....really fucking fed up with the amount of people ive seen imply or outright state that anyone advocating for police abolition has never experienced violent crime.
guess what, some of us have and for many of us a huge part of the reason we support it is because of how absolutely horrible our experiences were.
things police have done for me when ive come in contact with them
- tell me that a person strangling a coworker wasn't a reason to call and then refuse help
- get pissed when i called back because someone was being fucking choked and they were forced to send someone out
- get pissed and accuse the staff of purposely attracting problems after we installed a sharps container to reduce the used needles we'd been dealing with for months when they saw them after we reported another assault....
- which took them an hour to arrive at and then they got pissed the victim had gone with paramedics to the hospital and we hadn't somehow held the person who did it for them
- harass two witnesses to an assault because the were homeless
- harass me because i carry narcan and they overheard me say i used it to paramedics at an overdose
- see the shelter van in a parking lot and come in to harass the shelter workers as they helped someone
- and so much more
there has never been a situation where police have helped me when i experienced violence and there are a ton where they have made shit much worse.
if the police disappeared and none of the money was redirected i would be much safer, let alone if the money went to organizations and groups who actually gave a shit about people beyond using them as punching bags
who would i call if i needed help? definitely not the people who've repeatedly harassed me, refused to help when needed, and take a fucking hour to show up when someone is being beaten.
probably one of the community groups that's managed to do a significant amount more with a fraction of the budget without guns or harassing victims.
You don’t understand. Police prevent crime by maybe showing up after the fact, arresting a random black person who’s a 61% match for the suspect description, and then handing the case off to a prosecutor who will threaten the suspect them into accepting a plea deal so the prosecutor never has to prove their case in court.
How would society function without that!?!
I was a proponent of defunding the police for most of my life.
Then I started working for a major metropolitan police department. I worked in a precinct for about a year before I transferred to the crime lab, where I spent another two years.
I was given the opportunity to observe the police department, its officers, its civilian employees, first hand. Every day. 40 hours a week. Sometimes nights and weekends. Sometimes nine to five.
I left the department. I am now a police abolitionist.
My partner (NB) worked for the same department for five years. First in public records, then on the street. They were not out and presented fem.
They left the department less than a year before I did. They are also now a police abolitionist.
I learned that people join the police department for a variety of reasons. Most of them (officers included) want to do good. They want to help their communities. They want to make a positive difference in the world.
But the American policing system isn’t designed to help people or fix things on a societal level. And the people who joined the department with good intentions and high ideals end up in one of three situations:
1. They realize they can’t change things from the inside, and they leave.
2. They realize they can’t change things from the inside. But they need the good pay and excellent benefits to provide for their families. So they keep their heads down, try to do as little harm as possible, and stick around just long enough for their pension and lifetime benefits to take effect (with my department, this was 20 years). Then they leave as soon as possible.
3. They adapt to reflect the morals of the department, becoming the very things they sought to change when they first joined the department. These are the ones that end up in positions of power within the department (lieutenants, commanders, chiefs, etc.)
There is no “fixing” the police. It was built on a faulty foundation, and continues to build upward. And the people in power (both within and outside of the departments) don’t want it to change. Because the current system benefits them, and people like them, immensely.
Abolition is the only viable way to fix things. Like demolishing a decrepit building in order to build something on top of it.
The police showed up after our house exploded and all they did was repeatedly interrogate me while I was standing outside in the cold and the wet in my pajamas and bare feet with sheets of my own skin hanging off my arms, and presumably I was also in shock at the time.
