Trigger Warnings #1
Why abolishing the police would be beneficial to the mental health of the constabulary.
CW: abuse, police violence, rape, racial profiling
This is the first article of the Trigger Warnings series, examining environmental factors that effect mental health. To get early access to the next articles as they are released, please support Ollamh Counselling through their Patreon. All articles will become available to everyone through Medium, in the interests of accessibility.
The Banality of Violence
As of writing this, the NYPD have descended on a celebration of LGBTQIA+ Pride, pepper spraying people who are not even protesting[1]. @netpol[2] will release evidence of further, similar police violence on the streets of The United Kingdom. And across the globe — from Tigray[3] to Brazil[4] to Palestine[5] — organised police will be utilised to attack people standing up for their basic human rights[6]. People remark it is a contentious topic to pronounce you are opposed to the police and believe in its abolition, but at Ollamh Counselling we take the clear, singular vision that the police — and the incarceration industry that comes with it — must be abolished for the benefit of society. It is clear that an organised army using tasers and billyclubs has no place in a forward-thinking civilisation. The fact this is seen as a topic of discussion, is remarkable to me.
It is a common prerequisite of liberal thinking that we must accept all opinions and points of view; it is why in the counselling profession we find this kind of political neutrality in all aspects of our field. As counsellors, it is important that we remain non-judgemental with our clients, not out of respect for their opinions, but because the process of therapeutic work would not function if we do not sit with the client’s reality. If a client believes firmly that the police are right to utilise violence against predominantly black communities, it is our job to help them see the harm of this statement not through a direct challenging of the core belief, but through slow, guided exploration so the client can see it for themselves. This is not an issue of morality. It is an issue of the processes necessary to benefit someone psychologically.
However, with the knowledge that therapeutic work cannot directly oppose violent, prejudiced and dangerous points-of-view, comes a level of nuance that many in our profession lack. They take this functionality of counselling and apply it to their own politics. As an activist, I am aware that if I performed my counselling duty in all walks of life, nothing would change for the better. Helping one client witness their own mental processes is one thing; but to apply this to the state of society at large is improper and misguided. As individuals within a social system, it is our job to challenge violence in all it’s forms. As James Baldwin said[7], he does not have the time to figure out if you are a good or a bad copper, because in such an interaction, someone may have to die. Only us in positions of privilege have that very same privilege to be ambiguous and nuanced in our philosophies.
To remain on the fence in all matters of civility, kindness, and oppression is a kind of violence. It perpetuates the same violence. Whilst we debate whether it is crueller to deny an opinion than it is to deny someone their right to humanity, someone dies. Whilst we debate if conversion therapy is worse than denying the opinions associated with it, someone dies. And whilst we debate whether the police should be abolished, or whether it would be cruel to that one kind officer of the law — someone dies.
#ACAB
I would like to take a truly contentious position, however. It is common in the discourse around police abolition to utilise a phrase: #ACAB. Sometimes it is written as #1312, the numerals associated with the letters. It stands for “all cops are bastards”, and I stand by it. To be part of a system of such cruelty, even if you do not participate in such yourself, makes you culpable. As an analogy, if I were a teacher in a school where the maths department hit the children, but I worked in the English department and we taught such things were wrong, I would still be culpable in the attacks on the maths students because I work in the school. It is not enough to say, “but I am not a maths teacher.” However — and this is where I grow contentious in the field of abolition — I stand by ACAB as I believe it benefits police officers in the long term.
The phrase “all cops are bastards” comes from the common phrase “one bad apple spoils the barrel, and the barrel spoils the bunch”[8], indicating that a bad element in a system can corrupt that system, and a corrupted system corrupts all who function within it. I won’t go into the academia surrounding systemic corruption in this article, but suffice to say activists have to deliver these complex, nuanced subjects surrounding abuse in manners that can easily target the structures of society. An activist does not have time to discuss every individual circumstance that arises from such a system as policing. Rather, they must utilise strong, uncivil language to open a door to the academic treatises, folkloric interpretations, and intellectual analyses that lead us, inexorably, to such a statement. #ACAB may be reductive, but it’s a way of shining a light on an insurmountable collection of evidence — qualitative and quantitative — that the incarceration complex is not fit for purpose. And that to continually remain part of a gang that utilises abuse and murder as a tactic makes you culpable.
It is apparent that abolishing the police would be beneficial to those oppressed, abused, and murdered by that system. Since 1990, 1787 individuals have died[9] in British Police custody, and this number only increases if we include tragedies such as Sarah Everard in the data. There are countless pieces you can find for yourself that explore, indulge, and offer answers to the question of abolishing the police for the benefit of civilian life[10], but I want to look at this from another perspective. Many of the counterarguments surrounding police abolition revolve around what would happen to the officers themselves, and although this is usually steeped in classism[11], it is important to note that abolition would change the landscape of community wellbeing for the better.
Sick Days
“More than a quarter of officers who have taken sick leave attributed it to stress, depression or anxiety, while 65% said they still went to work even though they felt they shouldn’t have because of the state of their mental wellbeing” according to the Police Federations page[12] on Mental Health.
“A recent survey by Mind, the mental health charity, revealed that 5% of the staff and volunteers they interviewed from police, fire, ambulance and search and rescue services had made an actual attempt to take their own lives.”
This is unacceptable. Regardless of our positions as to what we hope becomes of police officers who have abused — if not murdered — members of the communities they are tasked to protect, the fact the environment for policing is such a disastrous one for mental health adds another aspect to why the police framework is not fit for purpose.
