Arresting cops means justice for whom?
Of the three cops who murdered Breonna Taylor, not a single was charged with homicide. After months of protests and demands to “arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor,” this was still unsurprising. Yet, if all three individuals were sentenced to long terms in prison, would that actually mean justice for Breonna Taylor?
Breonna was murdered. That cannot be undone. If any “justice” is possible for her, it would be the end to the conditions that allowed for her murder in the first place.
In the face of brutal police violence, it’s appealing to call for the arrest of the officers directly responsible for murdering Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans. For anyone that can imagine themselves at the receiving end of police violence, such a call is instinctual self-defense. But with mainstream discourse facing a radical shift in mere weeks, we must be cautious to not undercut that progress by turning to the prison industrial complex for justice.
To be clear, there should be little concern paid to the well being of those officers while Black protestors are pelted with tear gas and rubber bullets. Calling for justice in the form of officers being arrested, however, is unstrategic and undermines growing abolitionist energy.
“We must be cautious not to turn to the prison industrial complex for ‘justice.’”
While particularly gratuitous and well-documented cases of police violence and misconduct serve as the spark and focus of protests, if our calls are for the abolition of the whole system (or even the moderate request for some defunding), we cannot turn to it for our “justice”. Making one or two officers exceptional instances glosses over the key critique: that even cops who follow protocol are enacting harm. Just like an over-focus on the innocence of a Black person who faced police violence glosses over the fact that the law and our concept of “crime” is anti-Black in the first place.
Rioting against the justice system is incongruent with turning to it as a demand, demanding it do its job. While it’s understandable to morph rage into calls for imprisonment as a sort of punishment or violent revenge, such a call simply reinforces the system, especially if those officers are in fact arrested and charged (and the justice system “does its job”). Instead, we should continually focus on the fact that those officer were not immediately arrested and charged without protestors demanding it — the fact that even when the people did take to the streets for more than a hundred days to demand justice, those officers were still not charged for murder.
That proves there is nothing exceptional in what those officers did. It proves justice won’t come from the so-called justice system.
Accountability for that system can look like cops avoiding people or acting careful, knowing their conduct could spark a nationwide protest or further budget cuts. Knowing their house could be surrounded by an angry mob. Just yesterday the people of Kansas City came out to occupy the area around City Hall because of what a single officer did. With all the revolutionary potential the people have realized they hold now, why turn it over and let cops and courts police themselves?
While many calls for justice through the arrest of the officers who killed Breonna Taylor are entirely genuine, the call has also become an internet meme . . . a joke or way to get clout. This just reinforces the idea that such calls are in no way radical, but so easily digestible anyone can throw out the line to signal they want “justice.”
With devastating racist policing and imprisonment, how could somebody not feel the impulse, not want those officers to be locked up and suffer? Despite that, we must stay vigilant and continue to recognize that those cops are not special, but are just like the rest.
Moving forward from the Taylor verdict, I believe it is essential for advocates of defunding and abolishing the police to avoid focusing heavily on arresting killer cops. Not only does it materially strengthen and legitimize the system that allows anti-Black violence, it also makes our demands seemingly contradictory and incoherent.
That is the only way this can be prevented from happening again. That is the only justice that is possible now.
Story by Daniel Davidson. Opinions expressed here are only that of the original author.
