US police brutality hit a new record in 2023 breaking last year’s record as police officers killed at least 1,232 people in 2023 according to Mapping Police Violence. In 2022 cops killed 1,183 people. [MORE]

Black people disproportionately made up 26% of all those killed by police despite being only 13% of the US population. Killings of Black people also rose - as least year Blacks accounted for slightly less deaths at 25%. [MORE] In fact in 2023 Black people were the most likely people to be killed by cops. Blacks are 3X more likely to be killed than whites and 1.3X as likely as white people to be unarmed.

Born into this arrangement we have been miseducated to believe that “political authority” is part of the natural order of organizing human relations. Yet this is actually nonsense. The source of the police brutality problem and many many others is so-called “authority”- the implied right to rule over people. It is the belief that some people [authorities] have the moral and legal right to forcibly control others [citizens], and that, consequently, those citizens have the moral obligation to obey.’ [more] Here in this context, we are discussing the authorities known as police officers, who as representatives of authority, have somehow been empowered to use force offensively against citizens.

Contrary to lofty legal pronouncements and pretenses of civility, authority is evil and there is no legitimate or rational way to account for belief in its existence.

All force used offensively (not in self-defense) is excessive and immoral. Acts that would be considered unjust or morally unacceptable when performed by people are just as unjust or morally unacceptable when performed by government agents. Putting your hands on another human being, not in self-defense but offensively, without their consent and ‘manipulating their body in disregard of their volition is evil’, whether its done by citizens or representatives of “authority” wearing blue costumes. Laws cannot alter morality. Larken Rose explains, “authority is permission to commit evil – to do things that would be recognized as immoral and unjustified if anyone else did them.” subconsciously we know that ruling over others by force is barbaric.

There is no rational basis for the belief in authority. All governmental power purportedly is derived solely from the people. However, the government has somehow granted itself the power to do things that no individual citizen could ever do. While citizens have the inalienable right to act in self-defense or come to the defense of others, citizens have no right to initiate unprovoked acts of violence on other people and have no right to forcibly control other people. As such, it is impossible for citizens to delegate the power to forcibly control others to the government - because citizens cannot possibly delegate powers to the government that they don’t have. Other explanations for authority such as the “social contract” theory have been thoroughly debunked. [more] Although we assume there is some valid explanation for why the government should be entitled to engage in behavior that would be deemed to violate individual rights if performed by anyone other than the government, there is none. [more] And [more] Authority, the basis for all governments and rulership, is a farce. [more] As explained by Funktionary, freedom cannot exist in the presence of so-called authority.