"To protect and serve", my ass. Fuck the police! The government in this country does nothing to actually fight crime, that is, to analyze crime patterns, try to find out the causes of crime and suggest what socio-economic conditions should be implemented to fight things which are shown to be the cause of crime. For example, we know that unemployment and poverty are the most reliable predictors of crime, but does the government do anything to try to reduce unemployment and poverty? Do they even acknowledge the link between fighting crime and improving socio-economic conditions? No, they don't care about preventing crime, just punishing crime (as well as various non-violent, harmless acts). What do we do with all the poor unemployed criminals? We send them to a shithole with other criminals, where they are then demoralized, abused, raped, beaten up, unloved, and taught how to commit crimes before being released back into society, as if that didn't just make things a lot worse for his criminal potential. As for organized crime, our policemen, by enforcing anti-drug laws, are just handing one of the biggest markets over to criminal organizations. They have some delusion that society will some day not have any drug market, as if someday the demand is going to dry up through eradication of all drugs everywhere, yet the War on Drugs has made NO progress towards this goal since it started; drug use has actually substantially increased, while prices have simultaneously risen. This means any violent organization, from the gangs on the streets of LA to the CIA, has an easy way to make huge untaxed fortunes for whatever violent crime they want to fund, and they don't have to account for where the money came from to anybody.

The only legitimate purpose of the police is to prevent violent crime, and even that could easily be accomplished by the organized citizens of any community in an autonomous and decentralized fashion, rather than having the government running our lives with its monopoly on setting the rules and using violence. And even as far as violent crime goes, the police tend to propagate it more than they prevent it, through various means like giving the drug and prostitution markets to violent criminals, providing the example that violence against non-violent people is justified, sending criminals to universities of crime (prisons), and reinforcing trends of poverty and unemployment especially among people of color (it's hard to get a job after you've been to jail for drugs, or if you don't have a place to live because the police took down your squatter camp). Abolish the police system!