9.04
Black Lives Matter
I wrote this comic back at the beginning of the summer when protests started here in Portland after the killing of George Floyd. Portland has a long and bad history of police violence. I’ve lived here all of my life, and I can’t remember a time when the city trusted it’s police, or the police hadn’t recently killed someone under extremely dubious circumstances. This summer we saw that protests against police violence, racism and murder were met by police with even more deliberate and brutal violence.
ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) became a popular slogan over the summer. Its a generalization, but I think its a somewhat fair one. Are there good cops? I really hope so. But where are they? Police brutality, bigotry, murder, corruption and misconduct has been a serious problem in America for literally our entire lives. And my parents entire lives. And my grandparents entire lives. This is a problem we’ve had for generations, with no solution. And every attempt to solve the problem, or even address the problem, has been met with hostility by the police. So where are the good cops? If there was ever a time to speak out against all of this, this year was that time. If there was ever a time to stand up and be an example, it was during the grief and anger after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (and so many others). If there was ever a time to quit in disgust and join the protesters, it was this last summer.
Of course, we’ve seen what happens to cops that stand up and try to make a difference. We know that they are often intimidated, ostracized, harassed and fired. We know that cops are pressured to protect their own, and we know that their unions go out of their way to protect officers who should be fired and prosecuted. It seems like the cost of being a good cop is very high. Its hard for me not to admire officers who have stood up to their follow cops. I wish more officers would. I wish they had the support they need to do so without ruining their careers and their lives.
Are all cops bastards? I know a few police officers, and they seem to be nice people. A family friend who is an officer was there for me after my father died. I went on a few dates with a police officer when I was in college. But… I also remember the police officer who knocked me down in the parking lot of the motel I worked at and chipped my tooth after I called 911 for help when I was robbed. I remember the two officers who held me down in the rain on the platform of the train station when I was in high school, just because I couldn’t get my ticket out of my pocket fast enough. I remember the cop who held me at gunpoint at the airport because I “kind of” fit a description. I remember the cop who threatened to come to my home and show me his gun because he didn’t like one of my comics. I have good experience with cops and I have bad experiences. A LOT of Americans ONLY have bad experiences. A lot of Americans are dead because of cops.
Are all cops bastards? All cops chose to be cops. They may have had the best of intentions, but they chose to join an organization that is famous for its brutality, bigotry and corruption. Maybe they thought they could change it from the inside? Maybe they thought they could be a good cop that would make a difference? Maybe they didn’t think much about it at all, and just planned to do their best? Its clear that none of that is working. And has never worked. Its been 20 years. 50 years. 100 years, and cops are still out there killing people, beating people, raping people, harassing people, evicting people, stealing their possessions, burning them alive. Whatever good intentions a person might have when they chose to be a cop, they chose to be part of an institution that does harm daily to the people of their community. And even if they are otherwise a good person who is doing their best to be a good cop, we have to remember that in nearly every case, they have not spoken up. They have, nearly universally, chosen not to stand against police brutality, racism and murder.
Ghost Kiss is a superhero comic. Superheroes aren’t JUST about solving problems with violence, but that’s very often a part of any superhero story. Superheroes also often have relationships with the police. Sometimes as allies, sometimes as antagonists. In Ghost Kiss the police officers of Portland work side by side with the city’s superheroes, and they mostly have a good relationship. I’m willing to present the police in this way, as background characters whose lives and actions aren’t explored or examined in this comic. But I’m unwilling to have one of this comic’s main characters continue to be a police officer without addressing these issues. So Detective Nina Dorsey, Mya’s girlfriend, will no longer be a police officer. She has turned in her badge and will be taking another path in life. She did what I wish more police officers would do; quit and join the protesters in standing against police brutality and racism.
(I’ve always planned to address Ghost Kiss’ status as an agent of the NSA. I purposely chose the NSA as the government institution that manages superheroes, and I plan to bring that complicated and undesirable relationship into the comic eventually)
The last few times a Ghost Kiss story has been vaguely political I got a lot of angry responses. I’m STILL getting angry messages over the 2017 GK story inspired by the” Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville where a Right Wing terrorist ran over peaceful protesters with a car, killing one. I STILL get messages about that, over 3 years later. So let me promise you, if you are angry about this comic I don’t want to hear from you. Keep it to yourself. I’m not interested.
– Jake
Thank you!
Very fitting
It’s really sad how, despite the previous positive portrayal of the police in this comic, the real life police just had to go and do something disgusting again 🙁
I know. I want RL police to live up to great fictional cops.
Personally I don’t think defunding the police is the answer. They need to put more money into weeding out the bad ones and holding them accountable.
There’s still good people in law enforcement who don’t need another reason to give up on us.
I think we need that too. Defunding doesn’t mean no funding at all. It means that police get the money they need to do their job, but the things that aren’t their job (which is like 50% or more of what they’re asked to do) get done by other people. Nearly everything that has to do with mental health, domestic disputes, drug charges, traffic and parking, homelessness, accidents (both traffic and otherwise) shouldn’t be handled by police. Probably most non-violent crimes too. Let police deal with violent crime, and reduce their numbers and funding to reflect that. And make sure that they have teh training and support they need. Fund other services to deal with the rest.
“Al cops are bastards” is certainly a generalization. I know police who I think are good people. But they certainly exist within a system where they see other cops do awful things nearly every day. In some cases they don’t do anything about it at all. In some cases they want to but can’t. And not every cop can afford to just walk away from a clearly broken and dangerous system in protest. So its a tough situation.
The good news is, things really have gotten better. Just to give one example, in 1971, NYPD officers shot 314 people, with 93 fatalities. In 2020, they shot 14, with 9 fatalities. I’d call that a huge improvement. If you’ve read any of my previous comments, you know I think there’s still a hell of a lot of work to do. But I think it’s also important to recognize improvements, as well, if only because it makes it easier not to give in to despair.
As for Nina quitting, I think that’s for the best. I found her and Mya’s mingling of professional and personal relationships pretty problematic from the start.
I am a little curious about the reasoning of having the NSA work with sanctioned supers. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since the NSA’s (official) remit is foreign intelligence. They’re not a law enforcement agency, and they’re really not supposed to have any domestic role at all. I think the FBI would make a lot more sense, since their official mission does include domestic law enforcement. As far as examining a deeply problematic government agency, they would work every bit as well. After all, the FBI and its forerunners had been violating civil rights and engaging in a variety of legally and ethically dubious behavior for decades before the NSA was even founded. And despite supposed reforms, their record hasn’t gotten much better.
At the time the NSA was in the news for a whole bunch of stuff, including overstepping their mandate. I thought putting the NSA in charge of America’s superhero program would be an opportunity for some interesting commentary. But I guess I never really got around to it.