You seem to know a lot about inner group dynamics of an institution that you dislike. Where do you got your informations? Especially that the problems are increasing?
And furthermore, for a mindplay, lets just assume, you are right.
How would the “ACAB” be fitting in there? What is your intended effect of saying it out loud or posting it online? (Besides of beeing … edgy(?))
Yes, because my immediate surroundings used to be chock full of cops. My uncle and aunt as well as my neighbors and best friends parents growing up all were or still are Polizei, I had the opportunity to spend much of my time in the household of a criminal investigator and a trainer of the North Rhine Westphalian riot police, I lived next door and visited my cousins in the house of an internal affairs officer and a “normal” police officer. As a kid I had the opportunity to sit in and shoot a water cannon they use to dispere riots and every time there was a party in the cul-de-sac, I got to listen to the cops talk to each other and listened not only to what they said but how they said it, what they argued about and how it changed over the years. I grew up in those group dynamics, I heard the esprit de corps directly from them. And it informed my political leanings to a big degree.
None of them were bad cops, but all of them served a broken system that changed their attitude to the worse. Worse even, when my aunt did her job in the LKA Dezernat internal affairs when the migrant crisis started and there was a noticable step to the right on the side of the Polizei, she got ostracised and (subtly) threatened.
Then of course there are studies and statistics, 2024 had more people shot by the police than every other year since 1999 and illegal police violence is substantially more often directed against leftist, poor people and migrants or asylum seekers.
ACAB is a condemnation of a police system that is in large parts not working correctly and more importantly, suffers from targeted infiltration by the far-right. There are multiple reports of AfD and independent far-right activists calling for their allies to infiltrate the ranks of military and police to use the power of the state to further their political goals and mold the esprit de corps towards a desired anti-democratic bend. We COULD create laws to keep the worst of this in check, but the lobbying by DPolG and various politicans keeps that from happening… and as long as the keepers of the nations violence are not under stricter control and oversight, the entire institution and thus all cops will remain bastards.
Obviously you know a thing or two about german police, so you know that the police forces are federal leaded; so the police from Hamburg can be very diferent to the police from Hessen, or Lower-Saxony etc.
So if you know some people from one federal police, doesent mean you know them all.
Fe: The police from Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony are known for the very liberal and kind way of working, Bavaria and Hamburg on the other hand are known as straight law-and-order cops.
Further more:
I only know 2 people from the police in NRW, one was a socialist, good hearted criminal inspector from Cologne (father of a friend) and the other is an patrol officer from Düsseldorf. The patrol officer is a unpolitical working class guy, but has a good sense for whats good or bad. I know him from Alt Rock Festivals.
2015 and the rising numbers of refugees and the was a severe tests for the democratic values of our society. In every bubble I know (working class, farmers, academics, city folks, town folks, people from migrant families), a lot of people said and did weird stuff, and some got catched by fascist propaganda.
Especially working class, farmers and town folks had in my experience a high amount of fascist and racist views.
A friend of mine is working in a hospital as a nurse. He was facing racism from colleagues against patients on a daily basis. He had to fight a lot, to make his colleagues think about what they are saying.
And then came covid-19, a much more intense test.
Today I witness a more reflected and differentiated view. The bubbles far away from the academic ivory tower are more sensitive for discrimination and fascism or undemocratic behavior.
So if you witnessed a change of view by police officers, it was probably more of general view in the working class - and most police officers are more working class then academica.
2024 a lot of people got killed by police forces in Germany. This is a tragedy. And we have to lower the numbers.
To make a relation between uprising facism inside police forces and people shot by police is at least bold. Especially if you look at the cases in detail.
As far as I know its more of problem of our psychological treatment and a rising number of people in need for psychological/psychiatric help.
Where did you get your informations about illegal police force against leftist, poor people, migrants and refugees / asylum seekers?
I dont know how deep you digged into criminology, but this is a really tricky topic. Its about the Dark and white figures of crimes. If you show me your source, probably I can explain it a little to you.
But still: Illegetimate behavior by police officers, especially unlawfull force, against anybody is a severe problem in police forces. As far as I know its not a big problem in numbers, but as other forms of corruption, it does severe harm to our society and can lead to spirals of violence.
