That’s absurd on its face. Cops routinely look the other way in tons of minor civil code violations they don’t judge as damaging to society.
Cops have the discretion to enforce laws.
Some use that discretion poorly and they suck and some use that discretion well and they’re fine.
Discretion is just selective enforcement. Lots of people do a thing. But cops only think it’s damaging to society when the wrong kind of people do it. That thing might just be existing.
Maybe that punishment involves jail time, but more likely it means being harassed, or put in cuffs for a while but let off, or just be intimidated by a guy who can legally whisper “I fear for my life” into a body cam and then kill you.
ACAB means cops either participate in that system, do nothing to stop it, or try to stop it and get forced out.
Okay, so then NACAB.
That’s all I’m saying.
I understand frustration and even hatred toward law enforcement due to atrocities or idiot mistakes or qualified immunity, but making a blanket statement that depends on a misunderstanding of basic human discretion and personality demeans any legitimate facet of that argument.
If you say acab and believe it, then clearly you don’t understand reality well enough to want or have the capacity to change it, you just want to yell at somebody and stamp your feet.
Which isn’t very helpful.
It sounds like you’re breaking down cops into several categories:
- Cops that do bad things on purpose
- Cops that do bad things on accident
- Cops that work alongside groups 1 and 2
Sure, group 3 cops may use that discretion for good. Maybe they don’t pull someone over for going one over the speed limit, or decide to look the other way when a homeless guy tries to sell cigarettes. I agree with you, this is the kind of discretion that’s supposed to happen.
But when people say ACAB, they’re saying that when cops that don’t do terrible things work alongside cops that do, they are complicit. One cop slowly, agonizingly kills a guy. Three cops watch and do nothing to stop him. That’s an extreme example. But there’s a million small versions of that, in every big city and small town, where a cop uses either their legal authority or “I’m a person with a gun” authority to do something bad, and their coworkers let it happen.
Cops that don’t stop their coworkers from doing bad things are just as bad as those doing the bad things. So, ACAB.
