We try to summarize the keys to our vision in an article from eight years ago (Gara, 16-06-2013), and today we keep them, but on this occasion we believe that we want to talk about a subject that leads many people, even those who want to radically transform reality, to mimic the debate, because when addressing the issue of the Police they seem to forget that need to change the root, and base the debate on possible models of Police. Joseba Alvarez summarized it perfectly recently in this same medium (ARGIA, 08-03-2021): “The problem is not the police, the problem is the system. In this system there is no other model of Police.”

It is not a slow issue: if we address potential policing models, albeit indirectly, we recognise the inevitable need for the police. And this does not happen to us when we talk about the military, even if the military and the police are two sides of the same coin: the monopoly of “legal violence” against the people, outside the borders, in our streets and squares. And around the monopoly of this “legal violence” some of the basic issues of this false debate about police models are addressed: who, for what and against whom was created by the police, and then develop the apparatus. Who, for what and against whom did he give them that monopoly of violence? How, who and from what ideological and organizational parameters are formed to carry out this violence? Who arms and provides all kinds of repressive resources and control methods? Why has policemen been given command rank? Who cares about the police interests and the abuses committed in secret?... This is the situation in which, despite the apparent and the games of words, governs who governs. In the words of Amadeu Recasens, former director of the School of Police of Catalonia, the police apparatus “is one of the instruments of control of the main classes at a given time (always based on economic, historical, social reasons…). And with this they impose their economic power and their way of governing the collectivity dependent on their area of power.”

For the rest, as we pointed out eight years ago, we maintain our own: obviously, there are other possibilities for dealing with security. But not from citizen security, which is the basis of all police, but from human security (and within it integral health, respect and conservation of nature, the basic resources for a dignified life, non-discrimination based on sex, race, ideology or belief…). More and more current experiences are supporting other ways of working on the security of populations in initiatives arising from the auzolan (especially in some indigenous communities in Latin America, where we also have a lot to learn! ), giving imaginative and sensible answers to sexist violence, to the harassment of speculative and expoliting economic interests or to such serious issues as organised mafia crime. Those are the lessons learned and the debates that need to be tackled to strengthen the Police’s commitment to abolition.

For decades, the popular songwriter has also answered these questions through songs like Vomit Security Forces or He was a man of La Polla. The same answer has been given for years with the motto ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) on walls, t-shirts, patats and posters. Now the City of Vitoria-Gasteiz wants to criminalize by saying the obvious in a local adaptation (All Smurfs Are Bastard): All the police, including the smurfs, are zarzzas or bastartas – eutsi, we are all Gargamel – because the Spanish Royal Academy of Language itself (RAE) defines it as: “Anyone who has degenerated or abandoned the origin or nature”. In this case from the village. It is important not to forget this, because with these answers we will already know what can be expected of any Police, regardless of the model and social class of those who make up it, who vote.