Thread by @Monstrous_Fest

Folks are talking about police a bunch, and that's something I might actually be able to provide context for.

Police are never, and will never be, required to endanger themselves in any way for any reason. This has been litigated thoroughly.

The argument cop reps make is that nobody's job can require that they jump in front of bullets like weird nerds for idiot tech moguls.

This argument is reasonable! Nobody's job should demand the employee's death as a condition of employment.

The obvious problem, of course, is that cops' job /is/ purportedly to protect people from violence.

The corollary is that this is not a cop's actual job. They have no duty to prevent violence, no duty to put themselves at any risk, no duty to help anyone.

No cop will ever be punished for refusing to help, ever. Or refusing to risk anything.

This is /why/ cops insist so hard that their jobs are intrinsically dangerous! They don't have to take any risks, so their narratives emphasize that they are actually the victims.

Corollary: never, ever believe anything a press release tells you about what cops do or did, because cops tailor them very carefully.

This is why cops primarily assault people who are not armed, and why they do so with deadly weapons. To minimize risk.

The primary responsibility of any individual cop is to minimize risk to themselves.

No cops 'confronted' the shooter, because they could have gotten hurt. No cops entered the school, because they could have gotten hurt.

The tricky bit here is that they didn't let parents help.

Because once they're on scene, and protecting themselves, if they had let other people get involved they would have increased the risk to themselves, the cops.

And the cops' job is to show up, protect themselves, and document their fear of risk.

That's it.

This easily gets tangled up in the PR cops have done in the past. "To protect and serve" is not a statement of duty. No cop is required to protect or to serve. Most of us have some perception of a "good cop" who has responsibilities.

That is fiction.

Thanks, Terry Pratchett.

Any portrayal of a "good cop" is not a portrayal of a cop engaging in their job. If a cop helps someone for any reason, it is entirely external to their identity as a cop. They might have done a "good thing", but a doctor who holds the door isn't necessarily a "good doctor."

Eliminate this fiction wherever you recognize yourself engaging in it.

Never fucking watch die hard again. Or a police procedural.

Because when we collectively /think/ cops should be responsible or do any good, in the smallest way possible, they will not.

This is why it's more dangerous to be literally anyone else than to be a cop.

Everyone's job requires interaction with danger. Traffic. Violent customers. Dealing with cops. Hospitality is incredibly dangerous!

Cops make up a guy and then kill him for their own safety.

Institutionally, police are pretty much the only profession that permits its members to arm themselves against a hypothetical threat and then kill anyone who overlaps with it.

The rest of us have to be polite and bandage ourselves and hope. Cops don't.

This is, as a corollary, why cops hate civilians so much.

If a cop is in danger it is because a civilian inconvenienced them.

Something bad happened, and a civilian saw a cop nearby or attempted to invoke one.

This causes risk to the cop. Punishable by death.

Takeaway: it is dangerous just to call the police. It is MORE dangerous, in many ways, to call them, because by exposing them to danger you give them excuses to punish, assault, or kill you.

And, as above, their job is to identify risk and then eliminate the source.

In Uvalde, this is what happened. Cops were seen by civilians, and they did what cops do. They protected themselves, and then controlled the most convenient source of risk to their jobs - the civilians that saw them.

And then they lied about it. Poorly.

^That's it, that's the end of the thread. But it's a couple of days later, and I thought it would be good to follow up with further clarification.

We will be seeing /lots/ of changes to the story given by officers over the next few days, as officers coordinate their stories.

Take every one with a grain of salt. ANY statement from police departments that uses the passive voice ("projectile impact responsible for death of man near officer-involved incident") is an attempt to hide something, if not an outright lie, and media often publish them verbatim.

Every department has training that acknowledges danger. This does not mean there is an obligation to take risks.

A common instruction around precincts is "better to be judged by twelve than carried by six."

Which is to say, a cop should murder someone before taking risks.

There is one situation, just one, that I can think of, where a cop must take a risk, and that's when they are under a direct order to do something.

Direct orders rarely involve risk. "Contain the area" means "put up tape" not "confront the offender."

And I can't stop you watching Die Hard, but my point is: you are being lied to. You know it's fiction, but it reinforces the myth. Cops fundraise off this myth, and they use it to insulate their inaction. The lie takes money from your pockets and keeps them safe from criticism.

And that's a pretty rude thing to do to you, a person who just wants to watch Die Hard. It's disrespectful, and you deserve better than to be treated that way.

I didn't make this thread for clout, so this attention is new to me. I don't have anything to promote, and I don't want to promote off this tragedy anyway. If you want my venmo, DM. I'm looking for a new position, as well.

But the thing that matters is you ask questions.

That's what matters to me, and I'm deeply grateful that you read this thread, and I'm deeply grateful that you broadcast it and went through the horrible work of interrogating what you maybe thought you knew about policing.

Stay safe, y'all.