In the ostensible land of liberty, a most extraordinary contradiction has taken root and flourished with perverse vigor. The United States, that self-proclaimed beacon of democracy, harbors within its borders an increasingly militarized domestic force that operates with a shocking lack of accountability. The American police — those sworn to protect and serve — have instead cultivated a culture of impunity so brazen and so profound that it can only be described as a malignancy on the body politic. This is not mere hyperbole or rhetorical flourish; it is the cold reality faced by countless Americans who have found themselves at the wrong end of a system designed to shield its agents from the consequences of their most barbaric actions.
1,096 people killed by police in 2019. 1,021 in 2020. 1,055 in 2021. The bodies pile up, and we keep counting.
“When the police murder, they are doing their jobs.” — Mariame Kaba
The grotesque spectacle of police violence in America has become so commonplace as to be almost banal in its predictability. Consider the case of Charles Kinsey, a behavioral therapist who in 2016 was shot while lying flat on his back, hands raised skyward in the universal posture of surrender, attempting to care for his autistic patient. When asked why he had fired his weapon, the officer’s response was as illuminating as it was terrifying: “I don’t know.” One struggles to imagine a more perfect crystallization of the casual, almost thoughtless application of deadly force that characterizes American policing. That the officer in question received only a misdemeanor conviction and a year’s probation merely underscores the farcical nature of what passes for justice in these cases.
Five seconds. That’s how long it took police to decide to shoot 12-year-old Tamir Rice dead.
The treatment of the mentally ill by American law enforcement represents a particular species of barbarism that would be comedic were it not so frequently fatal. Take the 2014 case of Jason Harrison in Dallas, a schizophrenic man whose mother called police seeking help transporting him to a hospital. Within seconds of arriving, officers shot Harrison dead as he stood holding a screwdriver. Or consider the 2020 case of Daniel Prude in Rochester, who died after officers placed a “spit hood” over his head and pressed his naked body to the frozen ground until he stopped breathing — all while he was experiencing a mental health crisis. The officers involved were cleared of wrongdoing, naturally. The message could not be clearer: in America, mental illness is effectively criminalized, and those suffering from it risk summary execution at the hands of those ostensibly tasked with public safety.
25–50% of people killed by police are in the midst of a mental health crisis.
Let me be perfectly blunt: we have created a system where the most dangerous person to call during a psychiatric emergency is a police officer.
The elderly fare no better in encounters with America’s increasingly unhinged constabulary. In 2020, 73-year-old Karen Garner, suffering from dementia, was violently arrested after forgetting to pay for $13 worth of items at Walmart. The bodycam footage showed officers dislocating her shoulder and breaking her arm while she repeatedly cried that she was “going home.” Later, these same officers were captured on station video laughing and celebrating as they watched the footage of her arrest, the sound of her shoulder popping providing them with particular amusement. One searches in vain for a more perfect embodiment of the sadism that has infected American policing like a virus.
“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.” — Golda Meir
The perverse inversion applies: We can forgive the police for killing our citizens; we cannot forgive the citizens for making the police kill them.
Sexual violence perpetrated by police officers represents perhaps the most egregious abuse of power and betrayal of public trust, yet it occurs with disturbing regularity across the United States. The case of Daniel Holtzclaw, a former Oklahoma City officer convicted of raping and sexually assaulting multiple Black women while on duty, exposed not just individual depravity but systemic failures. Holtzclaw deliberately targeted vulnerable women with criminal histories, correctly calculating that their accusations would be dismissed or ignored. More troubling still is the knowledge that for every Holtzclaw who faces consequences, countless others operate with impunity, protected by a blue wall of silence and a justice system that routinely privileges the word of an officer over that of a civilian, particularly when that civilian comes from a marginalized community.
The second most common form of police misconduct reported? Sexual assault.
At least 400 officers are convicted of rape or sexual assault each decade. How many thousands more are never reported or never convicted?
You’re eight times more likely to be killed by a cop than a terrorist, yet we’ve spent trillions fighting terrorism and barely a fucking cent on police accountability.
The militarization of American police forces has proceeded at a pace that would make the Pentagon blush with envy. Through the Department of Defense’s 1033 Program, local departments have acquired billions in military equipment — grenade launchers, armored vehicles, bayonets, and other implements of war wholly inappropriate for civilian law enforcement. The result is as predictable as it is disturbing: when equipped like an occupying army, police behave like one. The images from Ferguson in 2014 — officers in tactical gear atop military vehicles, training weapons on unarmed protesters — seemed torn from the pages of a dystopian novel rather than scenes from a supposedly democratic society. That the American public has largely accepted this transformation speaks volumes about the nation’s warped relationship with authority and violence.
