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The main thing that people snag on is scale and frequency. If you are super into "ACAB" (all cops are bastards) you can easily "research" this all day for week

The main thing that people snag on is scale and frequency. If you are super into "ACAB" (all cops are bastards) you can easily "research" this all day for weeks and find so many insane cases of police being absolute bastards. You would be so solidified in your belief that police as an institution are fundamentally a force of evil. But you would probably never come across the boring stat that less than 1 in 500,000 police encounters ever register on the "ACAB" radar. This is almost always where people run aground. Stats are almost always obfuscated for things that people develop a moral conviction around. Imagine trying to acknowledge the stat there are effectively zero transgender people perving on others in public bathrooms.

drewbeck 10mo ago
If someone had this experience I’d encourage them to look into how police departments across the US consistently fight against any accountability for the cops who perpetuate those relatively few awful encounters. “Most interactions are harmless therefore the negativity is overblown and cops are trustworthy” is one takeaway if you stop your research at the right point. “if you have a bad experience with a cop the entire department will turn against you; they are not to be trusted” is a more accurate takeaway. As you say, stats very often obfuscate.
- gruez 10mo ago
  If we apply your logic, would you say it's fair to go around and say "all teachers are bastards", when referring to teacher unions that make it hard to fire incompetent teachers? Or maybe "all doctors are bastards" when referencing how the american medical association (the trade association for doctors) makes it hard for more doctors to be admitted?
  - adrianN 10mo ago
    Misanthropy is the logical conclusion /s
  - shadowgovt 10mo ago
    Sure, but one key difference is that if either of those groups steps outside the law, you can recourse to the law to check them. Since police are part of the law, when they don't hold their own accountable, there's no recourse. And that's a real problem. This is before one even starts unpacking the knapsack of how much law is designed to protect the police from consequences of performing their duties (leading to the unfortunate example "They can blow the side off your house if they have reason to believe it will help them catch a suspect and the recompense is that your insurance might cover that damage.")
    - gruez 10mo ago
      >Since police are part of the law, when they don't hold their own accountable, there's no recourse. And that's a real problem. I don't see how this is a relevant factor for the two cases I mentioned. Sure, it's bad that are part of the justice system, and therefore you can't use the justice system to correct their misbehavior, but you're not going to involve the justice system for incompetent teachers, or not enough doctors being admitted. For all intents and purposes the dynamic is the same.
      - shadowgovt 10mo ago
        > incompetent teachers I'm not really talking about incompetence, and incomptenece isn't the largest issue in the category of "things that make people say ACAB." https://www.wtrf.com/top-stories/teacher-charged-with-sex-crimes-against-2-minors-in-pennsylvania/ https://www.wtrf.com/top-stories/teacher-charged-with-sex-cr... I am not at all joking when I make the claim that police committing sex crimes is a problem that is frequently swept under the rug by both police internal affairs and the judicial system. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/08/daniel-holtzclaw-lawsuit-sexual-assault-complaint-police-cover-up https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/08/daniel-holtz...
      - thatcat 10mo ago
        Teachers and doctors may abuse their authority, but there is a sharp legal limit to what they can get away with.
  - alexashka 10mo ago
    Yes. It's not the root however. The root is nepotism. What you're describing is one of ten thousand problems nepotism causes.
  - vel0city 10mo ago
    How many teachers are getting off on murder charges due to their position as a teacher? Seems like a pretty big difference.
    - febusravenga 10mo ago
      They only murder talents and/or curiosity in children or self esteem. (I'm totally not ATAB here, just agree that parent post analogy)
      - collingreen 10mo ago
        Using murder in this context to minimize -actually murder- is pretty bad taste.
      - IAmBroom 10mo ago
        Words matter. Your rebuttal doesn't.
GuinansEyebrows 10mo ago
pedantic, but "ACAB" doesn't necessarily mean every (or most) cops do horrible things all the time (that's the strawman version). one, more nuanced, sentiment is something more like "all cops are bastards as long as bad cops are protected." another sentiment is "modern police institutions are directly descended from slavecatchers and strikebreakers; thus, all of policing is rooted in bastard behavior, therefore: all cops are bastards". there are plenty of other ways to interpret the phrase. "acab" is shorthand for a lot of legitimate grievances.
- drdeca 10mo ago
  My favorite slogan is “Slogans are always bad.” . It can be interpreted in a lot of different ways that make a lot of sense, and that’s why I repeat it often, without clarifying what I mean by it.
  - GuinansEyebrows 10mo ago
    and yet, here you are, indirectly swiping at something instead of just saying what you mean :)
- ImJamal 10mo ago