Officers are known to have to simultaneously deal with car accidents, helping vulnerable individuals find their way home, traffic stops, drug busts, civilian murders, community support, workshops, school visits — the list is as endless as it is varied. It is foolish to ask individual officers to perform a role that encompasses so many individual tasks[13]. Simultaneously, we see how policing units are over-funded (see, America now utilising Musk’s electric cars[14]), but in equal measure, how can one budget offer enough for a single individual to act in such a varied manner? Why are the police responsible not just for violent murders, but also for helping Autistic Children[15] find their way home? No wonder we are seeing such high rates of suicidal ideation and poor mental health in officers who have a role that no one individual could maintain.
This, by no means, justifies the abuse shown in the videos I’ve linked throughout this article. And neither does this challenge the notion some police officers are “good apples” when the system makes the entirety of them bad — rather, to be part of a system that subjugates, murders, and abuses individuals heralds that you are willing to put aside morality for your own well-being; there are no good apples. What I would rather indicate is that by abolishing the system of policing — i.e. removing the barrel — we can begin to utilise the good intentions and values of these individuals in a way that benefits the mental health not just of those they previously oppressed, but the officers themselves.
The Answer?
This article was inspired by the attack on the queer Yiddish anarchist pay-what-you-can café, Pink Peacock[16]. At a time where anti-Semitism is rife throughout the United Kingdom, it was appalling to see officers treat this organisation with such contempt[17]. Pink Peacock had been helping the local community with food drives, and this is how the local police repaid them. It is incredibly difficult to write an article that stands alongside the mental wellbeing of officers who would treat people in such a manner, especially those already likely made vulnerable in their communities due to their backgrounds, heritage, and beliefs.
By no means does this article stand with police officers in their line of duty. Much the opposite. I firmly believe that everyone on this planet deserves redemption, but that the victims of the abuse should never be the source of that redeeming. I write this article in the hopes it inspires those unaffected — the privileged — to reconsider the notion of prison and police abolition in a new light.
Imagine if the police officers who joined the force specifically to help educate young women how to defend themselves from attackers were only funded, independently, to perform such a task. Imagine if the police officers who wished to only help vulnerable adults find their way back to their families were funded, independently, to perform such a duty. Imagine if the officers who joined only to tackle white supremacist terrorism were funded to perform only that aspect of anti-racism. A focussing of resources and skillsets benefits anyone; the Japanese call it ikigai, that sweet-spot where one is performing their duty to the world, with the skills they possess, with respect, decency, and protection. The police does not offer such a thing, to their communities, or the officers it pretends to protect.
There is no clear answer to what systems could be employed after the inevitable abolition of the police state. As a (trainee) counsellor, however, I must make it clear that our current system is overstretching the potentiality of the officers that work within it. As well as the evidently, purely cruel members of that organised gang we call “the police”, there are individuals who just cannot function when their job is as varied and under-resourced as it is. By training individuals in specific areas that correspond to their beliefs, we can begin to unlearn and undo the damage that policing has wrought. We can become a community again.
We wouldn’t need “fuck the police” tote bags (even if I have already ordered my own[18]) if, rather than utilising an outmoded system of oppression such as the police, we focussed individual energies on helping the communities we come from. These are not new ideas. The British police were invented, historically, as violent crowd control. Community support, and the philosophies therein, can be found in decolonial, indigenous teachings. We are not beholden to systems that cause us harm. We can do better.
Nathan T. Dean is a writer, artist, trainee counsellor, practicing chaos witch, and founder of Ollamh Counselling.
All of these essay are part of an evolving documentation. Ideas the author may have now may shift in the future. This is the lot of the therapist, who must continuously explore their empathy in radical ways as the environment around them shifts. If you find anything in these documents you find offensive, please contact the author at ollamhcounselling@gmail.com. Without discussion, correction, and open discourse, we cannot benefit our clients as effectively as we might.
[1] https://twitter.com/chrisychung/status/1409286514069147652
[2] https://twitter.com/netpol
[3] https://twitter.com/Sanyiikoo_Oromo/status/1370054539508875271
[4] https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-brazil-rio-de-janeiro-crime-health-5b59728164b4b133517c385b38f55865
[5] https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-05-20-uk-spends-millions-training-security-forces-to-control-palestinians-in-west-bank-and-lebanon/
[6] https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1339569548899573761
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmKJqzKqd6g
[8] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/one-bad-apple-spoil-the-barrel-metaphor-phrase
[9] https://www.inquest.org.uk/deaths-in-police-custody
[10] I suggest What Do We Do About The Rapists?, an anarchist pamphlet, as a starting point.
[11] One of the major arguments around police officers having to remain in that system is that they would be unable to support their families if they quit their jobs. There are countless jobs they could do as an alternative — cleaning, fast food, etc — but this is often seen as “beneath” people. This is classism. It is regarded as better to be a victim of a system that makes you cruel, than be morally acceptable but work in a lower paid industry. There is always another way.
[12] https://www.polfed.org/our-work/wellbeing/mental-health/
[13] Especially if some of these tasks — such as drug busts — are becoming decriminalised. Imagine working entirely on stopping the selling of marijuana only to discover it should never have been criminalised to begin with.
[14] https://twitter.com/teslaownersSV/status/1401416050051227654
[15] Or, as the case may be, deporting them to countries they have never visited, but our government calls their home. The abuse of black communities is rife within policing: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/29/osime-brown-deportation-uk-racist-justice-system-autistic-black-jamaica
[16] די ראָזעווע פּאַווע
[17] https://twitter.com/dirozevepave/status/1404812383999217664
[18] https://pinkpeacock.gay/product/tote/
Update
“The British police were invented, historically, to attack the Irish[…]” has been updated to read “The British police were invented, historically, as violent crowd control” as I can’t find the original article specifying the history of England and the Irish. However, this article and this article gives some insight into the history of policing as a form of violence to working class communities.