All Cops Are Bad

in the criminal justice system the people are represented property in the policy makers who criminalized disobedience these are their stories I believe it was the anarchist philosopher Malatesta or Ice Cube who once said fuck the police coming straight from the underground that is as much of that song as I am allowed to read out loud and also that song has some pretty homophobic lyrics in there so this intro is a mistake hello comrades and non rads alike welcome back to cue and Anarchy the only web show something-something I'm your host funny name in the last episode we talked about capitalism I know quite a change of pace around here to talk about capitalism in this episode we're going to talk about the police so sit back get comfortable put your hands up in the air and interlace your fingers behind your head because if you make a sudden move I'm gonna blast your way to kingdom come motherfuck the police are bad which is not to say that they're all personally bad people or whatever because who gives a shit it's not relevant whether or not they're good people with kind hearts who will go to heaven because that's not the issue I have with the police I wish that were the issue I had with the police because that would be a much easier problem to solve you just fire all the current police and replace them with chiller ones the problem isn't with individual cops it's with policing as an institution the police should be abolished now I want to pull back a little here and and and clarify because I don't want you to get the wrong idea right off the bat I'm not saying that we should get rid of the police and leave the rest of society exactly as it is because that would be a fucking nightmare nor do I think crime will go away in an anarchist society there will always be crime or anti-social behavior and we have to do things to prevent and curtail that behavior there's still going to be people who are tasked with stopping murders so just chill nor do I think we should do violence to the police I just think should lose their jobs it's not the end of the world sorry if I sound offensive I'm just anticipating this video being played against me in court Sunday here's what I want we should abolish the police and there's an end to that sentence replace them with a more egalitarian institution that serves the few socially necessary aspects of policing without the ridiculous special privileges police are given now what are a police it's a group of people usually uniformed given certain legal powers by the state namely the they can do violence and they're allowed to arrest you insofar as the state can be said to hold a monopoly and the legitimate use of violence in a given territory the police are the people trusted to actually wield that violence they make sure that the state's rules are obeyed under penalty of injury incarceration or even death the police are the foot soldiers of the hierarchical institutions that anarchists seek to overthrow particularly the state and capital the police have always and will always so long as they exist act on behalf of capital to stop the working class from organizing in any meaningful capacity the law is designed by capital to serve the interests of capital and to keep the rest of us from fighting back against them but on top of that the police are also themselves a privileged class of people who wield unchallengeable power over the rest of us if a cop tells you to get on the ground you just have to do it if a cop tries to arrest you even if they don't actually have the legal authority to do that you're not allowed to resist they're not answerable to you so who exactly are they answerable to do they just police themselves I hope I don't have to explain why that would be a conflict of interest can't really be anyone else in the justice system either because they also rely on the police to do their job and that's also a conflict of interest so it seems like they can just do whatever they want and we can't to be clear there are usually civilian oversight committees in most metropolitan police forces but those institutions are comically toothless in my city Toronto Ontario the police were said to be uncooperative with the Special Investigations Unit nearly 1/3 of the time by Ombudsman Andre Marin that's just one city let's pick another city out of a hat New York I picked New York because it's my first association with the ward city and guess what when New York tried to make their Oversight Committee staffed entirely by civilians there were large-scale protests from police unions they've blocked off the Brooklyn Bridge and started chanting racial epithets at people in case you're curious I didn't know that going in and it took me two minutes to find on Wikipedia look up your city you'll probably find a similar story now that's weird isn't it isn't it weird how the police who are definitely following the rules are resistant to having their behavior scrutinized and the reason I find that kind of weird is because the police are always telling us civilians that if we haven't done anything wrong we don't have anything to hide so we're the police doing something wrong sure seems that way because if there's one quality the police officers seem to share its hostility towards accountability or oversight you sure love to turn off their body cameras before shooting people you know the body cameras right the ones that we installed on them because they kept shooting people and we couldn't tell if it was just murder and so instead of just taking away their ability to kill indiscriminately we said hey we'll put cameras and then we'll see if you're if you're doing it right and and then instead they turned off the cameras so that they could shoot people without anybody knowing why nothing suspicious there and to some degree cops get away with this because we kind of celebrate it as a culture I mean think about how many movies and TV shows and Airport novels star renegade cops who cut through the red tape and get the job done the idea that cops will use unlimited power and a lack of accountability in the interest of the public is a very popular fiction and it's one that authoritarian doofus is love in reality when cops flout the rules they just want to make their jobs easier they might want to secure a bogus conviction or hide evidence of corruption or brutality what's the advice that you always get when dealing with the police know your rights because if you don't the police can and will try to trick you into waving them unintentionally or just straight-up violate them assuming that you won't know what they are and are not allowed to do now I ask you does that sound like the behavior of someone who is protecting and serving you because to me it sounds like the behavior of someone with an adversarial relationship to the public which begs the question who are police really protecting and serving I mean it doesn't actually I'm just using the phrase beg the question wrong to annoy pedants you ever tried to contact the police about like stolen goods or a break-in or mugging they'll come and they'll file a little report and then they'll they'll put that away somewhere and forget about it on the other hand if someone poops in at Tim Hortons that will be front-page news for a week the justice system will spring into action and make sure that that pooper is brought to justice poop justice you know I worked at Tim Hortons and University oh that's a real Canadian sentence here's the weird thing we were never told to give cops free coffee I mean that wasn't part of the rules but management always did I guess that's not that weird I mean a lot of people consider cops heroes but a lot of people consider firefighters heroes too and we didn't give firefighters free coffee even though the franchise owner was himself the volunteer firefighter isn't that weird now I'm not saying that there is a secret conspiracy wherein Tim Hortons controls the police there's a very public conspiracy wherein Tim Hortons controls the police but not just Tim Hortons all of capital but Tim Hortons more than most because you know they serve doughnuts police enforce the wall that's kind of their whole main thing and who makes those laws politicians and who subsidizes politicians campaigns rich doofuses it's always been rich doofuses hey do you know what cannabis is illegal in the United States it's not because there was some study that said it was dangerous or it had bad health effects it's because William Randolph Hearst a rich newspaper tycoon and jackass thought that the production of hemp interfered with his pulp and paper business also a variety of regional economic factors I don't really want to get into it so he used his considerable wealth and influence over the media to watch a huge smear campaign to make cannabis look like it would make you murder people and I got to tell you it doesn't do that it the worst thing that cannabis does is it makes Adult Swim seem a lot funnier than it actually is according to the ACLU 7 million people were arrested from 2001 to 2010 for the possession of marijuana making up more than half of all drug arrests all of this despite the fact that 64% of Americans believe that pot should be legal and not just bleeding-heart left those like me either a majority of Republicans believe it should be legal in fact the majority of Americans have it should be legal since 2011 that's across three