A Maryland police officer was convicted on Friday of charges that he joined a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and hurled a smoke bomb and other objects at police officers guarding a tunnel entrance.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden heard two days of trial testimony without a jury this week before he found Montgomery County Police Officer Justin Lee guilty of two felonies and three misdemeanors. The judge, who also acquitted Lee of two other misdemeanors, is scheduled to sentence him on Nov. 22.
Lee, 26, ignited and threw a smoke bomb into the tunnel entrance on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace, where a mob of rioters attacked a group of outnumbered police officers. The device struck a police officer’s riot shield and filled the mouth of the tunnel with a large plume of smoke, prosecutors said.
What is the meaning behind all cops are bastards, really?
Are we utilizing an identical equivalent to racial stereotypes?
Were the Capitol Police who defended against these insurrectionists bastards? For example, Eugene Goodman who routed the mob away?
If anything, wouldn’t this almost invoke a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Are all cops bastards, or are only certain police cultures bastards? For example I’ve seen comparative documentaries of cops in other countries from Norway to Canada and not all cops are of the same quality.
So as much as it feels that way sometimes, not all cops are bastards. But if you give cops shit wage and shit training and low pay you’re going to attract more scum, absolutely. To be a Registered Nurse, for instance, requires far more education, testing, continued education, etc. And they’re paid better. As a result, the median quality is much higher.
It is akin to the idiom “1 rotten apple spoils the bunch”. Even a ‘good cop’ covers for, or supports directly or indirectly bad ones. Their internal culture is manifestly rotten with an “us vs them” mentality.
Spends the day cursing being surrounded by criminals, at best trying to ignore racist jokes, and gets lucky nobody challenges their supreme authority so doesn’t get on the news: a good cop (for now)
I’m an ex cop and the whole attitude is really reductionist and lacks any insight into how police organisations actually tend to work. Especially when it comes to large forces with tens of thousands of officers and staff - for example, by assuming that corrupt officers and cultures are evenly distributed throughout an organisation, which they’re not. It just doesn’t work like that and it’s a frankly juvenile attitude lacking in any nuance.
I’m saying this as someone with a degree in Criminology (in which my dissertation was on policing in ethnically diverse communities), a Master’s in human rights law, and several years of experience in a large force (which I left due to service related PTSD). I feel quite qualified to comment on it. ACAB is detached from how corruption actually works in the real world, discounts the good work of a lot of very good people, and offers zero solution or viable alternative. I can completely understand having a negative impression of the police given their media attention these days but ACAB is teenager-level critical thinking that does not acknowledge the complexity of the problem and spits in the face of many good people.
To be clear I’m not just bootlicking - I hated my previous employer (for separate reasons) and have no good will for them. There ARE problems with policing in 2024, as there always have been before, and they need acknowledging and fixing. But the ACAB narrative doesn’t work for me. And it’s more than a little ironic that you are using that narrative while simultaneously criticising an “us vs them” approach.
Thanks for literally proving my point.
I also said this:
It’s called nuance.
And the whole point of a catch phrase or saying such as ACAB is to boil a statement down past the nuance. I’m sure most people are willing to acknowledge that there are good cops. That’s not entirely the point. When you point out good cops, we can point out similar instances of a good cop being driven off the force for not falling in line or the “good cop” covering for a bad one.
Did you also rail against the phrase “black lives matter” because it didn’t address the nuance that other lives matter as well? Cause that misses the point. When a non-black person was killed, people weren’t trotting out that phrase. Similarly if there’s a good interaction with a cop, people aren’t going to start screaming ACAB. Those phrases generally get brought out when there’s a bad cop or black people are killed.
I have yet to see an instance of this that isn’t downvoted into oblivion. I don’t think the majority agree with you here.
I think there’s a pretty big difference between
If it’s not the point that all cops are bad then why do you use a phrase which states the exact opposite? How can you, with a straight face, justify a stance and narrative that intentionally removes nuance as you just said?
