My father was a law enforcement educator, and I would sit in on his lectures a lot. He gave me a secondary education after school this way.

Then I became a criminal as I grew up.

Here's a few basic things I learned about police that I wish more comrades understood:

1. I understand your anger, but they are not cartoon characters. Their lives do not revolve around making you miserable. For the most part, their motives are easy to understand, and in understanding them you can learn ways to avoid getting on their shitlist.

2. Obviously some stuff I say here will be less effective for marginalised people and people of colour, but some of it will still be useful.

3. Cops are predictable. They have protocols and methodology. They also expect you to be predictable. They rely on criminal profiling to find suspects. All you have to do is to not fit the profile. This can save you many years in jail comrades.

4. Cops are overwhelmed. Cops will deprioritise certain kinds of crime in favour of other crime. How to find the info on what your precinct focuses on? Find clearance data. Should be publicly available somehow.

5. One method of crime prevention is bullshit. Cops will always try to cast a big shadow in your head. They will parrot statistics and made up bravado. They will make you think they're unbeatable. Reality usually reveals a rather flawed, and dare I say underprepared, human being.

6. Fighting cops is generally stupid. Even if you get away, they will take it personally. Easiest way to piss off cops is to beat them in a physical fight. It's like kicking a wasp's nest. Best to convince them you're a coward and run. Their egos handle this far better.

7. Cops are at constant odds with their own human element, and will contradict themselves. Are most cops good? Of course they are. Most people are good. Systems are designed with this in mind, otherwise they would not work.

However, most criminals are good too.

End of the day, good or bad doesn't really matter. But no, not every cop is a psychopath, that's fucking stupid. How would you explain Nazi Germany? Whole point of these systems is to make good people do terrible things, and cope with this reality.

So don't focus too much on it. What matters is keeping people safe, and free, and healthy, and functional, and if good people are deluded and violent obstacles in this, then fuck them.

They have no more value than you or others.

Actually, should clarify one point here:

If you think people are fundamentally bad, then you cannot really support rehabilitative justice in practice. It's a contradiction. Learned this early on. So not defending cops, but psychology tells us pretty much everyone is redeemable.

And also, very importantly: You're no different. You're absolutely no different. You are just as vulnerable to violent and dangerous and fanatical doctrines as anyone else.

Be conscious of this, because I've seen a lot of people ruin their lives believing in good or bad.