acab? the myth of a protective police force

A.C.A.B? The myth of a protective police force

Art by Claire Ollivain Adapted by Shani Patel from articles by Pranay Jha and Amelia Mertha, Honi Soit Editors 2019

09 For most people, common interactions with the police force occur when cops are patrolling public spaces, supposedly performing a deterrence function by being on the lookout for crimes. Whilst many benefiting from settler privilege in so-called “Australia” may associate this police presence with feelings of safety, this is not the case for large proportions of First Nations people, and people of colour. The 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody concluded that First Nations people are over-represented in all forms of custody — despite making up only 3% of the population, they represent 27% of the prison population. The commission made 339 recommendations for policing, criminal justice incarceration, education, health, reconciliation and self-determination — in 2019, it was revealed that the majority of these have not been implemented, or have only been partially implemented. At a Black Lives Matter protest in August last year, Gumbayngirr activist Gavin Stanbrook addressed the crowd in a speech at the steps of the NSW Supreme court: “These people inside, the arbiters of choice and decision, they’re the ones who send our people to jail. They’re the ones who lock us up. They’re the ones who condemn us to a life of oppression and exploitation.” Whether they are targeting queer communities in recreational spaces, attacking unassuming people of colour walking home or silencing protestors voicing dissent, violence from police tends to produce a tiring and repetitive social response. It begins with a sense of shock, as the police push the boundaries of inhumanity with their callous brutality. Some of that shock turns to anger, which may translate into calls for reform. Those in power pretend to listen by offering a reductive reminder that there are only a few “bad apples”. A debate begins over re-training police officers, changing their attitudes towards marginalised groups, or reducing their use of weapons. Meanwhile, we slowly forget the names of the victims and survivors, and the police continue to antagonise broader society on a daily basis. Engagement with these debates is underpinned by an often unchallenged assumption; whether good or evil, the police are a necessary protective force. If asked to picture a world without the police, images of unadulterated anarchy feature in their minds — windows of shops shattered by looting rapscallions, cars being set on fire, the distant sound of gunshots, and so on. Underpinning the prison abolition movement, which is closely tied with anti-cop rhetoric, is a vision of community accountability and rehabilitation without carceral capitalism. This movement aims to dismantle prisons, replacing them with a system of community care and rehabilitation — one that treats the source of many crimes rather than just reacting to them with temporal and spatial punishment. As the legendary Black feminist and abolitionist Angela Davis says, “prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings.” For example, when considering instances of sexual assault, the police are often the last port of call. A report released by the ABC in January 2020 revealed that of over 140,000 sexual assaults reported to the police, almost 12,000 were rejected upon belief that the assault did not occur, over 34,000 were ‘cleared’ without making an arrest, 50,800 remain unsolved, and just under 42,600 led to legal action. In NSW, only one in 10 reports since 2009 has led to legal action. We must therefore question whether a system like this, which imposes suffering on so many, and offers so little justice for victims who do put their faith in the police and the justice system, is one that is viable. Prisons exist as an ongoing colonial structure, with police acting as agents for a government that is driven by capitalism and white supremacy.