The recent death of George Floyd by now-fired and arrested police officer Derek Chauvin has sparked a much-needed revolt against the blatant racism of the American police force and the country in general. In response to his death, a popular hashtag, ACAB, has been circulating on social media, which stands for All Cops Are Bastards. Many people are offended by this, complaining that "not ALL cops are bad," but those who are offended are missing the point. The keyword in the phrase is "bastard", for which the definition according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is "of falsified or erroneously attributed origin, irregular, inferior, or of questionable origin." In other words, a bastard is something that is corrupt. And that is unquestionable - the modern police grew from corrupt and racist roots in the 1800s, both in the South and the North.

In the south, policing grew from slave patrols in slave-owning states which were made up of white volunteers who took it upon themselves enforce laws related to slavery; this included locating and returning enslaved people who had escaped, crushing uprisings led by enslaved people and punishing enslaved workers found or believed to have violated plantation rules. Slave patrols had the right to forcefully enter anyone's homes based on the suspicion that they were sheltering escaped slaves.

In the north, the precursors to modern law enforcement were centralized municipal police departments that began to form in the early 1800s, beginning in Boston and appearing in New York City, Albany, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities. This is the most accepted narrative on the history of the modern police. However, these police forces were also overwhelmingly white, male, had very limited training or standards, and were more focused on quelling "disorder" than stopping crime. According to criminologist Gary Potter, they were instructed to control a "dangerous underclass," which included African Americans, immigrants, and the poor. So while the northern officers were not exactly the "slave patrol," these factors – controlling disorder, lack of adequate police training, lack of nonwhite officers coupled with the southern slave patrol origins – are among the forerunners of modern-day police brutality against African Americans.

After the Civil War, slavery was formally abolished, however, it was soon replaced with Black Codes, which determined when, where, and how, the newly freed slaves could work, how much they would get paid, where they could travel, and where they could live. So while the slave patrol was dissolved, freedmen were still heavily restricted by the government for the next three years.

Then, after the 14th Amendment was ratified, these Black Codes were deemed illegal, but just continued under a new name, the Jim Crow Laws. The Jim Crow Laws aimed at subjugating African Americans and denying their civil rights and were enacted across southern and even some northern states. They mandated separate public spaces for blacks and whites, such as schools, libraries, water fountains, and restaurants. And who was in charge of enforcing these laws? The police, of course. The police targeted black communities under the guise of enforcing the law, which was already racist. Furthermore, neither the police nor judicial system did anything when black people were being murdered by mobs.

Now, what does this sound like? Oh right, exactly what is happening now. Even though Jim Crow Laws are now illegal and no law explicitly discriminates against the black community, de facto racism, discrimination in practice, still exists in our legal systems and enforcement systems. There is absolutely no accountability when it comes to the American police because they cover their crimes by claiming that they are upholding laws. They have been doing this since their inception, both in the north and the south - upholding laws and practices that are racist, which makes the entire system, including everyone in the system, corrupt, thus, ACAB. This refusal to acknowledge their bastardization of liberty has resulted in George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin, and Ahmaud Arbery, just a few names among the thousands of black lives that have died since the days of the slavery. We should not call our enforcers the "police" - they are members of the same slave patrol, just under a different name.