  That is a lot of words to make a claim that nobody would accept if they used it for other issues. If somebody said that all blacks are criminals and used your exact argument, nobody would buy it.
  - GuinansEyebrows 10mo ago
    ah yes, race, something famously chosen
- 0x457 10mo ago
  > modern police institutions are directly descended from slavecatchers and strikebreakers; That's not (entirely) true, though? Every modern police department has its roots in London Metropolitan Police Force which had nothing to do with salve catching can't say much about strikebreakers, but I know specifically LMPF went on multiple strikes themselves. It had also nothing to do with solving crimes, that's just a bonus.
lotsofpulp 10mo ago
You picked a terrible example as a counterpoint, because ACAB is about police protecting bad police (or generally, authorities defending each other as a gang themselves). Which is seen in every group of authorities around the country. They literally give out get out of jail free cards for cops’ friends and family in many parts of the country, that is systemic, and has nothing to do with frequency of cops committing crimes.
- roywiggins 10mo ago
  And when a cop tries to do something about it, this is the sort of thing that happens. This guy seems like he's trying to do the right thing, but the system is designed so he can't: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/04/nypd-lawsuit-courtesy-cards-traffic-tickets https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/04/nypd-lawsuit... > Bianchi claims his superiors retaliated against him for his stance against the “corrupt” cards after he was warned by an official with the Police Benevolent Association, New York City’s largest police union, that he would not be protected by his union if he wrote tickets for people with cards. And if he continued, he’d be reassigned... The lawsuit cites several instances where his NYPD colleagues complained about his ticket-writing, including on Facebook... > Bianchi’s service as a traffic cop ended last summer when he wrote a ticket to a friend of the NYPD’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, the lawsuit states.
  - teraflop 10mo ago
    Adrian Schoolcraft is the name that comes to mind for me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft > Schoolcraft amassed a set of tapes which demonstrated corruption and abuse within New York City's 81st Police Precinct. The tapes include conversations related to the issues of arrest quotas and investigations. [...] Schoolcraft was harassed, particularly in 2009, after he began to voice his concerns within the precinct. He was told he needed to increase arrest numbers and received a bad evaluation. His fellow officers had him involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward. They told the hospital that his claims were a sign of paranoid delusions. He was eventually vindicated, but his career was destroyed.
ryandrake 10mo ago
ACAB is not about the proportion of bad encounters to good encounters. It is about the police system as a whole that defends and provides cover for the bad ones. If you have a system where 1 actor is bad, and the other 500,000 actors are good but also protect the 1, then you have a system with 500,001 bad actors.
- drdeca 10mo ago
  Suppose you have a system where 1 actor is bad, and 500000 actors are “good except that they protect that one guy”, and then the one guy dies of a freak heart attack, and then all but one of the 500000 are replaced with “good actors” except that they defend the guy who remains from the 500000. Are they bad actors?
  - pstuart 10mo ago
    You're reducing it down too far. Policing has a problem policing itself -- it's very well documented. People take it too far in both directions, but it's safe to say that there's more than one bad actors and the system demonstrably tolerates and defends them right up to the point where they are forced not to.
    - drdeca 10mo ago
      Right, there’s clearly a problem, and I think even a systemic problem. I just don’t think it follows that literally every officer is therefore culpable. I think I would say that probably almost every police union leader is culpable.
      - QuercusMax 10mo ago
        And who votes for those union leaders? The cops. They vote for corrupt people to protect their own corruption. It's a corrupt system from top to bottom.
        drdeca 10mo ago
NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
>But you would probably never come across the boring stat that less than 1 in 500,000 police encounters ever register on the "ACAB" radar. This is hardly a revelation. There are levels of bastardy in between "angelic philosopher-saint and paladin of justice" and "demonic hellspawn stomping babies for resisting arrest". The cop who just hands out false tickets to meet quota is just as ACAB as the one who finally loses his temper and shoots someone without true cause, but one gets to hide it better. Intuitively, I suspect that the cumulative actions of the low-level ACAB behaviors add more misery and injustice to the world than all the wrongful deaths and incarceration combined.
ImPleadThe5th 10mo ago
"If you research police corruption you'll probably find out the police are corrupt." Large corporations and the police both have statistically significant problems to be a concern to the average person. Frequency isn't the issue it's recurrence across municipalities. That's what makes it clear there is a systemic issue. Imagine if we didn't make laws about murder because "It's not that frequent of a problem only 1 in 500,000 people are murdered"