$7.4 billion in military equipment transferred to police departments since 1990.
“Give a small man a big gun and you’ll create a big monster with a childish mind.” — T.F. Hodge
Police unions stand as perhaps the most formidable obstacle to meaningful accountability and reform. These organizations have managed the remarkable feat of positioning themselves as both beleaguered victims and untouchable power brokers, flexing political muscle that would make traditional labor advocates weep with envy. Their contracts often include provisions that would be laughable were they not so damaging to public safety — mandatory cooling-off periods before officers can be questioned about shootings, purging of disciplinary records, limited windows for filing complaints, and myriad other protections designed not to ensure due process but to obstruct accountability. The result is a system in which problem officers bounce between departments like pinballs, their records either sealed or scrubbed clean, free to continue their predations on an unsuspecting public.
In Minneapolis, 2,600 excessive force complaints were filed against police between 2012 and 2020. Only 12 resulted in discipline. The most severe “punishment”? A 40-hour suspension.
It’s worth noting that the same conservative politicians who routinely attack teacher’s unions fall eerily silent when it comes to the far more powerful and demonstrably harmful police unions. The hypocrisy is as naked as it is unsurprising.
The financial cost of police misconduct is borne not by the officers responsible nor their departments but by the taxpayers themselves, adding fiscal insult to physical injury. Cities across America pay out hundreds of millions annually to settle lawsuits alleging brutality, wrongful death, and various other forms of misconduct. Chicago alone paid over $500 million between 2004 and 2014. Yet these astronomical sums rarely result in policy changes or personnel actions against the officers involved. The perverse incentive structure could not be clearer: when the financial consequences of misconduct are externalized to taxpayers while the benefits of unchecked power accrue to officers and departments, the cycle of abuse becomes self-perpetuating.
New York City: $1.1 billion paid in police misconduct settlements over 5 years. Los Angeles: $339 million over a decade. Chicago: $528 million over 10 years.
And who pays this blood money? Not the officers. Not the departments. You do, dear taxpayer. You subsidize your own oppression with remarkable efficiency.
Behind the badge often lurks a disturbing pattern of personal misconduct that belies the carefully cultivated image of the heroic public servant. Studies have consistently found that police officers have domestic violence rates significantly higher than the general population — with some research suggesting law enforcement families experience domestic abuse at rates two to four times the national average. The notorious “40% study,” while methodologically contested, points to a culture of violence that extends beyond professional duties into officers’ most intimate relationships. When those tasked with responding to domestic violence are themselves disproportionately likely to be abusers, the system’s fundamental rottenness becomes impossible to ignore.
“He choked me once. He choked me twice. I filed a complaint. Nothing happened. Now he chokes suspects on the job.” — Anonymous spouse of a police officer
The cruel irony is simply this: abused spouses of police officers have nowhere to turn. Call 911, and who shows up? Your abuser’s colleagues and drinking buddies. How perfectly American.
The drug war has not only failed to curtail substance abuse but has corrupted the very institutions charged with enforcing prohibition. One need not look far to find examples of officers stealing drugs from evidence rooms, planting narcotics on suspects, or even running their own distribution operations. The Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force scandal exposed an elite police unit that routinely robbed citizens, planted evidence, and resold confiscated drugs back onto the streets. Such cases expose the fundamental hypocrisy at the heart of American drug policy: while low-level offenders face draconian sentences, those with badges often engage in the same behaviors with relative impunity, protected by a system designed to shield them from consequences.
In a particularly delicious twist of irony, police unions routinely fight against random drug testing of officers. The defenders of the drug war apparently require their own cocaine and steroids.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” — John F. Kennedy
The international community observes America’s police pathologies with a mixture of horror and bewilderment. European police forces, while far from perfect, generally receive more training, kill civilians at a fraction of the rate of their American counterparts, and operate within systems designed to hold them accountable for misconduct. The annual death toll at the hands of American police — averaging around 1,000 people — dwarfs that of other developed nations by orders of magnitude. The United Kingdom, with a population one-fifth that of the United States, saw just three fatal police shootings in 2019. This disparity cannot be explained away by differences in crime rates or gun ownership; it reflects a fundamentally different conception of the role of police and the value of human life.
Norwegian police officers must complete a three-year bachelor’s degree. Finnish officers: three years of education. German officers: minimum 2.5 years training. American police: as little as 10 weeks. Less training than a fucking barber.
