Because ACAB is a dumb, reductive, poorly thought out slogan; and people that are dumb enough to spray paint on random property completely unrelated to the police aren’t people I’m going to listen to. And I’m certainly not alone in that. There are much better examples out there of the dark reality of policing, that’s a child’s tantrum.
> Because ACAB is a dumb, reductive, poorly thought out slogan;
It's not though.
I mean “All cops are made bad independent of their personal ethics by the structural defects of the system of policing” is both more precise and more accurate, but it really doesn’t work as a slogan.
It is though, because it doesn’t at all communicate that message to most people who aren’t already inculcated into that line of thinking. To a large portion of Americans, it just sounds like a personal attack on people doing a necessary job. And you can say “well they need to educate themselves” or whatever, but if you have to say that then it’s a bad slogan.
It is overly reductive, but one point that it succinctly highlights is that the well behaving community driven and collaborative police are accomplices to sheltering the more dangerous ones. And that the incentives to do that can be modified.
Yes, but a huge amount of people don’t jump to that. They jump to “I have a friend/neighbor who’s a cop and their not a bastard, so you’re wrong”. And those are people you need to win over.
