Let’s talk about why we can’t tolerate even one “bad apple” cop. To explain the point, let’s use an analogy that we’re all familiar with. If you’re like me, all it takes is a splitting headache to ruin your day. I’ve had one knock me out of commission for the entire day. Imagine grabbing some medicine out of your cabinet for a crushing headache and you see this warning on the label in bold red letters:
WARNING: ONE IN ONE THOUSAND PILLS MAY BE FATAL. USE AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.
Even with a splitting headache, would you take that chance? I definitely wouldn’t! What if this pill is the fatal one? What if the fatal one is in the bottle? Even though the odds are 1/1000, I can’t take that chance. Bad apples in the police work the same way.
As a Black person, I will have to encounter the police at some point. The “bad apple” officers are probably fatal. But I can’t know which officers are which. There’s no way to truly know which officer will do their job the right way or will take out their frustrations on my head. For this reason, we can’t tolerate even a few bad apples in police departments. These national protests are the outcome of rampant bad apples and hostility to purging them from the bunch.
Let me be clear. We need to get rid of the bad apples and create strict protocols that all but eliminate future bad apples. We need to minimize the destruction a bad apple can cause. We also need national policies that encourage good cops to report the bad apples. But make no mistake. If we can’t get rid of the bad apples, it’s time we consider getting rid of the police as we know them today. We will have to replace the police with a fully accountable entity that respects the communities it should serve, an entity that doesn’t abuse their monopoly on state violence. We can’t tolerate even one bad apple.