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TOTW: Calling the Cops

For cops, please dial extension 1312

Recently I was having a conversation with a non-anarchist friend who is white and female-identifying* she told me about a situation she found herself in where she considered calling the cops. She was alone alone and was threatened by a person of color who came at her in an explicitly threatening way. I responded with some boiler plate questions and anarchist hostility to the idea of calling the cops at all. Though she isn’t an anarchist, she hates the cops as much as I, or most anarchists I know do, maybe more. She understands the role cops play in society, and especially in relation to race, but found herself in a moment where, had things escalated, that might’ve been her recourse. As you might assume, the conversation didn’t go well.

Happily, she didn’t, and is fine, but she asked me “what do I do? If calling the cops is off the table, if this happens again and things go the other way?”

This conversation made me think about a different situation in which someone I know was threatened with a fire arm by a former intimate partner, and did get the cops, and the courts, and all of the bullshit state apparatus involved to keep her safe. I have no doubt that if she hadn’t made the choices she made, she would be dead. I don’t like that there were cops and all that, but I do like that she is still alive.

For myself, I know the answer, I don’t call the cops. To be frank, when posed with this question by most people, I am tempted to quote Crass (“What if I told you to fuck off?”), or I suggest they read Peter Gelderloos’ book Anarchy Works, but this recent conversation with someone I know has made me revisit the most common “gotcha” question anarchists are asked, but in a different context. Thinking about these issues, especially in the context of someone who shares most of my opinions of the cops and the state, coupled with the past experiences of other people I know where that truly did seem like the best option, got me thinking about how we engage with state apparatus in a world that is largely not the one we want to live in, as opposed to thinking about it in some sort of theoretical anarchist future, and, for someone else who finds themselves in a situation that I am not a part of, I found myself unsure of how to respond, given that there are numerous ways I do engage with the state, given, the cops are one of the most openly repressive faces of the state, but there are a thousand ways we interact all the time with cops who maybe don’t have badges and guns, but wield state power in more nuanced ways.

We do not live in the world we want; we live in this one. My friend would happily live in that other mythic world, but she doesn’t, I don’t, none of us does, and outside of tiny islands we create in the here and now it is unlikely to be that world anytime soon, if ever. I know that Anews is probably the worst place to ask a question like this (shout out to the troll army!), but I am curious, what are your answers? Because in the moment, given the specific situation my friend found herself in, I didn’t really have one. The hot takes include self-defense classes and arming ourselves. This feels like a partial answer, at most. Some might suggest retreating into insular circles that don’t, or more realistically, minimally engage with people who don’t share our world-view. I know some who would suggest a pragmatic (tactical?) approach of accepting that we live in a world where sometimes friends and comrades can’t do what cops can. None of these feels satisfying to me.

It’s easy to say “don’t call the cops” until we find ourselves in a place where the most feasible option is dialing 999 or 911 as opposed to texting people who might, or might not, respond, at all or in a timely manner. Do we advocate that everyone starts packing heat (I already know this is the most popular answer from the anons)? Do we retreat to our tiny islands and pretend the outside world doesn’t exist? Do we acknowledge that given the terrible world that we move in, sometimes some people do need to call the cops?

*Part of why this TOTW is a bit late is I wanted feedback from the main person I reference. We talked about the shitstorm that posting to anews about calling the cops would be, and about using identifiers that give context to the particular situation being labeled as identity politics, as opposed to understanding how the world works. While I am critical of identity politics, she said something that is worth noting, and is hopefully obvious to sincere readers, but felt like it was worth footnoting, given what I foresee the comment thread looking like. To quote, “walking in the world, as a woman, is political.” Her experience walking through the world is not the same as mine, and as an anarchist I understand both the ideas of “never call the cops” and “stay alive", and I honestly don't believe this is about identity politics so much as it is about engaging with the world we live in.