this post was submitted on 28 May 2026
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They don't understand what they're doing. They're not participating in policing. They are being used by cops.
That would not be an argument that horse "officers" are not bastards. E.g., lots of human officers drive their cars safely, but that doesn't make them any less bastards.
ACAB because all cops choose to participate in the vile institution of policing. To the best of my knowledge, most non-human animals are cognitively incapable of making that choice. And typically, the "training" to "convince" non-human "officers" to abuse people is itself abusive to the animals.
So, animal "officers" are victims of policing. And they're not bastards because they can't be; they don't have the cognitive functions to intelligently make moral choices. Any monstrous thing an animal "officer" does to any other victims should be considered a crime committed by the animal's human handler and policing as an institution.
They can be victims and be bastards.
A police dog, put in a position to hurt you, will.
A police horse out in a position to hurt you will try not to.
Drug dogs were probably the worst example I could have chosen. A better example would have been a dog used to attack people. They may have been trained and treated with various degrees of mistreatment to do so quite so enthusiastically, but they know they're hurting you.
The police horse uses what agency it has to try not to hurt you.
If someone forces you to drive a car through a crowd, you're still morally culpable if you try to hit people. If you do your best to avoid hurting anyone within the confines of what you were forced to do you're pretty much in the clear.
Considering the stakes of bastarddom are pretty low, I'm willing to judge an animal based on what it would do with its limited autonomy.
Yeah, I'm really not. Most non-human animals, dogs in particular, do not have the cognitive ability to make moral choices. Whether or not the dog "enjoys" doing the terrible things its handler commands or allows it to do is completely irrelevant. It simply does not have the autonomy to be a moral agent in my view.
Yeah because you have the cognitive functions to make moral judgements. If you were a dog and you took those same actions, you would simply not be morally culpable because you wouldn't have had the cognitive functions to make moral judgements.
I mean "bastarddom" is closely linked to notions of what constitutes justice. In particular, while there's never anything wrong with defending yourself against non-human animals, I would be completely and utterly against punishing or destroying police dogs as part of police abolition because "they're cops". They deserve exactly the same love and dignity that all dogs deserve, even if their handlers made them do terrible things.
Furthermore...I never said that you have to like these animals, or even any animals. I'm not in the business of telling people what they like or don't like. What I'm saying is that dogs are not morally comparable to cops. Obviously some dogs are more annoying, more obnoxious, less helpful, etc., than others. But they all deserve the same baseline level of dignity regardless of how we personally feel about them.
Oh, I never thought you were saying I did or didn't have to like someone or something. And I would never advocate for hurting or mistreating any animal no matter how much of a bastard it is.
I think the disconnect might be exactly how "severe" the label is. There are humans who became cops because they legitimately thought they could do good, who never did anything unjust and never were in a position of ignoring wrong doing or anything like that.
The closest thing to a moral failing being a lack of awareness of systemic justice and so on and so forth.
They're still a bastard because they're contributing to the entire thing, regardless of their lack of involvement in the specific negatives.
I don't think the dog needs punishment, just that it shouldn't be a police dog.
I'd easily agree that a dog doesn't have the same moral autonomy that a human does. I just don't think you need that to be called a bastard. Geese are often bastards. You don't hold it against the goose, but you don't forget that if given the choice that goose will nip you.
Utterly aside from the specifics: there's some research that indicates that canines do actually have capacity for a sense of morality and justice but it's limited to equal treatment so far as we can see. Not the more abstract "right or wrong action".