drewbeck 10mo ago

If someone had this experience I’d encourage them to look into how police departments across the US consistently fight against any accountability for the cops who perpetuate those relatively few awful encounters. “Most interactions are harmless therefore the negativity is overblown and cops are trustworthy” is one takeaway if you stop your research at the right point. “if you have a bad experience with a cop the entire department will turn against you; they are not to be trusted” is a more accurate takeaway. As you say, stats very often obfuscate.

gruez 10mo ago
If we apply your logic, would you say it's fair to go around and say "all teachers are bastards", when referring to teacher unions that make it hard to fire incompetent teachers? Or maybe "all doctors are bastards" when referencing how the american medical association (the trade association for doctors) makes it hard for more doctors to be admitted?
- adrianN 10mo ago
  Misanthropy is the logical conclusion /s
- shadowgovt 10mo ago
  Sure, but one key difference is that if either of those groups steps outside the law, you can recourse to the law to check them. Since police are part of the law, when they don't hold their own accountable, there's no recourse. And that's a real problem. This is before one even starts unpacking the knapsack of how much law is designed to protect the police from consequences of performing their duties (leading to the unfortunate example "They can blow the side off your house if they have reason to believe it will help them catch a suspect and the recompense is that your insurance might cover that damage.")
  - gruez 10mo ago
    >Since police are part of the law, when they don't hold their own accountable, there's no recourse. And that's a real problem. I don't see how this is a relevant factor for the two cases I mentioned. Sure, it's bad that are part of the justice system, and therefore you can't use the justice system to correct their misbehavior, but you're not going to involve the justice system for incompetent teachers, or not enough doctors being admitted. For all intents and purposes the dynamic is the same.
    - shadowgovt 10mo ago
      > incompetent teachers I'm not really talking about incompetence, and incomptenece isn't the largest issue in the category of "things that make people say ACAB." https://www.wtrf.com/top-stories/teacher-charged-with-sex-crimes-against-2-minors-in-pennsylvania/ https://www.wtrf.com/top-stories/teacher-charged-with-sex-cr... I am not at all joking when I make the claim that police committing sex crimes is a problem that is frequently swept under the rug by both police internal affairs and the judicial system. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/08/daniel-holtzclaw-lawsuit-sexual-assault-complaint-police-cover-up https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/08/daniel-holtz...
    - thatcat 10mo ago
      Teachers and doctors may abuse their authority, but there is a sharp legal limit to what they can get away with.
- alexashka 10mo ago
  Yes. It's not the root however. The root is nepotism. What you're describing is one of ten thousand problems nepotism causes.
- vel0city 10mo ago
  How many teachers are getting off on murder charges due to their position as a teacher? Seems like a pretty big difference.
  - febusravenga 10mo ago
    They only murder talents and/or curiosity in children or self esteem. (I'm totally not ATAB here, just agree that parent post analogy)
    - collingreen 10mo ago
      Using murder in this context to minimize -actually murder- is pretty bad taste.
    - IAmBroom 10mo ago
      Words matter. Your rebuttal doesn't.

GuinansEyebrows 10mo ago

pedantic, but "ACAB" doesn't necessarily mean every (or most) cops do horrible things all the time (that's the strawman version). one, more nuanced, sentiment is something more like "all cops are bastards as long as bad cops are protected." another sentiment is "modern police institutions are directly descended from slavecatchers and strikebreakers; thus, all of policing is rooted in bastard behavior, therefore: all cops are bastards". there are plenty of other ways to interpret the phrase. "acab" is shorthand for a lot of legitimate grievances.

