hey police

Hey, why did you pick me out again on the train from Basel to Bern? Hey, why do I get angry when I see you instead of the feeling of security you promise?

Hey, why do I want to walk faster when I see you and why do I prepare myself for unpleasant discussions when you show up? Hey, don't grab me so roughly! Hey, police, I'm watching you closely and I see how you're treating that person over there. Hey, why are you reproducing racist narratives? Why can you take people's lives without consequences? Why are you above the law, which you so incompetently and pervasively impose on civilians? Do you even know what you are? Hey, police, why do you actually exist and why haven't we abolished you long ago?

I already know some of the answers to these questions, but one still remains unanswered. When will you finally be history? As Vanessa E. Thompson puts it so beautifully in an interview with the WOZ: “police violence is not a contradiction in terms.” I am against my tax money being used to fund a corpus that is more of a danger to people than anything else.

 “Abuse of authority and police arbitrariness, right-wing tendencies and racial profiling do not only exist in the USA, but also in Switzerland. Anyone who is surprised by this has the privilege of belonging to the supposed majority society that doesn't have to be afraid of police violence,” is how Natalia Widla, journalist for ‘das Lamm’, aptly describes it. But if the only reason for the existence of the police that we are led to believe does not correspond to reality at all, what else do you exist for?

I want the money that I have spent hours working for to be used to finance or support structures that expose the existence of the police as superfluous. It cannot be that we are still surprised when yet another POC dies during police contact or in police custody, when we look the other way at the whole development and exercise of police violence that does not take a fatal end. But the police is not where the violence begins. It is also not only the manifestation of racism in laws (especially migrant laws), but also of the lack of laws, that legitimizes and protects the police in exercising unjust actions. It is our society that collectively doesn’t call out on laws or the lack of laws and injustice, even when pointed out. I want my money back!

Violence is a continuum. Even something as devastating as the killing of a POC by the police shares the same basis as being identity checked more often because of your appearance.

I know it's too early to suggest a today without police in a society like ours. But maybe a tomorrow.