For decades now, it has been held within the social consciousness that the police force as it exists today in the United States is vulnerable to abuse and corruption. From racially motivated killings (Madani & Reiss, 2025), to the abuse of power towards corrupt ends (AP, 2006), there are hundreds of cases of individuals within a position of governmental authority, meant to protect and serve, doing the exact opposite. These abuses have led to the rise of the anti-police movement within the broader left-wing political space, including the common reciting of the phrase "All Cops are Bastards" or ACAB. On an anecdotal level, this hatred of the police has felt near-universal, with friend groups taking it as a given that if you are a leftist, you will be in favor of, at minimum, the defunding of the police, if not the outright abolition of the police as an entity. It is for this reason that I have not written much about the police as an institution on this website, as I have a more nuanced approach that the strongest of critics would find overly permissive. That being said, I do not deny the harm that the institution of the police has caused in the United States, nor that action must be taken to remove the unilateral authority that the police so often have. However, I do believe that to say that the removal of the institution itself (i.e. the removal of an arm of the government that has the capacity to enact violence on citizens, which is the most common criticism of the institution I have seen), is short-sighted, and any act of reform or revolution must consider the value that a defensive force has towards those in danger of violence between individual citizens. As such, I will be creating a hypothetical model under which the police could work within my own utopia, and through it, I will describe the function the police should approach in the real world. Ultimately, I will argue that the police as it exists in the real world is far too powerful, with far too few limiting factors upon their authority, but this does not mean that state-sanctioned violence should not exist in some (albeit limited) form.
In our unfortunate reality, the police are often expected to perform tasks that they are not trained in, placed in situations where erratic individuals would be best served by psychologists, social workers, and counselors, rather than armed individuals who are trained to protect themselves and others using violence. This often leads to people being unjustly killed because of mental health crises, even when these people often pose no true threat to anyone other than themselves (and even in situations where they do pose a threat, they could likely have been stabilized by a trained mental health worker where a police officer is unequipped). Thus, in these situations, it makes little sense to rely on a force of people expected to become skilled in a wide range of potentially contradictory skills (i.e. combat, de-escalation, threat assessment, acting in a crisis, etc.), all under often less time than any individual would have become skilled in just one of those areas. It's no wonder that so many police officers end up killing innocent people when they are expected to wear so many hats, all with the knowledge that in any situation, their life may be in danger. As a result, my hypothetical police would not be expected to perform tasks that do not require lethal opposition, and instead, different branches of various health and safety departments would be created with the express purpose of handling these issues. This would, invariably, lead to the reduction in size and scope of the police department, placing me in the "defund" camp in a practical sense, but I have particular ideas in mind as to where the funds should be allocated, that being towards areas of harm reduction rather than defensive response. Instead of sending in armed police to respond to a domestic dispute, a social worker would be sent instead. If there is indication that the social worker would be in danger, a single officer might accompany the social worker to act as protection, but the key is that the primary interface with the dispute is the mental health worker, not the police officer. Instead, the police officer's sole duty and focus in training is threat assessment and defense, allowing for great skill and specialization within these areas, rather than diffusing skill across a wider range of abilities that no single individual should be expected to achieve without a doctorate-level of personal investment.
A social worker cannot safely respond to a mass shooting in progress. In these types of situations, a private citizen without training in threat assessment and defense is putting both themselves and others at considerable risk when attempting to act against a situation with immediate violence. As such, abolishing the police force and leaving only a combination of mental health workers to account for all possible circumstances is short-sighted, as if someone is performing active violence, and people's lives are at active risk, an unarmed officer of the government will not be sufficient to protect the people in danger. As such, as unattractive as the idea is to people who are as left-libertarian minded as me, state-sanctioned violence is often necessary for the protection of people involved in life-threatening violence. If one believes the state itself should not exist, this point is moot, but given that a state does indeed exist, this state should act for the betterment of the citizens within that state, not for the state itself. In other words, state actors should serve people, not people serve the state. As such, as mentioned in some of my other writing, the police acting as a democratically elected set of officials who are extensively trained in threat assessment and defense, who act for the sole purpose of protecting individuals in life-threatening situations involving violence, would satisfy these requirements. In a situation where my life is in danger by a violent individual, I feel it is imperative that there exists a group of people, as governed by the people who elect them, that may protect me from this violence. This should be the limit of their power, however, acting only to subdue violent individuals, and prepare them for the rest of the judicial process as handled by different departments. This does not prevent abuse, however, as if the state has the capacity to enact violence on citizens at all, there is potential for exploitation due to the inherent power imbalance. As such, within this hypothetical utopia is the capacity for self-defense laws to be extended to citizens defending themselves from police, and the judicial departments would act independently of the enforcement departments, thus preventing them from feeding into their own corruption. And within each of these departments, each individual is an elected official who is frequently audited by a third party to ensure that corruption does not take place. Moreover, if any force, lethal or otherwise, is applied to a citizen, that event is carefully monitored and assessed by independent parties to determine any wrongdoing, and if wrongdoing is established, a jury trial would be held to ensure that justice is served, and that violence is deincentivized. Thus, "body cams" would be standard practice, and each individual officer would not have the means to manually deactivate their body cam without facing reprimand. Taken together, these should work to combat any potential abuse, while removing the over-extension of the police force as it currently is. Therefore, in this hypothetical utopia, the police exists to protect against violence, and nothing more. Traffic violations, domestic disputes, mental health crises; these are all handled by different departments that do not have the means to perform lethal force.
I know that none of this would work for a variety of reasons, and that there are levels of complexity that I, a single individual, could not foresee. This document acts as a piece of hypothetical utopia to describe the orientation of my beliefs, as well as the direction that I feel political action should be taken. Practically speaking, I am in favor of defunding the police and reallocating these funds towards bolstered social safety nets, as well as altering training within police departments to better reflect the type of work that I think they should perform. What the rest of this utopia acts as is a direction that I feel things should be taken in going forward, as well as an assessment of my own political and ethical beliefs more broadly. It is not intended as a roadmap towards a genuine utopia, as genuine utopias cannot and will not exist, nor would I be anywhere near qualified to create such a roadmap to even approximate a utopia. You can read more about my beliefs regarding utopias here. Ultimately, I am absolutely willing to change my mind on anything that I have written here, as I am not supremely smart, well educated, or informed. I'm just some girl with too many opinions, so if you feel this is a bad system that I've described, please feel free to reach out!
Associated Press (2006). Baltimore Cops Found Guilty Of Corruption. Associated Press. https://web.archive.org/web/20080223004519/http://wjz.com/topstories/Antonio.Murray.William.2.421587.html
Madani, D., & Reiss, A. (2025, February 20). Murder charges announced in death of Robert Brooks, man beaten at New York correctional facility. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/murder-charges-announced-death-robert-brooks-man-beaten-new-york-corre-rcna193019