

We can't live like this. If nothing changes, sooner rather than later the crowds who surround cops to film their abuses are going to attack them to save whatever life they can. As always, there's a better way. All it needs is for us to be brave enough to take it.