One of my new friends is/was a cop. Just found out about it. I genuinely believe ACAB, and this news has me conflicted because my new friend seems really cool and super nice. I don’t know him super well yet, though. He’s a big part of this new friend group and I don’t know how to process this and how to deal with the fact he’s a cop.
I don’t want to look past the fact he’s a cop, but I want to stay his friend and stay in this friend group.
Any advice for dealing with this shit?
I can’t talk to my therapist about it until Thursday.
The comments that say give them a chance? Not me.
This is just personal experience.
My college friend and I, both big into paintball, went our separate ways. Met up with him a few years ago, and he apparently joined the police for and was a serious boot licker. Extremely twitchy, constantly talking about danger. He then, as a plainclothes civilian with a badge, went up to harass some teens who weren’t doing anything. Maybe he wanted to look tough? Either way, an absolute asshole.
My other friend decided to give a chance to a guy on tinder who was a cop. The guy was pretty cool when I hung out with him. He even played Yu-Gi-Oh and we made lots of nerd anime jokes. A few months later, she’s calling me because he choked her. The break-up wasn’t just messy. She physically had to take down all of her social media and move across the country. He kept going back and forth to bring incredibly nice to me, to then backhanded threatening me.
ACAB.
i use to work with the police, and many i considered my friends. i know they were good people, but i also knew those on the force that were not.
part of the acab movement is about how the general public can never know which is which, so it is in our best interest to assume we are always facing the worst of the worst. your intimate knowledge of the person can be held separately from the movement.
i do understand that those good cops allowing those bad cops is a huge issue but thats really on them, not you. officers who attempt to ‘fix’ this issue arent officers for very long.
officers who attempt to ‘fix’ this issue arent officers for very long.
I think this is the crux of it. ACAB because any cop with morals and integrity doesn’t keep their job. Those who are left are either monsters or enablers.
I mean, try to steer him to not be “one of the bad ones” and always do the right thing even if that means the possibility of getting fired.
If he starts abusing his power, thats when you have to cut off the friendship.
Basically, act as his conscience, and stop him from getting corrupted by the system.
Remember, if its not him, someone else is taking his position. Just use the fact that this happened to be your friend to try to act as a moral guide. But be willing to confront him if he becomes corrupt and be prepared of the possibility to lose this friend.
ACAB is cops as a collective. Like, your friend may be a great person when not at work. And may even be ‘one of the good ones’ when on the clock.
That doesn’t mean he’s going to testify against a fellow officer that he sees planting drugs on a suspect.
That doesn’t mean he’s going to testify against a fellow officer that he sees planting drugs on a suspect.
I work in the medical field. If anyone in my field was fucking around, like cops routinely do, they would be reported and fired faster than the rumour would spread. Our priority is the patient not my coworkers.
Cops, however, are ride or die- the public is just another tribe. ACAB because “good cops” enable every “bad cop”, it’s only a matter of time before every cop faces this challenge and every cop that does the right thing is run out of the department for being a “troublemaker”.
ACAB is cops as a collective. Like, your friend may be a great person when not at work. And may even be ‘one of the good ones’ when on the clock.
That doesn’t mean he’s going to testify against a fellow officer that he sees planting drugs on a suspect.
Totally. Some of the most horrific stories in the Police Problem community is what cops do to their friends and family.
There’s that one cop that won best police officer award and was straight off killing people.
Wouldn’t be a friend.
With things like cops, you have to remember that if no one with morals goes into it, it’ll keep getting worse.
I have a lot of family that are in some kind of law enforcement, and a couple friends from college that went into it as well.
If you cut them off because they’re cops, then the only people who associate with them are assholes and it concentrates.
Just be upfront about it.
Couple months ago I ran into a friend of a friend from college who’s a cop. The first and last things I said to him was dont be a fucking asshole. Other than that I treated him the same as if he wasn’t a cop.
If we cut that dude out of our lives, the only people he’d talk to would tell him to be more of an asshole.
Like, obviously if he’s doing shady shit, then fuck him.
I see some rather extreme responses here and I am pretty radical too but don’t let this shit replace your common sense judgement when dealing with people on personal level.
Use common sense.
Somebody just learned the dangers of broad generalizations
This is one of many problems with “ACAB” because not every cop is one way or the other.
Reality is that a functioning society needs police officers. It sounds like you hit it off with this person and they have some good qualities that you like.
How do you expect the police to change if we don’t get involved? Getting rid of the police entirely is not a solution. But getting in and making changes from the inside is a valid way to make things better.
Why are you wanting to create an echo chamber for yourself? Why don’t you expose yourself to others and other ideas that are different than yours? What’s the harm there? Are you scared you won’t be able to change his mind or that his ideas might make some sense to you?
Yes go out and befriend a KKK grand wizard today lol you will learn a lot.
Sure, ask Daryl Davis https://youtu.be/PVVFx3issHg
Sure go hangout with a neo nazi, I’m sure they have redeeming qualities.
Neo-nazies are the same species of human as KKK members. If what Daryl Davis did worked with KKK it should work with neo-nazies too. Or do you have a valid reason to think it wouldn’t?
I have a friend who worked at a convenience store in an area where the KKK still has a decent presence. The local grand wizard or dragon or whatever ridiculous rank he had took a liking to my friend (it should maybe be noted that my friend is practically a caricature of blond, blue-eyed whiteness.) I wouldn’t say they were friends, it was more than he was on the clock and couldn’t really afford to lose his job by telling some racist fuck to pound sand, they didn’t keep in contact outside of work, neither of them changed each other’s minds about anything (my friend is now engaged to a black woman) but they did have some fairly in depth and civil conversations about race and society and such.