presidential terms in two presidents one of whom admitted to smoking marijuana while in college and yet somehow on a federal level nothing has been done and it gets worse despite the fact that black people and white people tend to consume marijuana at the same rates black people overall are four times as likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana and I say overall because in some states that number jumps to eight point five times as likely and I could do a whole video about the way that the law selectively targets minorities but I don't actually need to do that because if you pay attention to the world even slightly you already know that of course nowadays it's not paper Barons who are encouraging the mass arrests of people of color for their own profits its private prisons a phrase that is so horrifying it should only exist in a grim satire of capitalism but alas is real and is a seventy four billion dollar industry and they're paid by how many people lay lockup meaning they're incentivized to lock up lots of people and make sure they stay there as long as possible until lobby Congress to make sure that there's mandatory minimums and people are just locked away for a long time for no reason meaning they're not incentivized to rehabilitate criminals or to reduce recidivism you know like a prison is supposed to do and if that isn't the perfect synopsis of the problem with capitalism I don't know what is capital has convinced the state to allow them to detain people indefinitely for a profit for crimes that are often completely harmless like possession of cannabis not to mention the ways that poverty itself is criminalized you can be arrested for stealing food that someone else threw away you can be arrested for vagrancy for sleeping on a park bench because you don't have anywhere else to go if you try and protest this if you try to make the world even slightly better in any way you better believe the police will find some pretence to show up and arrest you the entire justice system will collaborate to throw the most trumped-up charges they can imagine at you meanwhile if you deliberately sell toxic assets and send the economy into the greatest tailspin since the Great Depression not only will you be not arrested you'll be bailed out by this they can probably get a sweet bonus to boot if you murder a lady allegedly and you can hire an expensive lawyer you can just get away with it in fact if you admit to sexually assaulting a woman on tape you can become President of the United States there's one rule for them and there's another rule for us people like to talk about the system being broken but it's not broken this is how it was meant to function the people who designed these laws designed them to keep order and when they say order they mean them being in control of you and none of it literally none of it would be possible without a complacent and obsequious police force now I'm aware the police are required to follow the law and to enforce it neutrally and without bias but you know that whole just following orders defenses so 19:46 they always have the option of not being police it's easy I do it every day I'm not being a police right now incidentally that's why this blue lives matter rhetoric is horseshit it's not comparable to be a police officer and to be black because being black is unchangeable but much more importantly doesn't hurt anyone policing does hurt people so it's not the moral equivalent of being born with different skin color cops like to say that the negative social aspects of policing are the result of a few bad apples and I like that metaphor actually because you know what bad apples do they spoil the whole bunch maybe that's why the good apples are always standing up for the bad apples maybe that's why the good apples don't seem to have a problem enforcing laws that are unjust and disproportionately punished the poor and minorities maybe that's why the good apples are resistant to any form of accountability or oversight that would stop the bad apples from the ability to kill without reprimand all apples are bastards and by Apple's I mean police officers in case the metaphor wasn't clear apples don't do those things I said police do yeah but what are you gonna do you gotta have police right I mean there's always been police no what we now recognizes the police are a pretty recent phenomenon well there's been a lot of institutions that have called themselves the police throughout history but we now recognize as modern policing evolved in the 1830s Sir Robert Peel established the first modern police force in 1829 in London meaning a group of uniformed and badged people whose job it was to uphold the law that's why police in the jolly streets of London town are called bobbies and also I think why French fries are called chips I'm not sure about that throughout history there's been a lot of different ways to keep the peace I mean sure policing has been around for almost 200 years but that doesn't make it the only option it's not a universal human constant or whatever bullshit people try to tell you and it wasn't popular when it was introduced the only reason we deal with it now is because we're used to it so if we want to get rid of the police what are we gonna have instead and I have a suggestion voluntary community self-defense a community managed rotating group of people who temporarily take on the responsibility of keeping their community safe recallable at any time should that community feel that they are no longer fit to carry out their duties that way law keepers and the public would not be adversarial they'd be the same thing and also the law keepers wouldn't be a special privileged class of people above the public that they supposedly serve we should also focus on eliminating the root causes of antisocial behavior people shouldn't be poor enough to have to rob each other people who are mentally ill should be able to get treatment before a violent episode addiction should be treated as a health issue not a legal one getting an armed thug to lock people in a little box isn't a solution to those problems and as long as it's the only option we're willing to consider violent crime will always run rampant which the state will use as an excuse to take more and more drastic steps and eliminate more and more of your civil liberties in the name of stopping crime and I'm not talking about weed again because yeah you should be allowed to have weed but I'm talking about your right to privacy your freedom of association your civil liberties are not under threat in some hypothetical dystopian future they're under threat right now every day when crimes do occur our solutions should be based on restitution and rehabilitation not punishment not because criminals don't deserve to be punished because that's not anything there's no logic behind what people deserve there's no math equation you can put in that calculates what people deserve and what they don't it's nothing the reason we shouldn't punish criminals is because it doesn't fucking work it doesn't reduce recidivism we're just adding misery to the world with no tangible benefit to society aside from our own sadistic gratification I don't want to see criminals incarcerated and tortured I want to see them treat it and the ones that can't be treated I want them quarantined away from the rest of us but I want them treated humanely because if it's literally impossible for them to be anything but criminals we can't really be mad at them for being criminals can we and if it is possible for them not to be criminals we should help them accomplish that there are a million situations where what I've suggested might not produce the best results but the system we have now produces terrible results like all the fucking time if we hold our current system up to the same scrutiny that we hold potential alternatives we'd conclude that it's impossible and could never work right now we're stuck with a rotten system we can try to make smaller reforms exhaust all of our energy and political will and watch as they slowly get rolled back when the next guy comes to power or we can try something else what we call the justice system is anything but and our descendants will look back on police and prisons the same way that we look back on inquisitors and dungeons barbaric methods of social control that the powerful use to scare everyone else away from challenging them the police are not the heroes of this story they're not even the villains they're the henchmen they're the bebop and rocksteady of neoliberalism but I guess more so Bebop cuz he's a pig I don't know how to end this video I've talked for a very long time about the police and I'm still mad and I want to say a special thank you to whatever cop from the Toronto Police Service was forced to watch this video I'm sorry it was a big waste of your time because they didn't say anything illegal and I know your time is very valuable at the Toronto Police Service because when people from the gay village came to you and told you that there was probably a serial killer running around killing people he didn't do anything about it and people died needlessly and then you turned around and blamed the community for not cooperating enough so I guess what I'm saying is fuck you hey click the like button and the little bell to get notified of new videos and smash that like button just like you want to smash the state