The whole black lives matter thing isn’t relevant to my country so I won’t comment on that as I quite simply don’t know enough about it.
Because while you drone on about the nuance from the cops side of things, you completely ignore the nuance from the victims side. There’s plenty of body cam video of cops blatantly violating laws and rights and facing no consequences despite literally doing it on camera that they had to put on and turn on themselves. That stems from either the audacity to flagrantly be a bastard as the phrase implies or that that mentality is so ingrained in them and/or the culture that they forgot to not fuck up on camera.
You’re completely dismissive of the movement behind the saying ACAB because you ignore nuance too. When you understand why you do that, maybe you’ll understand why that phrase is used.
And before you try to throw that back on me, remember the side you’re defending chose their job and were entrusted with a responsibility to serve and protect. The rest of us didn’t “choose” to be the chattel under their boots.
As I said, I wrote my dissertation on policing in minority ethnic communities. I specifically went out of my way to understand the sensitivities before I started the career. I also have a master’s degree in human rights law, and continue to work in the legal field dealing with these topics every day. I am far better placed than most to understand both sides of the situation (though I’d argue against the assumption that there are ‘sides’).
How can you say there are all these videos all the time when I haven’t even said where I’m from? Because in my country, incidents like what I see often from America are extremely rare.
I dismiss the ACAB movement because it is by definition reductionist. When you say ALL of something is anything in society then I will immediately raise my eyebrows to that claim. Society is not that simple.
Think the following question over yourself. Don’t bother answering it here.
As the enforcer of the law, how many times have you casually broken the law and felt ok doing it? How many times have you seen a fellow police officer break the law and failed to hold them accountable or even helped them cover it up? In your experience, these events may have only involved minor crimes - not murder or rape or anything - but you almost certainly still operated in an environment of willingness to break the law and fraternal duty to protect your colleagues at any cost. The same situation is too common with serious crimes, as we see in the news on a regular basis.
Good cops don’t help cover up the crimes of bad cops.
I will reply, because I don’t agree with your perception and the implications of your comment.
In work? Literally never. Not once. Everything is recorded in BWV and is disclosable in court. Documentation and usually a statement is required for the exercise of any legal power. It’s all auditable. We even had community engagement groups who watch videos of incidents chosen at random by a computer, and I’ve had several of mine pulled up for feedback by them.
Putting aside the obvious ethical reasons why I haven’t done that and wouldn’t want to. Why would I risk my career and income anyway?
Never. Not once. I have reported multiple colleagues in the past for doing things which I thought were questionable, and those concerns were always appropriately actioned by management. I faced no consequences from my peers or the organisation for doing so.
Your presumptions are incorrect. Maybe they are correct where you live, I don’t know, but they’re not my experience at all. For what it’s worth, I’m not American.
I’m not saying these things don’t happen and as I’ve said repeatedly, I’m not saying modern policing is without issues. As someone who has worked in the criminal justice system for years with multiple degrees in the area, your perception of how things actually work in real life and how those problems manifest are not correct, and your judgements towards individuals (including myself) are totally unfair and without nuance.
I’m not sure how things work in your country. You’ve helpfully neglected to even state what country that is (which conveniently makes it difficult to find examples of the state of policing in your country).
This article is discussing American police and so that’s the context of my statements. We don’t do police accountability or oversight here, so your counterpoint doesn’t lend much weight.
I’ve intentionally left my country ambiguous to highlight that saying ALL of any group is a ridiculous statement, because I could be from anywhere in the world and somehow you think you know enough to apply that statement to me and my former colleagues.
So you’ve waded into an article about the criminal behavior of an American policeman, found a comment calling for police accountability in the US and posted some unverifiable anecdotal “evidence” that only qualifies their statement in the vaguest sense, but is aimed to plant uncertainty and doubt in the sentiment that police as a whole are bastards and need better oversight and accountability…
You very much appear to be one of the “good” cops that will do anything to minimize the crimes of his bad brothers. I would say that maybe ACAB only applies to the rotten societies like ours, but you are falling over yourself to cast yourself in the same lot as the bad cop in the article and to defend the profession. That’s not making the statement you think it is.
