1. Several of you have asked People Over Profit for our position on policing; we want to make clear that we are abolitionists, which is to say we believe that in the future, police and prisons should not exist.

2. As with capitalism, police and prisons are relatively new inventions: people haven’t lived with them since time immemorial and they are neither a natural nor final logical conclusion to how we deal with “crime.”

3. We have been raised in a culture that tells us through media and entertainment that police “fight crime” but in reality most of what they do is protect property or capital.

4. You say “okay but who do you call when someone is in danger?” That’s just it, it could be anybody—mental health professionals, deescalation specialists, community groups—why does it *have* to be the police? Is that the limit of our imagination and intelligence?

5. You say “okay but who will stop everyone from murdering everyone else or taking all their stuff?” Really? The *only* thing stopping you and literally everyone you know from doing those things is the existence of police? Come on.

6. You say “cops aren’t all bad—it’s just a few bad apples.” The comedian Chris Rock notes “there are some jobs that can’t have any bad apples,” that you wouldn’t want to have a pilot who just didn’t like landing planes, for example.

7. And if only it were as simple as “a few bad apples”; the whole institution of policing is set up to enforce an inherently racist system—capitalism—and that’s baked in. They can’t be separated. This is part of what’s meant when people talk about ”structural racism/inequality.”

8. You say “well what about reforming the police?” Reforms don’t work; diversification of the force doesn’t work, sensitivity training doesn’t work, oversight by other cops obviously doesn’t work. It’s been proven by both academic studies and in the streets.

9. And during these so-called “reforms” police have only become *more* militarized, not less. Think locally of the tank, the helicopter, cop bodies dripping with tactical equipment, the automatic weapons. Is this how police looked when you were a kid?

10. This militarization serves only one purpose; to instill fear, in racialized communities in particular. As political scientist Michael Parenti puts it “the function of the police is social control and protection of property.” That’s it.

11. Also any “reform” to the police results in giving them more public money, when we should be giving them less. That vast amount of money they recieve should go toward eradicating the root causes of “crime”: poverty, racism, inequality & barriers to mental health.

12. So we propose defunding, but also disarming the police as practical first steps. There is no reason for police to be armed; most police in similar countries to Canada such as the UK and New Zealand (among many others) aren’t armed.

13. Entertainment fills our heads with the idea that the guns of cops are the only thing standing between us and total societal collapse. It’s simply not true (see number 5).

14. If the cops hadn’t had guns it would have removed the option to kill Eishia Hudson over a couple bottles of liquor. Instead of firing at her and her friends on a busy street, they could have just let them go.

15. The car would have been found, insurance would cover damages and the couple bottles of liquor. No big deal. But instead a child is dead.

16. The truth is, the existence of an armed police force enables and enforces white supremacy and white privilege. It’s why policing is never challenged; it’s seen as a politically dangerous position to take.

17. But we are asking you if you are white, to try for even a moment to view the police through the eyes of a racialized person; do you feel served and protected? Or threatened?

18. Open yourself up to the possibility that we can find better options than policing and prisons, or at the bare minimum can you accept that the best way to deal with a person in crisis is not shooting them, that police should never be able to act as judge, jury & executioner?

19. As a final note, we won’t be engaging with bad faith actors on this thread; this is our firm position and if you truly want to engage in good faith with the subject and learn more, the book The End of Policing by Alex Vitale is a good place to start …

20. … but we also highly recommend following @WpgPoliceHarm, @BarNoneWpg and @prisonculture who have all been doing the hard work and who we never stop learning from.
#JusticeForEishia
#JusticeForRegisKorchinskiPaquet
#JusticeForGeorgeFloyd