Why do (some) anarchists want to punish police?

I don't understand how you could see police officers as "instruments of coercion and abuse" any more than you could see marine biologists as instruments of Cthulhu.

Cop shows, politicians, corporate media, and many cops tell us more or less incessantly that the police are heroes here to protect us. We hear also that hatred or fear of police is misplaced, and that police are an easy target onto whom otherwise powerless people too often blame their misery. I just got a very intelligent email from a cop commenting on a sentence from my book Endgame. The sentence was “A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper.” He wrote, “I agree for the most part. Yes, police are protecting the status quo, but they also protect poor people from gangs, thugs, and sociopaths who prey on people in lower socio-economic situations.”

I responded, “I don’t disagree with you. I think most of what individual policemen and policewomen do is exactly what you’re saying. That’s a hugely important function. And if that was all that police did I don’t think we’d be having this conversation.”

I continued, “I used to teach creative writing at Pelican Bay, which is a supermax. Some of my students were, I really think, okay guys who never caught a break. Some of them were okay guys who would be great neighbors if you kept them off drugs. But some of them, honestly, were sociopaths who need to be removed from society to protect others (I believe, as I say in The Culture of Make Believe, that there are things people can do that cause them to be removed from society—whether that removal is through segregating or killing them—but it’s also clear to me that the current system of so-called justice is deeply racist and classist: a not-very funny joke I tell in that book consists of two riddles: ‘Q: What do you get when you combine a long drug habit, a quick temper, and a gun? A: Two life terms for murder, earliest release date 2026. Now, Q: What do you get when you combine a large corporation, two nation states, 40 tons of poison, and at least 10,000 dead human beings? A: Retirement with full pay and benefits (Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide, culpable for Bhopal’)). In no way do I romanticize ‘lawbreakers.’ Just as in other categories of people, some are good, some are mediocre, and some are scum. And to the degree that police or anyone else protect me or those I love from sociopaths, I’m grateful.

“But police also break strikes and protect politicians, CE Os, and WTO representatives who sell out the people (and who, even from a straight-up, patriotic, ninth-grade civics perspective, are arguably committing treason, and should be hanged for their crimes). Why are police never sent in to force capitalists to come to terms with strikers? That’s a huge problem (and not a rhetorical question). The sociopaths the police arrest are for the most part sociopaths with no power, and especially with no political power. The sociopaths who cause the most harm are almost never arrested, and are certainly never imprisoned or otherwise punished commensurate with the harm they cause, in great measure because these most dangerous sociopaths run governments and corporations, with the direct assistance of the police. That’s another huge problem (or more accurately the same huge problem, restated).”

I continued, “I’ve known and been friends with really good policemen and policewomen. I was good friends with a parole officer in Spokane, who always said the big difference between him and the people whose parole he oversaw was that he grew up before he got caught doing stupid shit.

“My problem is not with police protecting individuals from harm by anti-social types. My problem is with police who blindly support the status quo, and who protect corporations which are killing the planet, killing communities, killing all of us. Why aren’t CE Os arrested? Why aren’t CE Os executed for murder? It is insane and despicable that they are not. That is my problem with police.

“And of course that doesn’t just apply to the police. I also object to writers who blindly support the status quo: I hate them, I really do, especially as a writer myself. I object to scientists who blindly support the status quo. I object to technicians who blindly support the status quo. I object to judges who blindly support the status quo. And so on.”

He also wrote, “Perhaps besides instigating and enabling an oppressive system one of the primary purposes of police is to serve as scapegoats, something to waste your energy on hating while the true perpetrators of misery continue to spread a corrosive civilization unscathed.”

He’s got a point. Cops have far less power than CE Os and politicians, and by themselves cause far less damage. But they’re still functionally separate parts of the same machine, ultimately serving the same ends. And part of the reason that cops are often more openly hated than CE Os and politicians is that police more visibly and directly have power over us than do CE Os and politicians—CE Os and politicians don’t normally walk around with guns, tasers, and nightsticks telling us what we may and may not do. Another way to say this is that CE Os and politicians wreak their damage indirectly, from a distance. CE Os and politicians don’t generally have the power to personally beat or arrest you. CE Os and politicians almost never harm you personally. Even the CE Os of the most polluting companies don’t personally poison you: they merely run these corporations, and then the activities of these corporations poison the air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat. And ultimately these activities poison you. But the CE Os don’t poison you directly (much like a shotcaller for a criminal organization—or rather, for a different sort of criminal organization—who never bloodies his own hands, no matter how many deaths he orders). Instead CE Os pay politicians to pass laws making it legal for these corporations to poison the air, the water, the food, and you. Then when those being poisoned protest, police are sent to protect those who are poisoning us all. Given that CE Os and politicians hide behind the police—yet another way to say this is that the police do their dirty work; and yet one more way to say this is that police are the public face for the whole structure of state repression, but not where the real power lies—it’s no wonder that cops sometimes feel scapegoated for the activities of those they protect. I’m not, of course, saying that cops share no culpability; they could choose to not protect (but instead to bring to justice) the large-scale sociopaths who are poisoning us (and them, for that matter), but they do not do this.

I ended my response to his letter with: “The question becomes: if you and I agree on at least some of who are the true perpetrators of misery, what do we do about that? How do we work together?”

I never heard back, which in a sense didn’t surprise me: his note felt more like a defense of police with an acknowledgment of the obvious (that they support the status quo) than a real effort to reach out to form an alliance to stop the “true perpetrators of misery.”