Well, the first A in ACAB stands for “all”. Meaning the claim is not limited to America. It’s a statement about policing as an institution in general, and so I think it’s perfectly reasonable for me to contribute to the discussion even though I’m a foreigner.
I don’t think my view can be dismissed as anecdotal. A person basing a view off of one anecdote is anecdotal. A person who has worked in the field for years and has multiple degrees in the area isn’t giving anecdotal evidence, they’re giving expert and specialist insight. Furthermore, I was specifically asked about my individual experience.
I defend the profession because it’s my opinion that policing CAN be a force for good. I don’t have direct experience with America so I won’t comment on that. But your accusations that even “good” cops are complicit in corruption by turning a blind eye or defending it is simply not true across the board and massively unfair towards people who sacrifice a lot for a very difficult job for selfless reasons. The organisation I worked for had tens of thousands of officers and staff so I’m obviously not going to claim it had zero issues and zero corruption, but it tended to be isolated to specific teams with their own internal culture that outsiders are rarely even aware of. I know this based on both my own experience and my studies of police corruption as part of my first degree.
I can honestly say with my hand on my heart that corruption was extremely rare in my professional experience. And when I saw something questionable (which was almost always down to incompetence rather than malice) I raised it and it was dealt with as appropriate.
I haven’t seen any comments qualifying their statement with “ACAB but only America” so I don’t think I’ve “waded in” at all (even putting aside the fact that this is a public forum anyway). All means all, and I object to such a blanket statement. I want to reiterate that I’m really not just trying to bootlick. As I said before, I have no good will towards my precious employer (for totally separate reasons) and I do agree that there are issues in modern policing that need to be addressed.
Understand that I make the following claim only to prove the fallacy in both: Racists will utilize this exact same argument — and HAVE with me — that the “bad apples” of inner-city gang violence leads to the fact that the entire culture is shit because even the “good apples,” don’t have enough clout to change the tide.
And yet, while true that crime is higher in these areas, it skirts the big picture as to the why, which in the case of inner-city violence it revolves around trans-generational discrimination, poor education, and simply population density — and similarly the WHY of cops having predominantly shitty cultures revolves around bigger issues and not so much the, “good cop didn’t stand up enough to the bad cops” I suspect.
The problem is you can criticize the wider problem of poor policing and demand massive reforms and cultural shifts without applying needless stereotypes cast on those who are trying to make a difference in the culture — simply because the “good” cops do not always out-number the bad cops in districts. So under this “ACAB” movement, it tends to have the opposite effect and lead to people who might be good cops to steer away from that career because they know they’ll just be listed as another bastard because they didn’t fight hard enough against the cultural shift… So ultimately, where does change reasonably, practically begin?
Not everyone is in a gang (and I’ll leave the gang part out of this, because that IS racist, along with the whole inner-city bit, but that’s a separate conversation on how laws were written to specifically allow cops to target racial groups)
But anyone who is a cop is in the gang that is the police.
No, the two things are not remotely equitable. One is about a group of chosen profession, the other is an entire racial group being associated with crime. That’s an argument that’s as flimsy as a wet paper bag.
Naturally in my example, the inner-city gang are the bad cops and the inner-city family and community leaders trying to make a difference are the “good cops” who just can’t seem to budge the numbers. If we were to use the logic applied by ACAB, then it’s all futile and any attempt at cultural change is pointless because change hasn’t occurred yet or fast enough.
I think they are quite comparable. Both rely on a) an extremely obvious misrepresentation of the root of the problem, and b) a fallacious stereotyping of a group based on a subset of the population.
So one set of cops who are all cops, and an unrelated set of people where the only defining factor is race.
Right. Its a racist, nonsensical argument from the start, that isn’t remotely comparable.
Nope. Only one does. Modern policing is the root of the problem, from the way they were formed and structured.
Negative, only one is fallacious, the racist argument. As modern policing is the root of the problem, all police are complicit in its continuation.
Your argument is a total crock.
I’ll ask you to try again and re-analyze and consider more from my perspective what you believe I’m actually trying to say as opposed to crafting a straw-man. At the moment, it seems you’re intentionally trying. I’m hoping your comprehension is not this poor, because if it is then there is no point in progressing further.
Clearly dismissive, but not from a position of substance. Awfully bad-faith, and the lack of substantive rebuttal reinforces that I’m making a good albeit uncomfortable point.
There is nothing to consider. The premise is either racism, or a complete misunderstanding of the issue, for either “gang violence” or “cops” respectively.
So no, I won’t consider from your perspective, because the basis is flawed. There is nothing for me to comment on about a completely incorrect comparison.
Exactly. Both examples utilize the same fallacy that racists use. Thank you for proving my point.
Since you’re just making straw-men in bad faith, I figure I might as well do the same. See how this works?
ACAB is about the whole system of law enforcement being corrupt and not the characteristics of individual pigs.
But the phrase literally means “all cops are bastards”.
It is LITERALLY and DIRECTLY saying that every individual officer has the characteristic of being a bastard.
I actually understand it to be “bad.” TIL.
Still, ACAB.
The point still stands.
Here in my country we’ve had a lot of very high profile cases of abuse and even serial murder in the healthcare profession. It’s also a position of power that can attract the wrong sort, and it’s very well researched how the healthcare sector is institutionally racist and provides worse outcomes - even death - to minority ethnic communities. Are all doctors bastards?
I feel when you have to cherrypick examples, it hurts the argument rather than helps.
I feel that by discrete logic, I only need to provide one single example that you deflect in order to prove that not all are bastards. If 1 of the population != bastard; then not all are bastards. Period.
Surely you have a better way to spend your time.
A better way, like… Commenting on day-old threads with snarky quips and a superiority complex?
Cute, kid.
While others will surely fill you in further, ill table this idea for ya
No. because a cop stops being an “”“”“oppressed minority”“”‘’" (needs more quotes fr) as soon as they take off the badge
Sorry I don’t really buy that logic since some shithead right-winger bigot could just say a trans person can stop being an oppressed minority the moment they stop taking their hormone medications.
At the end of the day, the exact same sort of fallacious logic persists: A judgment of all within a population based on the perceptions of a subset of that population.
Logically, if I prove merely one cop is a good person, then the claim of all is simply wrong.
I don’t feel like going into the larger point of ACAB. Not that it isn’t something i don’t feel very strongly about but this chain is addressing your first bullet only.
If i ran into some shithead right winger bigot using that argument, i would tell them this:
"Wrong. A cop is a chosen profession.
A trans person is a trans person no matter the state of their transition. "
Is it morally right to judge negatively the person merely based on the profession they choose?
Just as it’s not right to judge the person based on what identity they choose to subscribe to? After all, if everyone is free to identify as who they want, why suddenly is your career a vector from which you’re allowed to sling mud at the person, and not even based on that individual but merely because of being a part of the group?
So, is Eugene Goodman a bastard?
Yes.
Then:
Is Eugene Goodman a bastard?
No Law enforcement should exist and should be abolished tomorrow?
Edit: Ah, not quite as quick to respond this time. I wonder why… Do you see the checkmate in 2 moves?