drdeca 10mo ago
My favorite slogan is “Slogans are always bad.” . It can be interpreted in a lot of different ways that make a lot of sense, and that’s why I repeat it often, without clarifying what I mean by it.
- GuinansEyebrows 10mo ago
  and yet, here you are, indirectly swiping at something instead of just saying what you mean :)
ImJamal 10mo ago
That is a lot of words to make a claim that nobody would accept if they used it for other issues. If somebody said that all blacks are criminals and used your exact argument, nobody would buy it.
- GuinansEyebrows 10mo ago
  ah yes, race, something famously chosen
0x457 10mo ago
> modern police institutions are directly descended from slavecatchers and strikebreakers; That's not (entirely) true, though? Every modern police department has its roots in London Metropolitan Police Force which had nothing to do with salve catching can't say much about strikebreakers, but I know specifically LMPF went on multiple strikes themselves. It had also nothing to do with solving crimes, that's just a bonus.

lotsofpulp 10mo ago

You picked a terrible example as a counterpoint, because ACAB is about police protecting bad police (or generally, authorities defending each other as a gang themselves). Which is seen in every group of authorities around the country. They literally give out get out of jail free cards for cops’ friends and family in many parts of the country, that is systemic, and has nothing to do with frequency of cops committing crimes.

roywiggins 10mo ago
And when a cop tries to do something about it, this is the sort of thing that happens. This guy seems like he's trying to do the right thing, but the system is designed so he can't: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/04/nypd-lawsuit-courtesy-cards-traffic-tickets https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/04/nypd-lawsuit... > Bianchi claims his superiors retaliated against him for his stance against the “corrupt” cards after he was warned by an official with the Police Benevolent Association, New York City’s largest police union, that he would not be protected by his union if he wrote tickets for people with cards. And if he continued, he’d be reassigned... The lawsuit cites several instances where his NYPD colleagues complained about his ticket-writing, including on Facebook... > Bianchi’s service as a traffic cop ended last summer when he wrote a ticket to a friend of the NYPD’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, the lawsuit states.
- teraflop 10mo ago
  Adrian Schoolcraft is the name that comes to mind for me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft > Schoolcraft amassed a set of tapes which demonstrated corruption and abuse within New York City's 81st Police Precinct. The tapes include conversations related to the issues of arrest quotas and investigations. [...] Schoolcraft was harassed, particularly in 2009, after he began to voice his concerns within the precinct. He was told he needed to increase arrest numbers and received a bad evaluation. His fellow officers had him involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward. They told the hospital that his claims were a sign of paranoid delusions. He was eventually vindicated, but his career was destroyed.

ryandrake 10mo ago

ACAB is not about the proportion of bad encounters to good encounters. It is about the police system as a whole that defends and provides cover for the bad ones. If you have a system where 1 actor is bad, and the other 500,000 actors are good but also protect the 1, then you have a system with 500,001 bad actors.

drdeca 10mo ago
Suppose you have a system where 1 actor is bad, and 500000 actors are “good except that they protect that one guy”, and then the one guy dies of a freak heart attack, and then all but one of the 500000 are replaced with “good actors” except that they defend the guy who remains from the 500000. Are they bad actors?
- pstuart 10mo ago
  You're reducing it down too far. Policing has a problem policing itself -- it's very well documented. People take it too far in both directions, but it's safe to say that there's more than one bad actors and the system demonstrably tolerates and defends them right up to the point where they are forced not to.
  - drdeca 10mo ago
    Right, there’s clearly a problem, and I think even a systemic problem. I just don’t think it follows that literally every officer is therefore culpable. I think I would say that probably almost every police union leader is culpable.
    - QuercusMax 10mo ago
      And who votes for those union leaders? The cops. They vote for corrupt people to protect their own corruption. It's a corrupt system from top to bottom.
      - drdeca 10mo ago

NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago

>But you would probably never come across the boring stat that less than 1 in 500,000 police encounters ever register on the "ACAB" radar. This is hardly a revelation. There are levels of bastardy in between "angelic philosopher-saint and paladin of justice" and "demonic hellspawn stomping babies for resisting arrest". The cop who just hands out false tickets to meet quota is just as ACAB as the one who finally loses his temper and shoots someone without true cause, but one gets to hide it better. Intuitively, I suspect that the cumulative actions of the low-level ACAB behaviors add more misery and injustice to the world than all the wrongful deaths and incarceration combined.

ImPleadThe5th 10mo ago

"If you research police corruption you'll probably find out the police are corrupt." Large corporations and the police both have statistically significant problems to be a concern to the average person. Frequency isn't the issue it's recurrence across municipalities. That's what makes it clear there is a systemic issue. Imagine if we didn't make laws about murder because "It's not that frequent of a problem only 1 in 500,000 people are murdered"