I don’t know about you, but every time a cop pulls up behind me, even when I’m doing absolutely nothing wrong, my whole body floods with panic. Suddenly I’m sweating, are my hands on 10 & 2, did I just run over a pedestrian, was a planted bomb in the boot of my car that I somehow missed. That’s not safety.
That’s cognitive dissonance.
We’re told, over and over again, that police are there to protect us. And yet our bodies know better. Our instincts don’t feel protected - they feel hunted. That disconnect is no accident. It’s baked into the system.
What They Say vs. What They Do
We’ve all been sold the narrative that police are here to stop murderers, to stop domestic violence, to make sure our communities are safe. And if you ask anyone, left, right, whatever, they’ll agree that’s what we want. Nobody wants unsolved murders. Nobody wants rape kits collecting dust in evidence rooms. Nobody wants drunk drivers mowing people down or children being abused or neglected.
But let’s look at what actually happens.
If a murder isn’t solved in the first six months, the odds of it ever being solved drop off a cliff. And yet unsolved murders stack up year after year. Rape kits sit untested in labs for decades. Meanwhile, my local police department has shiny new off-road toys, racks up overtime babysitting construction sites, sets up speed traps on the freeway, and rushes to scrub graffiti off politicians’ buildings.
How does any of that make us safe?
It doesn’t. It makes capital safe. It makes property safe. It keeps the gears turning for those who already hold the power and the money.
The Gaslighting
Here’s where the gaslighting comes in. From the time we’re kids, we’re told police equal safety. Cartoons, after-school specials, PR campaigns, they all hammer the same message: cops are the good guys.
But our lived experience doesn’t match. Our lived experience is once you see those flashing lights behind you and your heart drops through your stomach. You hear a story about a rape kit backlog while your local cops are parading around in military gear. You notice who gets stopped at the park, who gets harassed outside the liquor store, who gets tackled for stealing lipstick.
We’re told this is protection. We’re told this is safety. And when we feel fear instead of safety, we’re told that’s our fault. That’s gaslighting on a cultural scale.
“To Protect and Serve” Was Always PR
The motto “To Protect and to Serve” sounds like a timeless promise. But it’s not. LAPD invented it in 1955 after holding a contest at the police academy. In 1963, the city council made it official and plastered it on patrol cars. Other departments copied it. It looks good on the side of a cruiser.
Here’s the kicker, in court after court, it’s been made clear the motto isn’t binding. Police don’t have a constitutional mandate to protect individual people. Warren v. District of Columbia (1981): police didn’t have a duty to protect women under attack in their own home. DeShaney v. Winnebago (1989): the state wasn’t responsible for failing to stop a father from abusing his child. The courts have been very clear that the police don’t owe you protection. The slogan is marketing, not a contract.
Why This Matters
Because we actually do agree on what we want. As communities, we want fewer murders. We want fewer assaults. We want people not to be abused. We want safety, plain and simple.
So why are billions of dollars poured into an institution that doesn’t deliver those outcomes? Why are there endless resources for toys, tickets, PR campaigns, and recruitment but precious little for cold cases and rape kits? In 2024 alone, police killed at least 1,365 people, the deadliest year on record for law enforcement violence. At the same time, researchers estimate there are still 200,000–400,000 untested sexual assault kits in the U.S. even after decades of “backlog reduction” efforts. States together have allocated about $231 million—funding tests for around 156,000 kits, while just one city’s police department runs on nearly $1.9 billion a year. Federal studies show up to 50% of kits produce CODIS profiles, and more than half of those lead to DNA hits. But instead of funding that, we fund armored cars, drones, and flashy side-by-sides.
The Myth of Accountability
If you’re wondering about accountability inside the institution itself, it’s not much better. What do you mean you’re assigning Internal Affairs to investigate? That’s the police investigating the police, who nearly always conclude the police did nothing wrong. That’s not accountability. That’s fucking theater.
And even when there is evidence of misconduct, the system has built-in shields. Qualified immunity makes it nearly impossible to hold officers personally liable unless their misconduct exactly matches a prior case. Translation: unless there’s already a precedent saying “this specific thing is unconstitutional,” they walk. Add to that the court rulings saying police have no legal duty to protect, and what are we left with? A structure that fails to protect us, hides from accountability, and still demands more funding in the name of “safety.”
Meanwhile, the rape kits sit untested, cold cases stack up, and repeat offenders stay on the streets. The crimes escalate. And the institution keeps looking the other way.
Violence Everywhere, But Not Here
And while all of this plays out at home, the same story runs globally. We’re told “violence is never the answer” while violence is normalized everywhere else, bombs dropping in Gaza, endless war in Ukraine, uprisings crushed in the Congo, revolutions drowned in blood across the globe. Violence is acceptable when it’s state-sanctioned, when it protects power. But when people resist that same violence, suddenly we’re told to stay peaceful, to play nice.
The contradiction is staggering.
What Defund and Abolish Really Mean
This is where phrases like “defund the police” or “abolish the police” get so misunderstood. People hear them and imagine chaos. But what we’re actually saying is look at the evidence. Look at your own body when a cop pulls in behind you. Look at the cold cases, the untested kits, the unsolved harm.
We don’t need more police to feel safe. We need actual safety. We need resources going where they matter. We need transparency about where the billions are going. We need to stop pretending the gaslighting is real.
It’s not about wanting more chaos. It’s about wanting the opposite. It’s about saying enough with the lie.
Fuck The Police
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