I can’t say for what Mr Pointy Hat’s takeaway was from their talks, but my friend’s overall impression is that the klan guy was kind of stuck. He kind of seemed to know that the world had changed around him, and that maybe he was in the wrong and there was no place for someone like him anymore, but he was unable and/or unwilling to change himself to adapt to the new world and to different ways of thinking than he’d been brought up with, so the kkk was kind of his way of carving a safe space for himself out of the world where he knew how things worked and where he had some sort of value. And his hatred towards black people and other people different from himself wasn’t really that they should be killed or enslaved or treated poorly, but that he didn’t get why they needed to be part of the same society as him, sort of like if they could just all go off and live in their own countries he’d wish them the best in their endeavors.
I’m not saying that’s at all a good philosophy, I find it absolutely abhorrent, but it’s also more nuanced than I would have otherwise thought a klansman would be capable of.
I also won’t say that my friend necessarily had a perfect read on this guy, it could very well be that he totally took the wrong things away from what the guy said. And even if he did hit the nail on the head, with a sample size of 1, you can’t exactly extrapolate that to say that the rest of the klan or other racist shitbags feel the same way.
But I do think there can be some value in talking to some of these types of people, maybe not befriending them exactly, but building some sort of mutual understanding might help get some of them onto the right path before they end up too old and stuck in their ways like that guy.
Something about playing with a dog who was rolling in the sewer and you will also stink like shit. I’m exposed to enough morons, people don’t change at least not for the better. I’m not going out of my way to engage more but good for you.
If you didn’t think people can change, you probably wouldn’t spend as much time arguing with people on the internet as you do. Not really much point in doing that since you’re not going to change their minds after all.
But even if you genuinely don’t think people are capable of improvement, I think it would still be worthwhile in a “know your enemy” sort of way.
Yeah just keep getting to know your enemy. That is super effective way to deal with them. Kill them with kindness as it were lol while they kill you with rocks. Worry not I’m sure in 3 days you’ll rise again.
My dude, what the actual fuck are you on about?
“Know your enemy” isn’t a saying about peaceful turn-the-other-cheek, love-thy-neighbor, forgiveness bullshit
It’s about knowing how and why they fight so you know how to defeat them.
You can’t and won’t win over every individual Nazi or klansman and make them see the light, but each one you do is one less enemy on their side and one more ally on yours, and my talking to them you get a better understanding on how to beat them.
Sure buddy sure. As Elvis put it." A little bit less conversation a little more action please…" Ya dig?
This is one of many problems with “ACAB” because not every cop is one way or the other.
It’s a statement of what the job entails, whether the individual is a “moral” person off the clock is not relevant.
Reality is that a functioning society needs police officers.
Police are a relatively modern invention, have only been around ~200 years.
Police as in law enforcement. That’s been around a long, long, long time.
I have a couple of friends in law enforcement (NYPD & state Police). They tend to be best cops around, one of them is being sent to be a trainer so he can get some bigger promotions.
You got to ask yourself and maybe them if they are a good person. All cops are bad because of what the system does to them. But who they are in spite of what that system is doing says more about who they are as a person.
Chances are they’ll have edgy jokes, but you’ve been on the Internet long enough to end up here, so I’m sure you can navigate that.
Remember conservatives hate liberal arts colleges because people who are exposed to diversity are more tolerant of it.
This.
I’m friends with a former Republican social media person. I don’t share his views and he’s knows that, but I can appreciate his views so that I can learn.
Sometimes the most uncomfortable perspective can help you grasp some really complicated things.
And also, you might not even know what their views on the police are.
Just get to know them. Don’t adapt their views if you don’t subscribe to them, but listen to them and maybe you can take away some stuff here and there.
I think you deal with it the same way you deal with someone of other political party. If you can have a reasonable argument with them and each explain your values and how you process some issues, it’s OK if they come to a different place than you.
E.g. People can feel for the homeless and come to a different % of assistance vs. job training.But, If it seems like they have an utter lack of empathy for a certain type of person, you call that out and see what happens. If they can’t acknowledge human rights and dignity, you cut them off.
I have cops that are friends and they aren’t bad as far as I know.
that you know of. guarantee they’re dirty or know dirty cops and don’t do anything about it.
commissioner Gordon is fictional
Those of you who know me here know I have an interest in sovereign citizens. I’m in a make fun of sovcits group on Facebook, and this one guy I talked to a lot added me as a friend, no big deal, but then he messaged me to tell me he’s a cop in Australia and that he runs into them while working a lot. I think Australian police are likely of higher quality than American police, but I’m still using filters on FB posts.
Is this person a new friend? Or is this person a cop. Getting to know someone and becoming friends with that person is a relationship. Deciding this person is horrid because they are a cop is superficial. And that person will never be your friend, there is no relationship there. Is this person a Human you want to get to know, or a job title you hate.
I’m not saying which country I live in, but I’ve only ever had good experiences with cops. They were polite to me and also helpful. It is a profession which can and does attract bad actors and the extent to which people are vetted differs between locations, but not everyone is going to be like that. There are genuinely nice and caring people out there who want to help and protect people!
Same
One of my friends is a veteran. I be sure to tell him my thoughts on his deployment in Afghanistan and I’ve told him multiple times he deserves his PTSD.
But I still love that man as a human and a friend. We get along together, we laugh, I call him a terrible person, and life continues.
Basically, don’t change your beliefs based on who you’re with, and it’s fine to be friends with a cop. I have other friends who are terrible human beings as well, but they make up for it with other great qualities. If anything, being friends with a PoS is the best way to make them a better person; you really have an opportunity to help society.