Channel: Thought Slime

Views: 310,829

Rating: 4.6856189 out of 5

Keywords: police, ACAB, all cops are bastards, police vs anarchists, why do anarchists dislike the police?, anarchy, q and anarchy, thought slime, anarchist, anti-police, police abolition, prison abolition, libertarian socialism, left wing, anarcho communism

Id: vk5xnEL8mYg

Length: 19min 11sec (1151 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 12 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/ErinTheTrickster]

HELLO AND WELCOME TO THE EYEBALL ZONE

[u/A-B-Cat]

I got a shout out in the eyeball zone for my music. Unfortunately thoughtslime thought (slimed) that video was pretty harsh and deleted it.

Super cool to get recognized like that and it's a huge thing to do for other leftists.

[u/Sunnyboigaming]

A great video from Matt

I'd also recommend Copaganda by JackSaint

Pt. 1 Pt. 2

[u/[deleted]]

One of my favourite videos released by Thought Slime!

[u/MoreDetonation]

Definitely my favorite thumbnail of theirs.

[u/RedditAsphyxiation]

Episode 3 of non competes "how anarchy works" addresses a similar topic too

[u/McGrillo]

Love me some Thot Slime, might have to rewatch this one

[u/TheYaYaT]

That includes Chinese police though some authcoms might think otherwise

[u/apakras1]

The acronym sent me through some mental gymnastics — Assigned Cop At Birth?