I am lately trying to square these two desires I have. First to abolish police and prisons; and second to arrest and convict abusive cops (say, for instance, Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove, the cops who killed Breonna Taylor while she slept).

I want both of these outcomes, and I don't think they conflict that much.

Let's get this out of the way: I don't want abusive and killer cops in prison, because I don't want prison to exist. What I specifically want is for abusive and killer cops to not be cops.

We know right now that, due to powerful police unions, it's almost impossible to prevent a cop who's been fired from a department to get reinstated. 1 And furthermore it's difficult to prevent such a cop from bouncing from city department to city department after being fired from their last post. 2

Many abolitionists who are much smarter than me have surely given this a lot of thought, but for now this is enough for me: until we've gotten rid of police entirely, the only way to get the worst cops out and keep them out may be to give them murder convictions.

And I just don't have time to care about abolitionist "purity".

  1. Fired/Rehired: Police chiefs are often forced to put officers fired for misconduct back on the streets. The Washington Post, 2017.
  2. White South Jersey Cop Charged After Pepper Spraying Black Teen Who Was Just Sitting on a Stoop. Philadelphia Magazine, 2020.