“Americans have built a society based not on freedom but on domination.” — Raoul Peck
The notion that this heavily armed, minimally accountable constabulary exists primarily to “keep us safe” represents perhaps the most successful propaganda campaign in modern American history. Crime statistics consistently show that police solve only a small fraction of serious crimes — about 2% of major crimes according to some studies. Response times in many cities have grown so abysmal that calling 911 has become an act of faith rather than a practical safety measure. Yet the mythology persists, fueled by procedural dramas and copaganda that bears little resemblance to the actual function of American policing, which has always been the protection of property and the control of populations deemed threatening to the established order.
“Safety” is one goddamn hell of an euphemism for a system that routinely executes civilians.
Clearance rates for murder: 54%. Rape: 30%. Robbery: 30%. Burglary: 14%. Let’s be clear: the police aren’t solving crimes. They’re showing up after the fact and filling out paperwork.
The structural immunity enjoyed by American police extends well beyond the formal legal doctrine that bears that name. While qualified immunity — that judicial fabrication that shields officers from civil liability unless they violate “clearly established law” — certainly contributes to the culture of impunity, the problems run far deeper. Prosecutors dependent on police cooperation for their daily work have inherent conflicts of interest when investigating officer misconduct. Grand juries presented with carefully curated evidence rarely indict. Judges and juries confronted with the testimony of an officer against that of a civilian overwhelmingly credit the former over the latter. The system is not broken; it functions precisely as designed — to protect power from accountability.
Since 2005, only 121 officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter for on-duty killings, despite thousands of such deaths. Of those, only 44 were convicted. Let that sink in. 44 convictions out of thousands of killings.
“Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.” — Jean-Paul Sartre
Perhaps nothing illustrates the moral bankruptcy of American policing more clearly than the response to the protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder. As millions marched against police violence, departments across the nation responded with more violence — beating protesters, firing “less lethal” munitions at point-blank range, deploying chemical weapons banned in international warfare, and generally confirming the protesters’ central thesis. The NYPD officers who drove vehicles into crowds, the Buffalo officers who fractured the skull of 75-year-old peace activist Martin Gugino, the Philadelphia police who tear-gassed trapped protesters on a highway — all stood as living embodiments of the very brutality being protested. That most escaped significant discipline merely underscored the near-total absence of accountability.
In a span of 10 days during the 2020 protests, police committed at least 125 documented acts of violence against journalists. So much for the fucking First Amendment.
“He’s bleeding out of his ear!” screamed bystanders as Martin Gugino lay motionless on the pavement. The official police statement? “Man tripped and fell.” The video told a different story. Trump’s response? Gugino was “an ANTIFA provocateur” who “fell harder than he was pushed.”
The corruption of American policing extends beyond individual acts of violence to a systemic distortion of the communities they ostensibly serve. Asset forfeiture — that legal abomination that allows departments to seize property without even charging its owner with a crime — has warped policing priorities, incentivizing departments to pursue cases based on their potential for profit rather than public safety impact. In 2014, American law enforcement took more property from citizens than burglars did. This state-sanctioned theft disproportionately impacts those least able to challenge it through costly legal proceedings, creating a predatory relationship between police and the communities most in need of genuine public safety services.
$68,000 — that’s how much cash police took from an elderly couple in Michigan driving through the state with their life savings to buy a winter home. They were never charged with any crime.
Think about that statistic for a moment: In 2014, police stole more from Americans through civil asset forfeiture ($5 billion) than burglars did through all home burglaries combined ($3.5 billion).
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” — Frédéric Bastiat
The racial disparities in American policing cannot be dismissed as mere statistical artifacts or the result of “a few bad apples.” Black Americans are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans. They are more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, and subjected to use of force — disparities that persist even when controlling for neighborhood characteristics and alleged criminal activity. The Justice Department’s investigations into departments from Baltimore to Ferguson to Chicago have revealed patterns of constitutional violations so pervasive and so racially skewed that they can only be described as systemic. That many Americans continue to deny this reality speaks to the power of racial mythology in a nation still unwilling to confront its original sin.
In some cities, Black drivers are stopped at rates 5 to 10 times higher than white drivers. In Ferguson, Missouri, before Michael Brown’s killing, the city set explicit revenue targets from police fines targeting the Black community.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” — Anatole France
And so too does American policing, in its majestic equality, theoretically protect and serve all communities while in practice functioning as an occupying force in Black and brown neighborhoods.
