The title of this piece references a relevant book for our times that deserves a read by Alex S. Vitale titled…wait for it…“The End of Policing.” Boom. Profound title reveal you didn’t see coming. Moving right along now that has been properly addressed. In his book Alex Vitale delves into the ideas behind policing and whose interests police are actually protecting. How their authoritarian origins were never legitimate and serves the interests of power and not the actual needs of the people. And such is true for every part of our system now, nothing is here to serve the pleb filth, you’re here to serve the needs of your capitalist masters. Work their jobs, on their land, and spend your life chasing after things they want you to. Those in power are not your friends and not here to protect you unless you somehow prove helpful to serving a given narrative of power.
I’d like to note as well that the type of people they hire to be police are a certain way for a reason, they are there to intimidate first, and if the the will of the state was to find peace and resolve things they wouldn’t routinely hire guys that are freakishly larger than the average person. There is message in everything people do. And the message they are sending when they have muscle head police with weapons and a militia of other armed to the teeth maniacs trained to kill is you are being suppressed and if you resist what old rich people in suits say you’ll meet the rough end of these people.
These are not the actions of an institution who is loving or cares, these are the actions of a bully. People who will endanger as many people as needed to get one guy in a high speed chase because they always need to make the point that they are in control, this is also the exact mentality the military has when targeting terrorists in Iraq. Doesn’t matter how many they endanger or if they are chasing someone that’s innocent. They just chase and cause chaos.
In Iraq they’ve bombed an entire building or block even to try and kill one terrorist target. The establishment doesn’t care about the havoc they create they just set the dogs loose and let them terrorize people into conformity. Along with their other terror and torture tactics that are jails and the entire “justice” system, where truth is seldomly heard, we just take a judge’s word, and the suffering just won’t go away. Oh home of “justice.”
Cities and states intentionally hire police who are huge men, steroid filled men usually with delusions of being a hero of some kind, or harbor fantasies of getting laid by the women who like to sidle up next to existing power for protection. They hire guys who are most likely to pose in the mirror for fifteen minutes a day flexing and drawing their weapon with a scowl on their face noticing how bad ass they look. Guys that saw Dirty Harry and were inspired by it. A no nonsense cop that kicks ass is their egoic delusion – it’s irrelevant that all the ass kicking is at the behest of mayors, governors, and the Federal government who are bought out by corporations and the blessing of central banking institutions and doing things for the worst reasons, they somehow fool themselves they are protecting America the great and good hearted when in actuality they serve a first rate scoundrel.
And then there is the narrative of the hardworking salt of the earth good guy cop just there to help people, and maybe they do sometimes, but the general harm they cause to real liberty where we are living our lives under the supervision of a nanny state is never worth the faux sense of security offered by police, and when there is an emergency they typically arrive on the scene far after the threat is gone.
And really most people would probably never agree to join the police in the first place if it wasn’t for financial desperation. And relatively speaking being a cop is a pretty cushy job for a person of a certain disposition. If you’re ok with taking a payout and not questioning the raison d’etre of government and throwing people in tiny cells at your discretion, then you might make for a good cop. If you’ve shut down that emotional part of your mind that knows when you ticket people you are often taking things from people who have very little, or in some cases where frivolous arrests occur police radically alter and interfere with lives when an issue could have just have easily have been let go and life would have been none the worse, but a cop chose to bring a situation to a head and now things are worse for everyone.
These incidents happen all the time, and every time someone is arrested for possession of drugs or having drugs in their system the nanny state and their strong armed bulldogs of doom that constitute the police, military, and federal intelligence agencies intercede in someone’s life and makes it worse, not better. And we’ve heard some stories that have the eerily familiar sound of bullshit where someone says jail was the best thing that could have happened to them. What they really meant was an intervention in their life is what they needed, but due to the lack of community that has been taken away and lack of normal support systems found in those communities through social bonds there is now no safety net there. Capitalism has made people weak and dependent on them instead of us relying on our neighbors, friends, and family and being independent of needing resources from capitalists whose motivations are always profits, not well being.
The state essentially creates the conditions that make chaos more likely and then sells the cure for these ills, part of which is their policing which again furthers the interests of corporations, nation states, and banks. Like a mobster that breaks your windows and then offers a neighborhood watch program where if you pay them a certain amount they’ll insure the safety of your windows.
Anyways, the above is a mixture of my own thoughts and what was noted in Vitale’s book The End of Policing, and I agree with his conclusions, namely that most of what policing is now needs to come to an end if we ever want to live in a truly free society. And I did want to point out some direct excerpts from the book I liked which contradict many of the popular opinions from modern conservatives and liberals alike:
Here Vitale mentions the oft noted problems with training in a particular manner that establishes an us against them mentality in police –
Vitale mentions the broken windows theory I alluded to in my above writing where police essentially help create a need for their own existence:
People consistently believe community policing is the answer, but they never consider that policing in itself is harmful and is simply something that attempts to put a band aid on a problems that shouldn’t really exist at all if we lived with stronger community bonds and less inequality:
One of if not the most central problem with policing and incarceration is strong arming the will of the people through threats and fear. Insuring that the people are always kept at arm’s length from ever really influencing power and power can hide behind their own private army which we are told are supposed to be serving the needs of the people and not the needs of the powerful. Vitale notes that below:
And lastly, below Vitale notes how the attempts at more band aids to fix what is broken doesn’t work, and further, the powers that be never had to provide evidence it worked in the first place:
