‘Defund the Police’ Is a Great Slogan, If You Want to Defund the Police
How the handwringing over the terminology misses the point
One of the most common clichés invoked in conversations about policing in the US is the one about apples: “Not all police are violent. The ones doing the killing are bad apples.” Those who use this cliché intend to simultaneously defend the institution of policing while admitting that the violence committed by officers is, in fact, indefensible. What they seem to forget is the rest of the adage they are invoking—based in the science of how rotting apples work—which is that a few bad apples spoil the whole barrel.
This adage, in its original sense, is actually an apt metaphor for institutional corruption. A popular saying from the opposite side of this struggle is “All Cops Are Bastards,” but for the sake of rhetoric, I want to be generous here. Let’s assume that there are cops who are not bastards, at least not irredeemably so. Which is to say, let’s assume that there are human beings who got into policing for reasons other than the power to use chemical weapons on residential neighborhoods or to kill people with no consequences. Maybe they grew up seeing portrayals of good cops on TV, or maybe they legitimately want to see rapists and murderers held accountable. Because of the violent influence of the organizational culture of policing…