The performance of American police failures takes on an almost theatrical quality in the context of school shootings — those distinctly American tragedies that occur with such frequency that they barely register as exceptional anymore. The officers who stood in the hallway at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School while children were slaughtered, or those who waited outside classrooms in Uvalde for over an hour while students bled to death, expose the hollowness of police heroism narratives. When actually confronted with dangerous individuals with firearms — rather than unarmed civilians — many officers revert to self-preservation, their expansive claims of bravery revealed as empty posturing. That the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled police have no legal duty to protect citizens completes this portrait of institutional betrayal.
376 officers responded to Uvalde. They waited 77 minutes while children were being massacred. They handcuffed parents trying to save their own children. Some officers went in — but only to retrieve their own kids.
“Cowards with badges.” — That’s what the families called them.
The Parkland school resource officer, Scot Peterson, hid behind a concrete column for 48 minutes during the shooting. He retired with a full pension of $8,702 per month.
Here’s a curious statistic: In 2019, more American police officers died by suicide (228) than in the line of duty (132). What does this tell us about the psychological devastation wrought by participation in a system of authorized violence?
The phrase “a few bad apples” is perhaps the most misused metaphor in modern American discourse. The full saying, of course, is “a few bad apples spoil the barrel.” And this is precisely what has happened to American policing — the rot has spread throughout the institution, corrupting even those who might otherwise serve honorably. The problem is not merely individual officers but a culture that shields the violent, rewards the cruel, punishes whistleblowers, and treats communities as enemy populations to be controlled rather than citizens to be protected. Any officer who has witnessed misconduct and remained silent — which is to say, nearly all of them — has chosen their loyalty to the badge over their duty to the public.
Adrian Schoolcraft, NYPD officer who exposed corruption and illegal quotas: harassed, kidnapped by fellow officers, and forcibly committed to a psychiatric ward.
Frank Serpico, who exposed widespread corruption, was shot in the face during a drug raid and left to die by his fellow officers.
Regina Tasca, New Jersey’s only openly gay female officer, fired after stopping two officers from beating a handcuffed emotionally disturbed man.
Cariol Horne, Buffalo police officer, fired for stopping another officer from choking a handcuffed suspect. It took her 15 years to get her pension.
“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
The solutions to America’s policing crisis are neither mysterious nor particularly complex — they merely require the political will to value human life and civil liberties over the maintenance of a violent status quo. Robust civilian oversight with actual investigatory and disciplinary powers; elimination of qualified immunity; mandatory and substantial malpractice insurance for officers; decoupling of police from mental health crisis response; demilitarization; and stringent national standards for use of force would represent meaningful first steps. That such basic reforms face fierce resistance exposes the depth of America’s commitment to unaccountable state violence.
Camden, NJ dissolved its entire police force in 2013 and rebuilt from scratch. Fatal police shootings dropped by 95%.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
As a society ostensibly founded on principles of liberty and justice, America’s tolerance for an increasingly militarized, minimally accountable domestic armed force represents a betrayal so profound as to call into question the nation’s foundational myths. A country that allows agents of the state to kill, maim, and abuse with near-total impunity — particularly when those abuses fall most heavily on the already marginalized — cannot credibly claim to value freedom or equality before the law. The rest of the developed world has managed to construct systems of public safety that do not routinely execute civilians or shield violent officers from consequences. That America refuses to do the same represents not an unfortunate aberration but a damning indictment of its most fundamental values.
There are police departments in this country with tattoo gangs, where officers earn ink by killing civilians.
“America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil.” — William S. Burroughs
The police, along with the prison system that serves as their adjunct, represent perhaps the clearest expression of what America truly values — control, subjugation, violence, and the maintenance of existing hierarchies. We are told that freedom is our highest value, yet we have constructed the most extensive carceral state in human history. We are told that justice is blind, yet we have created a system where those with badges can commit the very crimes they are tasked with preventing with virtually no consequences. We are told that all lives matter, yet we tolerate — indeed, fund and arm — an institution that treats some lives as expendable. The contradiction is so glaring, so obscene, that only a society steeped in delusion could fail to see it.
American police kill vastly more civilians in days than police in other developed countries kill in years. Iceland: 1 fatal police shooting in country’s history. Finland: 9 fatal police shootings in the past two decades. Norway: Police fired guns only 4 times in 2019, injuring 2 people. New Zealand police killed 35 people in the entire 100-year period from 1910 to 2010.
Meanwhile, American police kill approximately 1,000 people every single fucking year.