To your last part:
The GDP (the by far major police union) and the BDK are fighting against the afd in the police. Fe. it is not allowed to be part of the afd as an GDP Member since 2021. And contrary to their usually unpolitical public statements, both unions condemn the afd.
https://www.gdp.de/niedersachsen/de/stories/2025/05/2025-05-02-verfassungsschutzentscheidung-zur-afd-muss-ernst-genommen-werdenhttps://www.presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/72365/5696490
And many federal states are trying to make the police force resilent against fascist propaganda. There a democracy-schoolings, fe. by lgbtqi+ police-officers. And the basic training nowadays includes sociology, psychology, criminology, anti-escaltiv trainings etc. to prevent radical views by training them to look through the daily mess of poverty, violence and misery they are facing day to day.
The Dpolg-leaders on the other hand are at least right-wing conservative populstists. In general they are just loud and are playing todays media.
In parts because of them, Polizei Grün (police green) got founded.
https://polizei-gruen.de/
And they try to work on some basic problems of the police, like their error-culture.
So… Are they all still bastards* to you?
Edit:
*furthermore: the insult “bastards” is shit. Please, if you want to insult someone, use something else
The problem is not with individual cops, I know a lot of really good cops, first among them my aunt who always fought to keep the institution responsible and upright by investigating cases of police misconduct and for that she was threatened and ostracised.
The problem is that the institution politically is largely opposed to checks and regulations regarding their members. Prosecutors drop charges of police violence if any investigation takes place at all (only 2% will arrive at a charge). And if it comes to a trial, policemen form the ol’ “Wall Of Silence” (also the case of Oury Jalloh)
Amnesty International says:
“Leider gibt es viele Einzelfälle, bei denen die Ermittlungen […] unbefriedigend bleiben”
At what point do “many individual cases” stop being individual cases?
Slesvig and Lower Saxony being model police forces doesn’t take away the problems with hamburgian, saxon, north rhine westphalian, hessian, baden wurtembergian and bavarian forces.
The GDP fighting fascism in the police is a good thing, but the unions resisting the establishment of independent investigators is not.
Other countries have a much more transparent handling of their cases of police violence and our german police institutions are lobbying hard to keep those regulations away in our country.
This opposition to control and regulation is a HUGE problem, especially when the people holding the states monopoly on violence are forming an esprit de corps that prevents individual good cops from blowing the whistle on bad behaviors.
Believe me, im in to the thematic and the police as a whole needs reformation, especially the error-culture.
But still: Is “ACAB” the right answer to this problems?
You seem to know a lot about inner group dynamics of an institution that you dislike. Where do you got your informations? Especially that the problems are increasing?
And furthermore, for a mindplay, lets just assume, you are right. How would the “ACAB” be fitting in there? What is your intended effect of saying it out loud or posting it online? (Besides of beeing … edgy(?))
Yes, because my immediate surroundings used to be chock full of cops. My uncle and aunt as well as my neighbors and best friends parents growing up all were or still are Polizei, I had the opportunity to spend much of my time in the household of a criminal investigator and a trainer of the North Rhine Westphalian riot police, I lived next door and visited my cousins in the house of an internal affairs officer and a “normal” police officer. As a kid I had the opportunity to sit in and shoot a water cannon they use to dispere riots and every time there was a party in the cul-de-sac, I got to listen to the cops talk to each other and listened not only to what they said but how they said it, what they argued about and how it changed over the years. I grew up in those group dynamics, I heard the esprit de corps directly from them. And it informed my political leanings to a big degree.
None of them were bad cops, but all of them served a broken system that changed their attitude to the worse. Worse even, when my aunt did her job in the LKA Dezernat internal affairs when the migrant crisis started and there was a noticable step to the right on the side of the Polizei, she got ostracised and (subtly) threatened.
Then of course there are studies and statistics, 2024 had more people shot by the police than every other year since 1999 and illegal police violence is substantially more often directed against leftist, poor people and migrants or asylum seekers.
ACAB is a condemnation of a police system that is in large parts not working correctly and more importantly, suffers from targeted infiltration by the far-right. There are multiple reports of AfD and independent far-right activists calling for their allies to infiltrate the ranks of military and police to use the power of the state to further their political goals and mold the esprit de corps towards a desired anti-democratic bend. We COULD create laws to keep the worst of this in check, but the lobbying by DPolG and various politicans keeps that from happening… and as long as the keepers of the nations violence are not under stricter control and oversight, the entire institution and thus all cops will remain bastards.
