During our initial conversation over beers, J was talking about how she was really into football (soccer) as, apparently, most Europeans are. She continued that she had two young boys, so of course, they would make little friends from their school. As she was dropping one of them off at their new friend’s family’s apartment, she noticed a banner on the wall for an opposing team to her football club. But this was not just any opposing team; it was the one founded by the STASI, or the East German Communist Secret Police. Being an East Berlin girl with her parents still having Communism fresh in their minds, she told her son that he could not play with that boy anymore.
Later, as we were walking through the streets of Vilnius, as she added her football club stickers to various signs and posts, there was some graffiti that I did not understand and never saw before. It was the letters ACAB and in another iteration 1312, matching the orders of the letters alphabetically. She explained to me that it stood for All Cops Are Bastards. This kind of drew me back as I have several members of my extended family in law enforcement. I realized that I needed a bit more perspective.
You would think that me, being a white American male, I would be free from any interaction with the police. You would be wrong. I have run from the police, I have been frisked by the police, I have been pulled over by the police, I have been asked to get out of my vehicle by the police, and even have surrendered firearms to the police. Always, and without question, I knew that in these scenarios, they were the authority. Courtesy would be met with courtesy, usually.
But this was America.
Even to this day, in other countries, police show up in the middle of the night, knock on a door, ask for your father, mother, sister, brother, or simply ask for you to come with them, please. Goodbyes are said, and like that, the person would disappear into the night. In some cases returning thoroughly abused, but in too many more, not return at all. This happens in even in supposedly non-authoritarian countries.
In these places and times, the police are acting as the fingers of the black hands on the levers of power; tightening their grips to consolidate and centralize it, using the greatest of human motivators; fear. Today, from Havana to Bejing, Hanoi to Santiago, and even Lima, unexpected knocks on the door from the police are met with absolute and abject terror. And rightfully so.
Given what I saw in the basement of the KGB headquarters in Vilnius, it is completely justified. Having read what ordinary men that were Nazi police units did in Poland during their occupation, where 500 men either directly or indirectly ended the lives of 85,000 people, made me realize what a unique position America is in. Unlike any other country, we are different. We have amendments and Miranda Rights. We have Civil Liberties. We have advocates, legal charities, and the right to a speedy and public trial. Most importantly, we have decentralized police. The vast majority of them have taken the job out of an idea of service to their communities. Most want to be cops, but some want to play cops. There are bad ones out there and they do bad things; just like there are bad doctors, bad bankers, and bad teachers. But a majority are not. For every George Floyd, Freddie Gray, Rodney King or Justine Damond (who I bet you have to look up,) we have millions of police interactions in this country that are calm and orderly.
In the end, when the youth chant All Cops Are Bastards, when cities move to Defund the Police, when we take the civility out of our civil system, what are we left with? A void. Tyrants, like the Universe, hate vacuums. What comes after should terrify everyone and echos in history.