Thread by @AlexandraErin

I implore everybody who thinks #DefundThePolice and #AbolishThePolice go too far to please pay attention to what police do, as an institution, when asked to reform or having reform imposed on them.

Even if you think we will need them, we would still have to level and start over.

"Good cops" are induced to look the other way if not go along with it, or they get fired, or framed, or murdered by the bad ones.

Body cameras haven't fixed the police. Being filmed by the public does not stop them.

The police respond with brutality, propaganda, threats (and reprisals) against public officials and journalists when asked to do better, when told they must do better.

You cannot reform an institution that doesn't want to be reformed, especially when we have armed it so.

You don't think the abolition movement is prepared for what happens next? Fine, call the bluff. If it's so obvious we need the police but like better police, then there will be every chance to implement Police 2.0 as we defund the police.

Abolishing the police is supposed to be this complicated and unrealistic pipe dream but reforming the police... okay, you have to remove the power of the police unions, in a way that doesn't just further break the actual labor movement. You can't get rid of bad cops until you do.

While you're fighting to break the police unions, the police they protect are free to... kill you. Arrest you. Discredit you. So then you focus on fighting the bad cops, and the union comes back.

Say you figure out how to get rid of the bad cops. Oops, a bunch of "good cops" quit in solidarity because this whole thing is cultural indoctrination and forced teaming and carefully cultivated paranoia.

"We need police" but now you only have a skeletal department.

You weren't planning on getting rid of the cops, your city's infrastructure and emergency response protocols assumed there would be cops, you don't have any alternative in place, but you've rendered the police non-functional.

That's assuming you succeed at any real level.

Reforming the police in a large city on an institutional level, to say nothing of nationwide, involves a lot of moving parts that are all there working together to make sure the police get to keep doing what they want. It will either fail, or break the police.

And breaking the police is... I mean, I'm not opposed to that, obviously. But I'd rather we do it on purpose, in an organized fashion, through defunding, rather than straining the system to the breaking point in an ill-fated reform attempt.

Defund the police and you shrink those interlocking pieces to the point where they stop propping each other in place, and you can start removing them.

And you might be thinking "Well, a skeletal police department that you're talking about is like square one, so we could start over from there." Maybe, but you're still going to be recruiting people into the system and culture that created this outcome.

Whatever you think should replace the police we have, even if it's better police, I just don't see how or why you'd think we could get them while we still have the police we have in place as a system.

You might think abolishing those police is impossible, but. The possibility of reform is an illusion. If your boat sinks ten miles from shore then yes it is easier to tread water than it is to swim ten miles to shore, but only one of those options has any chance of working.

Sometimes big change IS more feasible than small change. Imagine you have a very cluttered, crowded room and you need to clean it up. Which is ultimately easier: trying to do so by rearranging stuff inside the room, or starting by taking everything out?

If you can take everything out of the room, you've got more space to move. You can spread everything out and see what you have to work with and then decide what, if anything, is worth keeping and putting back in the room.

It's possible for an engine to be so badly damaged that it's easier to replace the whole thing than repair it. It's possible for a thing to be so broken there isn't any sense in fixing it.

The police aren't just broken, they're broken in a way that makes it impossible for them to be reformed. It's not a weird coincidence that they have a willingness to use lethal force, a lot of powerful political backing, unusual levels of legal immunity and prosecutor sympathy.

Every institution that lasts becomes self-perpetuating and self-defending, because institutions that don't do those things, don't last.

But the police have been given unique power and position in our society that exacerbates this.

People who are saying "The police only exist to protect property." or "The police only exist to enforce capitalism." are understating the horror. Those are the secondary functions of police. The primary function of the police now as the institution evolved is to protect police.

And every day, every time reform is attempted or mentioned, the police tell us that they will not allow it. They will not allow their power to be limited. They will not allow reform to be imposed. They will not allow us to judge bad cops from good ones.

Defunding the police is the *one* real avenue we have for lessening their power. We still control the purse strings (so long as defunding also means removing their ability to self-fund through banditry).