Why the Police are not Your Friend: Part 1

One of the biggest reasons people give for rejecting anarchism is their fear of what will happen in a world without police protecting them. To deal with this issue I want to look into two myths surrounding the police (with more to come later): first, that not all cops are bad, and secondly that they have a dangerous job.

Sometime in the next week or two, I will attempt to dispel two other myths: 1) that the cops are there to protect you and 2) the cops deter crime.

Myth 1: "Not all cops are bad"

The Chicago Tribune today published an expose that looked into the 200+ incidents of police shootings going back for 10 years. The report noted that a person is shot by the police once ever 10 days in Chicago and that in less than 1% of the around 250 incidents the police officers are found at fault. In the other 99ish% the police officers get off, often even before the autopsy is completed and before testimony from witness is recorded. In many instances, the police oversight review board did not even interview one witness nor look at any of the forensic or autopsy reports.

The Chicago Tribune reports also claims that at least 12 of the people killed where shot in the back, often from very close range. In one of this instance Cornelious Ware, was shot to death by 5 plain clothes police officers who claimed they saw him wave a gun. His 15 and 13 year old siblings claimed otherwise. The forensics evidence came back and showed that the gun found at the scene had no blood on it, even though Ware was shot in the hand that was theoretically holding the gun.

Of course, the police officers where found to be free of all charges and let to go back to work. The civil courts found otherwise, as early this year a Chicago jury sided with the Wares and before the verdict came out the police department gave the family nearly 6 million dollars to keep quiet. The civil court found that the police officers shot and killed Ware and then placed a gun to cover their asses. They originally got off because the oversight board refused to interview people, miss quoted the witnesses (removing the fact that he was unarmed), and refused to look at the autopsy evidence. In addition, the protocol in the Chicago police department is to let the officers meet together before writing an incident report. This allows all the officers to get their stories straight and to fabricate what needs to be fabricated.

What we have here is systemic police misconduct, abuses of power, and departmental cover-ups. It might not be earth shattering information for most people to hear this but it helps dispel the myth that "not all cops are bad." Why is this? Because, this expose shows that there is an institutional framework set-up within the Chicago police department (and ever other major cities) that obfuscates and distorts truth in order to defend police misconduct. This not-so-thin blue line has to go all the way up to the Chief of police and the politicians in the windy city. It also has to include almost the entire police department. It even implicates those theoretical "good cops" who for some reason or another decided to remain silent while hundreds of their fellow cops murdered, raped, and terrorized the mostly black neighborhoods of Chicago. These theoretical good cops, who had to know about the misconduct, could have told the news reporters and made a stand against this gross abuse of power, instead they remained quiet. To quote Edmund Burke (who I rarely quote), "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." In this instance, the "good men" did nothing, and because of it the "bad men" killed well over 200 people. My question is how good could those "good cops" have been? Maybe they where just following orders or did not fully know what was going on? But it seems I have heard that argument before elsewhere…

What also comes out of this story is how horrible a job police oversight boards do. These boards are always just rubber stamps for police decisions. Instead of looking into misconduct and attempting they instead just provide a legal cover-up for the police. The CopWatch program is a much better and more successful way of addressing and stopping police misconduct.

Myth 2: "Cops have a tough and dangerous job"

The other argument in defense of the police is that "they have a tough and dangerous job." This argument is also fallacious. If you look at the statistics there are 676,000 police officers in this country and last year and 147 died on duty (this includes all who died from heart attacks, car accidents, etc). This brings the death rate for police officers to be 21 per 100,000 putting them below carpenters, electricians, coal miners, convenience store workers, and about 30-40 other professions. This number is actually only slightly higher then the death rate in child-birth last year (which was 17 out of 100,000). So if you think the cops have a dangerous job what about the soon to be mothers who are putting their life on the line (nearly as on the line as the police are) in order to have a child? Or the roofer who is always one bad step from killing himself should be allowed the right to kill or maim people.