The Con is On: good cops tag in for bad cops on police reform
by Alan Wain and Leslie Butler
Now that the systemic problems of policing in America have finally been exposed for all to see, Americans are about to witness the awesome power of a self-correcting system. Cue the chorus: “The system sucks; long live the system!”
We are about to see illustrated what former president Bill Clinton never used to admit — how there is nothing right with America that can’t be made wrong by what’s wrong with America. Nothing escapes from the Washington swamp that can’t be dragged back into that swamp and drowned. Police reform is about to be made wrong again.
The con is on. Spin doctors of the chattering and political classes have begun revealing the fine print on what they mean by “the system” or by “the problem is systemic”, or “the system is broken” and by promising “meaningful, fundamental change”. More importantly, we are starting to learn what changes the chattering classes and politicians deem too radical.
The bad cops, the brutes who allegedly embarrassed the system, have been asked to temporarily take a seat. It is time for the good cops with their softer, politer voices now. The bad cops haven’t gone anywhere. They are just tagging out to let their partners tag in. It’s how the partnership works.
But the really artful part of this tag team con is how, by suggesting that cops can embarrass a policing system, it implies cops are somehow outside the system. It suggests the broken “system” refers only to words on paper — to the set of rules, instructions and policies that tell people within a policing system what to do. The cops themselves can still be tops, still the city’s finest. Just change the policies and we can let almost all the cops stick around to enforce some new policies.
What we have here is a failure to communicate
Police officer layoffs can be avoided by pretending we aren’t over policed, just wrongly policed due to a failure to communicate clearly to the boys in blue. The problem is miscommunication, not malice. And, by extension, if there are almost no bad cops, there are probably almost no bad police chiefs, bad mayors, bad legislators, or bad watchdogs either. We mustn’t think that any of the overwhelming majority of good people in the system aided and abetted, tolerated and protected the brutality of the bad apples because…well…just because.
We are urged to pretend we have had an awareness problem, that the proper authorities didn’t know about the prevalence of police brutality until just now. Perhaps the cops didn’t realize that killing unarmed citizens was so frowned upon. Maybe, when someone’s diction or hearing is a slightly off, “serve and protect” can sound like “intimidate and terrorize”.
We’ve seen this movie before, in the Arab Spring. The Egyptian people rose up and got military dictator Hosni Mubarak arrested. The other generals thanked the mob for alerting them to their dissatisfaction with a bad apple. We get it, they said. Message received. So, clear the streets and leave it to us to safeguard your revolution for you. Trust us, they said: “There’s nothing wrong with a military dictatorship that can’t be put right but what’s right with a military dictatorship.”
So, the Egyptian people left the streets. They trusted the generals. Then the Arab Spring reverted back to winter. The generals went back to kneeling on the people’s throats and eventually even to letting Mubarak out of jail.
It’s why Maya Angelou advised the exact opposite of: “when someone shows you who they are, don’t believe it. Be a chump. Give them another chance”.
The Evolution of Joe Biden
If anyone does insist on holding someone accountable for decades of police brutality and racism there’s always Donald Trump. Some think replacing that jerk with the fresh faced Joe Biden will bring happy days to policing.
Okay, fine, Biden’s face maybe isn’t so fresh. He’s even older than Trump and has sloshed around in the Washington swamp for forty years. Plus, he carries some embarrassing baggage as the guy who sponsored the 1994 crime bill that brought in over policing, mass incarceration and a war-on-crime ethos that encouraged cops to adopt a warrior mentality against their fellow citizens.
But Biden’s thinking has supposedly evolved. The 1994 Biden supported a massive expansion of police numbers and incarceration based on an assumption that power would not corrupt. It is unclear whether he was naïve then or just pandering to swing voters — the white suburban soccer moms and white folk of middle America. If those fine folks believed stories of police brutality and systemic racism were urban myths, that was good enough for 1994 Biden.
But 2020 Biden is prepared to assume the same people who abused their power the first time around won’t do it again. It is unclear whether he is naïve now or just pandering to swing voters — the white suburban soccer moms and white folk of middle America. If those fine folks believe the black community’s fears that police brutality and systemic racism will continue if everybody keeps their cop jobs is paranoid and over blown, that is good enough for 2020 Biden.
This is evolved? This is learning from the past? This is recognizing that the Black Lives Matter movement actually know what they are talking about?
Ass-covering, gaslighting and bullshitting
It is depressing watching the parade of shameless self-congratulating politicians covering their asses by scrambling to get out in front of the mob’s uprising to pretend they are, and have long been, against the very police practices they have been promoting, tolerating and ignoring for so long.
It is also depressing to hear the chattering classes gaslight and bullshit us about what we have witnessed these past few days. Most of them parrot a mantra they know is false. They say violence never solves anything and the authorities will ignore any calls for change that come with property damage.
They spout this nonsense knowing we just saw the unprecedented swiftness with which the Minneapolis officers got charged after the mob police burned a police station. They say it knowing we just saw mobs get rid of offensive statues by foregoing petitions and tearing them down. And as students of history they likely know race riots preceded the passing of the 1965 Civil Rights Act. They’ve likely heard that Lincoln condoned a bit of violence, a little property damage and a little taking away of private property (slaves) in his war for a good cause.
The talking heads urge a return to proper channels now — back to peaceful protests, back to voting, to re-attending debates and public consultations, to patiently awaiting the results of inquiries and of studies. In lieu of action, we’re offered theatre. Colin Kaepernick got his apology, not rehired. Mass incarceration got officially regretted but the inmates remain locked up. A street is named after Black Lives Matter now and many police chiefs took a knee for the cameras.
Past victims of institutional racism and police brutality are being told they will be able to relax the next time they run into the very same cops who have brutalized them before. In the future, they will be protected by the department’s re-written brochures. Sure, right? What could go wrong?