Golly that’s awfully convenient that you’re defining the narrow parameter of your response; for when we widen the scope the entire argument collapses. I wonder why those two questions are so difficult for you to answer…
But sure, by your logic since gender and name are chosen, then they are fair game to cast prejudice and stereotype, yes? Of course not. But then that applies to anything that is chosen. Where you live, your religion, career, etc. Fundamental to your prejudice isn’t the matter of choice, but the statistical fallacy that is over-generalizing all within a group.
for your last paragraph: yes they are, and you partly explain why in this very paragraph. it’s about how they’re trained and how they’re used.
don’t forget that they started as a service to catch slaves for the owners. they’re still more or less on that mission, only now that slavery isn’t as common, they expanded to wage slaves and other oppressed people instead. and they still serve the masters.
I think saying all cops are bastards because they are bastards is unfair to however few actual good cops there are out there. It’s the system that is failing us, and putting bad cops in a position where they can’t fail and where they can’t or won’t be held accountable. I think it’s unfair to however many cops out there who just want to help, aren’t racist, aren’t willing to abuse their power, etc to claim that ACAB means all cops are bastards because they are all bastards and that there are no good cops. I feel like it’s a step away from saying the only good cop is a dead cop, which is probably not the most popular sentiment, but I think some people here might actually believe in that sentiment.
I know this is probably an unpopular opinion, and I’m not afraid of acknowledging systemic problems, and I think I have done so. Oh well, that’s my thoughts.
Please read the thread as these are points that were already repeatedly litigated elsewhere.
Also I’m just curious: Where do you live, and would you ever call 911 in any sort of emergency whatsoever? A burglary of your house; the witnessing a murder in your neighborhood, etc. Do you have kids?
I’m not going to doxx myself here by giving details about my life and whereabouts but it is likely that if there was an actual emergency i would call the cops because there’s literally no other system in place. that doesn’t mean they aren’t bastards.
also it helps that I’m not a black person in the US. otherwise police would be much more likely to shoot me than someone who broke into my house.
Man isn’t it kind of fucked up that you’d rely on the only service available and to help you, but maintain the cognitive dissonance that they’re all bastards just the same, including Eugene Goodman? “Thanks for coming to help me and my mother, officer, but did you know you’re a bastard?”
Reminder that there are black officers in America. Like Eugene Goodman. Perhaps if there were more black officers in the force and they weren’t all labeled as bastards that the culture could change. Forgetting the fact that the media you consume focuses on the wrongful actions of police but rarely if ever the positive actions.
Can’t we just say MCAB to be more logically precise?
first of all it’s incredible that people still think they have a gotcha with this “yet you participate in society”-ass argument. it’s not cognitive dissonance if there’s a rhino that’s got you cornered and the only number you have is 1-800-LIONS you call a lion and hope for the best. you can acknowledge the lion could just as easily eat you instead.
you probably watched the end of Jurassic Park and thought wow the T-Rex really cares about those humans! no, sometimes a general threat may get rid of a more immediate threat. and more importantly, sometimes it doesn’t, and beats the immediate threat to be the first to kill you.
second of all, black officers aren’t magical beings. they can be and often are just as racist because they’re part of a racist system and are trained just the same.
the media should focus on bad things. doing what you’re supposed to do rarely makes news. you know when i design a nice looking website with good user experience the news crew doesn’t show up at my house. but if i designed a website so bad that a user ends up dying from using it i would expect some news coverage of it.
not massively fucking up shouldn’t earn you a spot on the news.
and lastly, no we can’t say mcab. because one bad apple spoils the bunch. the so-called “good cops” still enable and protect the so-calledv"bad cops" and that makes them all the same. because if there are cops who are actually good they either quit or get fired for trying to speak up.
Forget “lions” and “rhinos” (lol wtf?), if a cop came and protected your mother from a violent intruder, rapist… Would you say they’re a bastard to their face, or would you just say it behind their backs on a message-board? For in that moment, was the cop a bastard, or did they do their duty? Especially if they treated both you and your mother with respect?
