Open up its the police tik tok3/20/2024 ![]() "While I do personally stand with All Cops Are Bastards, that's not 'each individual cop is a bastard,'" Mills says. She references the acronym ACAB, short for "All Cops Are Bastards" - a pithy and oft-graffitied phrase that encapsulates the fundamentally oppressive nature of policing. Like most people denouncing copaganda and police officers' behavior on social media, Mills is aware the problem lies in incessantly trying, as a cop, to come out as unimpeachable. Many of them are just cops acting goofy and dancing, as if to say, "see? We're normal people just like you." The existence of such dancing cop videos feels a lot like propaganda, in that they serve as a red herring to real structural problems with police and policing. "And hitting people and their skulls with rubber bullets and beating them in the street."Ĭop TikTok videos span the gamut from funny dancing bits to engaged political conversations. "It's beyond inappropriate and tone-deaf," as well as hypocritical, she says. "Two hours later after doing the kneeling with the protesters, and hugging the protesters, and thirst trapping, you're shooting out tear gas canisters," she adds. But his timing - specifically, at a protest against police brutality - struck her as wrong. "That's fine, whatever, do what you want," she told Salon. In another political epoch, that doesn't necessarily bother her. Mill notes that there is a prevalent group of police officers who use TikTok as an attention-getting tool. "For all you ladies out there," reads the supertext above the original video's frame, along with hashtags #blacklivesmatter, #peace, and #thankyou. "I was just so shocked that it would cross someone's mind that that was a good idea," she recalls of the police officer, who poses smiling next to a cop car while protesters stream by. She decided to " duet" it - in TikTok parlance, reposting it next to a reaction video of herself - to call out the officer's behavior. In the video, a young officer smiles charmingly in front of a police car, nodding at protesters walking by. On June 6, Tara Mills, 23, was scrolling through her TikTok "For You" page when she found the video of a cop " thirst trapping" at a protest. ![]() And apparently, there are infinite ways to tell the same story. Though stylistically different, Whitzel and Davis' videos have the same underlying narrative: many cops are good and innocent, undeserving of criticism. ![]() We're all human beings we need to be treated like human beings." "People are humans, regardless of race, color, creed, religion, whatever you want to call it. "I'm not a racist cop," he says after complaining about the number of "nasty looks" he received at Sam's Club while in uniform. Davis peppers his videos with hashtags that will allow both the pro-cop and anti-police brutality crowd to discover him: #alllivesmatter, #blacklivesmatter, #endracism, #nojusticenopeace, #copsoftiktok. Deputy Tim Davis of Knox County, TN, decided that wearing his uniform and delivering a monologue using his phone's front camera would be enough. ![]() Unlike Deputy Sheriff Whitzel, many TikTok cops opt for more direct ways to convey their pro-cop message. As it has grown popular, it has also grown more politicized, too - and as with other social media platforms, it has been enlisted as a propaganda tool in the culture wars. Whitzel's video is exemplary of "Cop TikTok," a popular subculture on the nascent video-centric social media platform akin to a revamped version of the now-defunct Vine. TikTok lets users upload videos of up to 60 seconds and edit them as they please with music, text and creative tools. The date appears in a supertitle: May 28, three days after George Floyd's murder. "There are a lot of good cops! Not all are bad… remember that," reads the caption, followed by a police car emoji. Whitzel smiles, revealing an assault rifle in his right hand. His uniform vest reads "sheriff" in big yellow letters his six-pointed sheriff star shines right above his embroidered name. To the tune of Flo Rida's 2007 club hit "Low," Deputy Sheriff David Whitzel on TikTok) walks up the steps to his home after a long day at work.
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