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