Comic Strips

Then I will say, just because we are likely to make the same mistakes over and over is not an excuse to stop doing a thing if it helps, and I cannot subscribe to the belief that just because a thing CAN go wrong that it necessarily MUST go wrong. We can manage our world better with better policies and social structures, to abandon something just because it’s been misused is like not using dinner knives anymore because they’re used for stabbings.

Yep. And to make better policies and social structure, we need to understand why it goes wrong. Modern police has been made with mercenaries, soldiers (18/19e centuries), slave hunters (19/20e centuries), gang members paid to terrorize union members, and nazis. Those people were fired for their skills, and taught others cops to do like them. Because it was need by the ruling class to keep the inequality that favor them : to keep slave in slavery, workers wish small wages, or keep away racialize and colonized people from the infrastructure build with loot of other countries.

I'm not saying that cops are evil people. Some cops know that kind of issues and want to be "a lesser evil", others want to be good but will believe in some stuff that give sense to the violence they are making (racial inequity, nationalism, ... ). In the end, a white collar triggering war, or funding war crime would have a better treatment than a hobo stealing.

My point is : the social structure are stronger than individual will. And the police is a social structure. Again, police as an institution with people, a hierarchy, and an history that produce it. The social function "protect everyone against violence" is important, and is not the police we are talking about.