In his letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The systemic injustice embedded in American policing threatens not only those immediately subject to its violence but the very concept of a society governed by law rather than force. As police budgets grow ever larger, as officers acquire ever more military equipment, as constitutional rights are increasingly treated as optional courtesies subject to officer discretion, the distance between America’s democratic aspirations and its authoritarian reality grows ever wider. That this transformation has occurred with the tacit consent of so many citizens suggests a collective moral failure that will define this era of American history as surely as Jim Crow defined another.
“How much longer must we be killed by those sworn to protect us?” — Patrisse Cullors
Ethan Saylor, a 26-year-old man with Down syndrome, was killed by off-duty deputies over an unpaid $12 movie ticket. They crushed his larynx while his aide begged them to stop.
Elijah McClain, stopped while walking home from a convenience store, killed by police who injected him with ketamine after putting him in a chokehold. His final words: “I can’t breathe. I have my ID right here… My name is Elijah McClain… I’m just different. I’m just different, that’s all… I can’t breathe.”
Sandra Bland found hanging in a jail cell after being arrested during a traffic stop for failing to signal a lane change.
Eric Garner, choked to death for selling loose cigarettes.
Daniel Shaver, crawling on his hands and knees, begging for his life before being shot five times.
Breonna Taylor, killed in her bed during a no-knock raid at the wrong address.
Philando Castile, shot seven times in front of his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter after informing the officer he had a legal firearm.
Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy with a toy gun, shot within seconds of police arrival.
The list goes on, and on, and fucking on.
The most damning indictment of American policing might be this: at some point, the litany of victims’ names becomes numbing. We cannot hold the full weight of this ongoing atrocity in our minds at once — there are simply too many dead, too many grieving families, too many communities traumatized by those sworn to protect them. The human mind recoils from such sustained horror. And in this psychological limitation lies perhaps the greatest challenge to reform: how do we maintain moral clarity and urgency in the face of routine, systematized violence that has become as American as apple pie and AR-15s?
Law enforcement in the United States has become the most visible symptom of a broader disease — a society that has abandoned any pretense of valuing human dignity in favor of control, hierarchy, and violence as solutions to social problems. The police are merely the blunt instrument with which America enforces its pathological commitment to inequality. They are the enforcers of a social contract that was never meant to include all citizens equally. They are the domestic troops in a war that America has been waging against its own marginalized populations since its founding.
When a society chooses to make violence its primary response to social issues — whether mental illness, homelessness, drug addiction, poverty, or simply the existence of Black and brown bodies in public spaces — it reveals its moral bankruptcy. America has made this choice repeatedly, funneling billions into police departments while starving social services, affordable housing, healthcare, and education. We have created a society where armed agents of the state are the primary point of contact between government and vulnerable citizens, and then expressed shocked dismay when those interactions end in bloodshed.
“Death is the new normal in America.” — Jelani Cobb
The true nature of American policing becomes especially clear when contrasted with the police response to different types of protests. When Black Americans protest police killings, they are met with militarized responses, mass arrests, tear gas, and rubber bullets. When armed white protesters stormed state capitols to protest COVID-19 restrictions, police stood by passively. When white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, police provided protection. This disparity reveals what many have long understood: American policing was never designed to protect all citizens equally but rather to protect certain citizens from others — specifically, to protect white property owners from those deemed threatening to the racial and economic order.
“A riot is the language of the unheard.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
One can only imagine what King would say about a society that remains more outraged by broken windows than broken necks.
In the final analysis, American policing stands as a monument to national hypocrisy — a testament to the gulf between what America claims to be and what it actually is. A nation genuinely committed to freedom would not tolerate an institution that so routinely violates basic civil liberties. A society truly dedicated to justice would not shield violent agents of the state from accountability. A people sincerely devoted to equality would not accept a system that so consistently produces racially disparate outcomes. That America not only tolerates but celebrates and mythologizes its police forces reveals the hollowness of its professed values.
Each generation of Americans faces a choice — whether to confront the contradictions at the heart of the American experiment or to continue the comfortable delusions that allow injustice to flourish. The evidence of police brutality and unaccountability is now too overwhelming, too well-documented, too bloody to be denied. The only question that remains is whether Americans possess the moral courage to demand a system of public safety that actually deserves the name — one that values human life, respects human dignity, and serves all communities rather than controlling some for the benefit of others. The world watches and waits for the answer, though the blood-soaked history of American law enforcement offers little reason for optimism.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
Perhaps. But the arc doesn’t bend itself. And in America, that arc has been weighed down by the bodies of those killed with impunity by the very people sworn to protect them.