Obviously you know a thing or two about german police, so you know that the police forces are federal leaded; so the police from Hamburg can be very diferent to the police from Hessen, or Lower-Saxony etc. So if you know some people from one federal police, doesent mean you know them all. Fe: The police from Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony are known for the very liberal and kind way of working, Bavaria and Hamburg on the other hand are known as straight law-and-order cops. Further more: I only know 2 people from the police in NRW, one was a socialist, good hearted criminal inspector from Cologne (father of a friend) and the other is an patrol officer from Düsseldorf. The patrol officer is a unpolitical working class guy, but has a good sense for whats good or bad. I know him from Alt Rock Festivals.
2015 and the rising numbers of refugees and the was a severe tests for the democratic values of our society. In every bubble I know (working class, farmers, academics, city folks, town folks, people from migrant families), a lot of people said and did weird stuff, and some got catched by fascist propaganda. Especially working class, farmers and town folks had in my experience a high amount of fascist and racist views. A friend of mine is working in a hospital as a nurse. He was facing racism from colleagues against patients on a daily basis. He had to fight a lot, to make his colleagues think about what they are saying. And then came covid-19, a much more intense test. Today I witness a more reflected and differentiated view. The bubbles far away from the academic ivory tower are more sensitive for discrimination and fascism or undemocratic behavior. So if you witnessed a change of view by police officers, it was probably more of general view in the working class - and most police officers are more working class then academica.
2024 a lot of people got killed by police forces in Germany. This is a tragedy. And we have to lower the numbers. To make a relation between uprising facism inside police forces and people shot by police is at least bold. Especially if you look at the cases in detail. As far as I know its more of problem of our psychological treatment and a rising number of people in need for psychological/psychiatric help.
Where did you get your informations about illegal police force against leftist, poor people, migrants and refugees / asylum seekers? I dont know how deep you digged into criminology, but this is a really tricky topic. Its about the Dark and white figures of crimes. If you show me your source, probably I can explain it a little to you. But still: Illegetimate behavior by police officers, especially unlawfull force, against anybody is a severe problem in police forces. As far as I know its not a big problem in numbers, but as other forms of corruption, it does severe harm to our society and can lead to spirals of violence.
To your last part: The GDP (the by far major police union) and the BDK are fighting against the afd in the police. Fe. it is not allowed to be part of the afd as an GDP Member since 2021. And contrary to their usually unpolitical public statements, both unions condemn the afd. https://www.gdp.de/niedersachsen/de/stories/2025/05/2025-05-02-verfassungsschutzentscheidung-zur-afd-muss-ernst-genommen-werden https://www.presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/72365/5696490 And many federal states are trying to make the police force resilent against fascist propaganda. There a democracy-schoolings, fe. by lgbtqi+ police-officers. And the basic training nowadays includes sociology, psychology, criminology, anti-escaltiv trainings etc. to prevent radical views by training them to look through the daily mess of poverty, violence and misery they are facing day to day.
The Dpolg-leaders on the other hand are at least right-wing conservative populstists. In general they are just loud and are playing todays media. In parts because of them, Polizei Grün (police green) got founded. https://polizei-gruen.de/ And they try to work on some basic problems of the police, like their error-culture.
So… Are they all still bastards* to you?
Edit: *furthermore: the insult “bastards” is shit. Please, if you want to insult someone, use something else
The problem is not with individual cops, I know a lot of really good cops, first among them my aunt who always fought to keep the institution responsible and upright by investigating cases of police misconduct and for that she was threatened and ostracised.
The problem is that the institution politically is largely opposed to checks and regulations regarding their members. Prosecutors drop charges of police violence if any investigation takes place at all (only 2% will arrive at a charge). And if it comes to a trial, policemen form the ol’ “Wall Of Silence” (also the case of Oury Jalloh)
Amnesty International says:
At what point do “many individual cases” stop being individual cases?
Slesvig and Lower Saxony being model police forces doesn’t take away the problems with hamburgian, saxon, north rhine westphalian, hessian, baden wurtembergian and bavarian forces.
The GDP fighting fascism in the police is a good thing, but the unions resisting the establishment of independent investigators is not.
Other countries have a much more transparent handling of their cases of police violence and our german police institutions are lobbying hard to keep those regulations away in our country.
This opposition to control and regulation is a HUGE problem, especially when the people holding the states monopoly on violence are forming an esprit de corps that prevents individual good cops from blowing the whistle on bad behaviors.
I would urge you to look into the KivAPol research project: https://kviapol.uni-frankfurt.de/
Believe me, im in to the thematic and the police as a whole needs reformation, especially the error-culture. But still: Is “ACAB” the right answer to this problems?