A short dictionary of liberal language on policing | Human Rights For the police, liberal language is as indispensable as a service pistol. Far from being merely a weak shield against the onslaught of police violence, it is its cloaking device and its gun turret. It drapes the peculiar institution over with flags and reform-talk, and mounts a defence against the calls for its abolition. Policing, in liberal language, is presented to be indispensable and well-intentioned if frustratingly flawed. This, despite its recency and historical role in racist violence. Policing is always to be fixed and the people who are forced to endure its supposed malfunction are always required to suffer longer, while being watched by the never-harassed in their cafés shaking their heads and mouthing “it’s so sad”. The bodies pile up, generation after generation, and the colony accumulates profit for the families who have always accumulated. Violent repression continues for the people who have always been violently repressed. And the liberal can be found sitting at some pundit, educator or editor’s desk with their chins in their palms wondering, always loudly so as to displace all other possible questions, what “we” are doing wrong.