Good cop, bad cop.

Whenever we have one of these police atrocities, there is always a shocked reaction in certain circles about the bad cop or cops and people talk about whether its just a few bad apples or if the whole system is corrupt, but in either of these assessments is the implication that what the cops should be doing is altogether different than the atrocity, that the bad things are happening because these are bad cops. 

Again, whenever one of these atrocities happens, the statement comes out from those in authority that the cops are just doing their jobs, and in fact there seems a genuine puzzlement from the police that this could be questioned. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are extremely rare.

We have this idea of law enforcement as keeping the peace, helping people, catching bad guys, and that being rough may be a part of it now and then, but only because it is a hard and dangerous job and that going beyond certain limits, limits that are the subject of some debate, is an aberration.  There are a few bad apples perhaps, or an otherwise good person has been driven over the edge.  It is a nice picture, but totally wrong.

There are those who say that the police are all corrupt, that they are all bad cops.  This is also wrong.

In truth, the police are doing exactly the job that they are trained and paid to do, and beating and occasionally killing blacks and other low status people is just part of it. The fact that you don't like what they are doing is because you are thinking they should be doing a different job.  The police are here to protect (property) and to serve (property owners), and that has been pretty much their purpose all along.  They are also trained to "keep order", which means to intimidate the dispossessed and shut down vocal dissent as quickly and decisively as possible.  This pretty much requires that they be feared by the people who have the most reason to dissent.  The more unequal our society becomes, the more they serve only the richest and the more dissonance is apparent between their real job and the one we would like to think that they do. 

If you want them to do a different job, you need to change their bosses.  You need to change their training.  You need to change how they are paid.  This last is especially important.  Right now in most municipalities it is very clear to everyone that a significant part of the budget comes from fines and judgments.  The police are, in effect, writing their paychecks by writing tickets, and they are not going to write tickets to rich people if they can avoid it (job security).  This puts the burden increasingly on the poorest and blackest citizens. And, in the end, you need to solve the underlying problem of inequality. The police will only treat us all well if we are all property owners and relatively equal.  Is that impossible?  Not at all, but it is not easy and won't happen by thinking we are just talking about bad cops.