You see, we’ve long respected those in society who practiced what they preached. Changers of society are rarely choosy beggars; that is, ones who protested a part of society so vehemently were rarely hypocrites who participated in the things they sought to change. So it strikes me as interesting that you’re willing to label ALL cops – even the good black cops like Eugene Goodman – as bastards – and yet, are fully willing to plead for their aid when the going gets tough. That’s fucking remarkable. I know if I had your conviction and belief that “ALL” cops were bastards, I sure as shit wouldn’t be calling anyone because that would only exacerbate the situation. For example, if I lived in a shithole like Russia or China, I probably wouldn’t call the cops.
And are you saying that all cops have a duty to be racist and all cops, including black cops, are always discriminatory toward citizens? Because that is precisely what you are saying when you say that “ALL” cops are bastards.
By discrete logic, if I merely show that one cop has been an upstanding citizen leading by example, then that clearly undermines the whole “All” part of ACAB, yes…?
And moreover in what magical society do you seek to live in where your participation does not necessitate some sort of accountability for laws established in said Democracy…? What is this Utopian society?
And okay, let’s do this weird analogy with feral lions and dinosaurs… If said T-Rex or Lion after killing the naughty Rhino (let’s say Hippo to be more accurate since Hippos are actually far more dangerous), then comes over and simple licks your face, then rolls over and lets you give it a belly-rub… Would one not conclude, “Wow, not ALL lions and T-Rexes are man-eating monsters with no soul!”? Like… You get how your analogy is flawed from the outset right? The circular-reasoning begging-the-question assuming-the-premise take that is, “All Cops are Predestined to being Man-eating monsters”? What kind of fucking take is that?
And where is your proof that this OTHER analogy, “one bad apple spoils the bunch” applies to cops? Your entire prejudice against cops are built atop a fucking house of cards fallacious argument about Lions and spoiled APPLES. What in the actual fuck? And if you really want to get misanthropic-meets-nihilist, then you can simply say that about literally any human in any group and as a result we are all spoiled apples anyway. But I don’t subscribe to that. Obviously, cultural change begins with promoting those good apples, and weeding out the bad apples over time. If we want to go with fruit analogies now, then I’ll just say that just because one barrel goes bad doesn’t mean we stop growing fucking apples. We just implement better picking methods, promoting healthier apples while working on a new system that weeds out the bad apples sooner.
Even the FBI proves this. How far we’ve come from being complicit in the assassination of liberals, to the very same institution blowing the whistle on right-wing extremism and white-supremacist movements, INCLUDING corruption INSIDE Law-Enforcement precincts.
you really have trouble with analogies.
“you know this is like tying cement block to your ankle and trying to swim”
“yeah but what if the block floats though”
the whole point of using a cement block is that it doesn’t float. saying a T-Rex would lick your face because it’s one of the good ones doesn’t work. the analogy was lions vs rhinos because you asked how someone helping in one instance could ever be described as a bastard.
since you’re not an analogy guy let me say it plainly: having a bastard get rid of a son of a bitch doesn’t make the first one not a bastard. especially since there is always a chance the bastard would get rid of you first.
Our discussion aside, I want to let you in on a rhetorical tip because this is the kind of shit I study: Analogies are frankly terrible to use in a debate/argument. They are more useful in non-controversial things where there is not strong often emotionally-charged disagreement, such as a classroom to help explain a concept. Best just to avoid them in general because at their core, analogies are pretty much never 1:1, and thus will be scrutinized and nitpicked to oblivion.
The problem isn’t that I disagree with Lions or T-Rexes being inherently bad… It’s that even if all police were as feral as a lion, it still doesn’t make sense because a lion would go for the most vulnerable, wounded prey and not the hippo or rhino lol.
Moreover the premise of the analogy itself just does not apply to the circumstance at hand, and helps me convey why all cops != feral cats.
… Do you understand how this is the classic logical fallacy that is circular reasoning? When there are clear examples of police coming to your aid and NOT acting like feral cats and in fact can act like good domesticated house cats, then I reveal the exception. And if there is merely one exception, then not ALL cops are feral cats, or bastards.
So please explain how Eugene Goodman, specifically, is a bastard.