Yes, because my immediate surroundings used to be chock full of cops. My uncle and aunt as well as my neighbors and best friends parents growing up all were or still are Polizei, I had the opportunity to spend much of my time in the household of a criminal investigator and a trainer of the North Rhine Westphalian riot police, I lived next door and visited my cousins in the house of an internal affairs officer and a “normal” police officer. As a kid I had the opportunity to sit in and shoot a water cannon they use to dispere riots and every time there was a party in the cul-de-sac, I got to listen to the cops talk to each other and listened not only to what they said but how they said it, what they argued about and how it changed over the years. I grew up in those group dynamics, I heard the esprit de corps directly from them. And it informed my political leanings to a big degree.

None of them were bad cops, but all of them served a broken system that changed their attitude to the worse. Worse even, when my aunt did her job in the LKA Dezernat internal affairs when the migrant crisis started and there was a noticable step to the right on the side of the Polizei, she got ostracised and (subtly) threatened.

Then of course there are studies and statistics, 2024 had more people shot by the police than every other year since 1999 and illegal police violence is substantially more often directed against leftist, poor people and migrants or asylum seekers.

ACAB is a condemnation of a police system that is in large parts not working correctly and more importantly, suffers from targeted infiltration by the far-right. There are multiple reports of AfD and independent far-right activists calling for their allies to infiltrate the ranks of military and police to use the power of the state to further their political goals and mold the esprit de corps towards a desired anti-democratic bend. We COULD create laws to keep the worst of this in check, but the lobbying by DPolG and various politicans keeps that from happening… and as long as the keepers of the nations violence are not under stricter control and oversight, the entire institution and thus all cops will remain bastards.

Police violence charges are usually dropped due to “lack of public interest” (which can be applied to pretty much any crime at the discretion of the responsible prosecutor) and/or the police officers you allege to have abused you will sue you for defamation. Usually it’s both.

So another police office will decide whether to believe you or their fellow police officer?

…but the world is fucked up though… and tbh, the United States and its hegemony has had a lot to do with it unfortunately.

It absolutely does. By “good” cops, I mean those who follow protocols and are generally nice to the people they lord over.

When I say ACAB, I am not necessarily weighing in on the individual character of all police officers (although often they do suck as individuals). What I mean is that the role that cops play in society is evil. The police are here to impose the will of the capitalist class on the working class every single day. Even if they follow protocols while doing it, even if individual cops rarely do “the right thing”, even if the “good” cop in your head or your social network or family is otherwise an excellent person outside their police work, all cops are still cops and therefore categorically evil.

ACAB includes “good” cops because the police are a categorically evil institution.

So viele Einzelfälle…