Settler Colonial Governance and the Impossibility of a “Good Cop”

Abstract

Most of my undergraduate students are angered by current and historical events that highlight problems with American policing. They believe in the police but decry the bad actors that delegitimize the institution. In turn, many of my students feel compelled to do something about it and thus aspire to be police officers, for they believe “good cops” can/will transform the police. In this chapter, I argue against this hegemonic idea by framing the police as a mechanism of settler colonial governance and asserting that the police officer’s primary role is to animate the state. With this in mind, I call into question the notion that individual cops, “good” or otherwise, are afforded the agency required to effect transformative change that is indexed toward solving the root problems with the police in the United States. This chapter argues that to be a police officer, one must inhabit the genocidal power of the settler colonial state and thus occupy an inhuman position. The chapter concludes by asserting that a truly free society would not have more “good cops,” it would have sociopolitical and economic conditions under which cops are not necessary.