Australia

"No, but you see, since all cops are part of a systemic issue, all of them are bastards, even if they have the best intentions and aren't complicit in the problems I have with police"

There is probably a lot of overlap with people who think all white people are racist, or all men are rapists.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

There were a couple on some of the r/Australia threads.

Okay, I’ll bite. I think she did her job well here. I don’t think her job should exist. I guarantee, whether intentionally or not, that she has wielded her power to make a minority’s day shittier during her career, when they didn’t deserve it. Giving that sort of power to a person, giving them that control over other people, almost always leads to corruption. A few people shining through is the exception, not the rule. Victoria police ran a scare campaign in the media last year about the decriminalisation of public intoxication. How it would cause an outbreak of other crimes, and make their job harder. But no such thing has happened. Even if you don’t believe the police should stop existing, it’s undeniable that they’ve systematically lobbied for more and more powers, which disproportionately affect minorities and the poor. Reducing those powers and shrinking the force has more benefits than not doing so or allowing their power and sizes to continue to balloon.

Edit: To be clear, the decriminalisation was directly off the back of the Royal Commission into an indigenous woman, Aunty Tanya Day’s death in custody. She was arrested for public intoxication after she fell asleep drunk on a train. Think of all the drunk footy fans you’ve seen snoozing on a train home before.

There’s not a lot of point in an event like this when emotions are high and reactionaries are high on the “heroism”.

But “all cops are bastards” remains true.

In capitalist society the role of the police is to protect the private property of the ruling class and to serve their interests.

Since their inception that has been the role of the police force in Australia, beginning with the genocide of aboriginal people in order to secure land for settlers.

In the 80s and 90s we saw how little the role of the police force is in “protecting and serving the people” as they formed gangs to hunt down, murder, then cover up the murder of queer people.

Can you really justify the role police play in keeping workers from striking and making meaningful change in workplace reform, or in housing where the police use violence to evict the poor in order for the rich to buy up all the houses?

We haven’t even touched on mental health. Why in general are the police called when there’s a mental health crisis? Where are the counsellors, psychiatrists and social workers? Why was someone with schizophrenia allowed to get to the point where they became a threat to the public?

The actions of the individual are justified in this situation. Incidentally police do some good actions sometimes by virtue of the fact that they’re currently the ones with the power, weapons, and authority to act in these circumstances.

But there are much better ways of organising a society that don’t create such disparity, and there are much better ways of protecting communities that aren’t primarily centred on using violence against the poor to protect the greed of the rich.