The Goals of Police and Why We Avoid Cop-Jacketing, a thread:

The Role of Police: Police exist to violently enforce the State’s sovereignty in all communities.

Every law is a police order. The State can only exist so long as it has means to make people obey its laws by force.

The Reality of Police: Police forces are relatively small in comparisons the communities they occupy and operate within. To fill their role, they have to *project* their power over large areas that they are inherently unable to be physically present in at all time.

Ex: if you have no moral aversions to stealing a candy bar, what stops you from stealing a candy bar isn’t that a cop is always watching, but that at any time a cop *could* be watching.

Police Projection of Power: To project their power, police create the impression (through patrols, surveillance, neighborhood watch programs, etc.) that they are able to see and control more than their actual capacity allows.

This power, however, DOES have a very limited capacity. This capacity is quickly expended the more resistance to their operations their are. There are simply far more people in communities than there are police.

Some Myths About Police Goals and Tactics:
- “Engaging in (vandalism, violent resistance, looting, etc.) is what the police want us to do so they can attack us!”
- “Most looters/vandals are actually cop infiltrators trying to delegitimize movements.”

Myths Debunked:
Because of their limited capacity to project their power & their desire to keep a situation controlled within that capacity, police DO NOT want people to actively resist them/engage in militant activity because that ruptures their ability to project their power.

Police infiltrators within protests are more likely to:
-try to keep protestors in an easily controlled area
-attempt to pull protestors away from a contested area
-attempt to control the otg narrative about the protest/sow paranoia
-attempt to disband the protest
-gather intel

Cop-Jacketing: Cop-jacketing is when we make unsubstantiated claims that certain actions are actually the work of the police/that specific individuals are police infiltrators.

The Dangers of Cop-Jacketing: When we cop-jacket without 100% certainty and proof, we lend ourselves towards the actual goals of police, which is to deny the autonomy of our movements, sow paranoia, and further project the power of police.

How to Avoid Cop-Jacketing While Remaining Attuned to the Threat of Infiltration: Police/Fed infiltration is certainly a threat we should be very attentive to, but the best tools in our arsenal is to resist spreading paranoia and to practice good security culture.

It makes sense to want to find absolute rules that will allow us to know who is and isn’t a cop/fed, but the truth is that those rules do not exist, and the process of trying to find them does so much more harm than good. Security culture is far better self and community defense.

Check out this Crimethinc article “What is Security Culture?” To build your understanding on where/how to start building your security culture practices! https://crimethinc.com/2004/11/01/what-is-security-culture

Anyway, I try to do this kind of thing on a regular basis to make information more accessible to others. I will always do it for free, but if you like it and want to show your support you can either give love to my tip jars or join my Patreon: http://patreon.com/butchanarchy 

Very important addition: https://twitter.com/AHotJupiter/status/1379154912723005441