This week I was at an event hosted by COC Eindhoven (queer org) and SP Eindhoven (socialist party), about queerness and neurodivergence.
Now there was one police officer from Roze in Blauw (queer police org) in his uniform in the audience, which not everyone was super comfortable with, and since I am definitely on the open end towards the police actually had a conversation with him afterwards where he basically confirmed what I had already suspected:
Coming with one (1) officer in full uniform is a very deliberate decision to be clear that they are police, that they do want the contact with the community, and show the community that they are there for us and that they want to stand on our side and protect us, but that they at the same time don’t want to “take over” the event by being there with multiple people.
And some of you may hate more saying this, but this, is exactly what genuinely good police work looks like and what we want as leftists: The by far biggest issue with cops in most places (especially in Trumpistan) is that they only hang out among themselves and have no contact with the communities that they are supposedly protecting. This was an example of the polar opposite of that.
And since I expect that some people are going to be unhappy that he came in full uniform, including his firearm, I will argue that this is in some ways the most important part of them all: It means that he did not come as a private person, or someone sneaking in, but instead in the open, in his official capacity, making it unambiguous that this wasn’t one officer that happened to be the one good one, but rather that he was official representative of the police and that they any attack on this community would be something that would put you into conflict with the police.
Does that mean, that the Dutch police is perfect? Hell, no, it doesn’t! And when I brought that up with said officer that I have second very credible knowledge of pretty blatant racism (me, having a very Dutch-looking skin color, never having experienced any myself, but the important point is that I can listen to other people’s experiences), said officer readily acknowledged that there is a problem and that this is also something where he is trying to improve things.
But we should never make the mistake of measuring against perfection. Things come in shades of gray and sometimes shit happens. It is upon us as lefties to be able to acknowledge when someone is clearly trying to do the right thing and to improve and to not reflexively fall into the habit of only ever criticizing but never acknowledging good things.
I believe it was Contrapoints who once said that substantial parts of “the left don’t want power, they want to criticize power”. But that is now how you get good things and a trap that we need to avoid falling into. The problem isn’t power, the problem is that it is in the hands of the enemy and not in the hands of people who want a better world.
Anyways, I expressed towards said officer that, while I knew that I was definitely not speaking for everyone, but only for myself, I actually appreciated his presence and what Roze in Blauw does. And it seemed to make him very happy to hear that, probably because so few people in our community ever tell them that.
And this is where we need to look at ourselves and what we are doing: Imagine you joined the police, because you truly care about keeping your communities safe and protecting vulnerable people. You are probably met with mostly apathy, and in some cases hostility from your colleagues, but you push for improvements regardless and actually manage to do so in places. But then the people whom you did this for still turn around you, reliably post the time 12 minutes past 1 PM, and basically make it clear that they would spit in your face if they could get away with it. Even from those who are less hostile, you never hear a positive word of encouragement. On the other side of the isle you see your nazi-adjacent colleagues being treated in very friendly manners by nazis and fascists.
This situation is one of the things that makes improvement so hard: Police officers are people to, and people want to be liked and if the only place that they can get that is from the right, your making it extremely tough for them to not go there. And I know that some of you will now bring out the talking points about how these things are “the bare minimum”, “not enough”, or that they shouldn’t get “praise for acting like normal people” and things like that. To you I have to say: This is not a productive way of thinking, it ignores how humans work, and tends to come most commonly from people who I can’t help but feel in many instances follow common narratives more than having their own thoughts… Most notably, it’s not about “praising basic human decency”, but about being nice, or at the very least not hostile to people that are genuinely trying to help you.
NASA famously learned that punishing people for mistakes was not a useful way to reduce bugs and errors, but that making it clear that mistakes were a normal part of the process and that the only thing you had to do if you made one was to fix it yourself (to ensure you understood it), massively reduced overal mistakes. I firmly believe that being nice to police officers, even if they are imperfect, is a similar situation where the overal outcome will be much better than punishing them with hostility. In part because it will make them take us more seriously when we point out actual problems.
Also, one more thing I like about the police here is that the uniforms are very much focused on high visibility, which makes the substantially less intimidating in my view, because it’s not some pseudo military nonsense. I am genuinely a big fan of that, and seeing the all-black police in Luxembourg was honestly very off-putting after that.
