However, what these proposals often forget is that the only way to truly de-militarize an occupying force is to remove them altogether. Our conversation about de-militarizing the police needs to become a conversation about abolishing the police.

At least 400 people a year – though likely a lot more – are killed by police, and plenty beyond that face violence that is life-threatening, even if not life-ending. Certainly, part of the problem has to do with particular cops who are especially bad, and part of it has to do with a toxic culture of police solidarity. More fundamentally, though, police lawlessness is just the inevitable result of the structural factors at play.

 Police are different from the rest of us in that they're officially placed above the law. There are certain things that they can do that ordinary citizens can't, and when they do things that even they're not supposed to do, they're given a lot of leeway.