The "no cops" policy

The club's "no cops" policy has garnered a few well-meaning questions, so I wanted to take some time to answer them here.

Why no cops?

Put simply, many people feel unsafe around police. VoxClub is explicitly a queer-friendly and neurodivergent-friendly space - both groups are often victims of overpolicing and of police violence.

It's impossible to make every space welcoming to every person, and VoxOffice prioritises the inclusion of marginalised folks more than the inclusion of the institutions that persecute them.

Who counts as "a cop"

It's hard to write a complete list, but suffice to say it isn't just police officers. Anyone who works in service to a punitive and carceral justice system (a system that categorises humans as criminals to justify punishment or imprisonment) would be unwelcome.

That includes police officers, but also PSOs, prison officers, police union admin staff, criminal prosecutors or justices, and spouses of police, as a non-exhaustive list.

A rule-of-thumb: if they'd react defensively to the ACAB slogan, they're not a good fit for the club.

What about ex-cops?

(or ex-PSOs, ex-prison officers, etc)

They aren't welcome either.

While I'd like to think that those who quit policing do so for good reasons, in my experience the overwhelming majority of them do so for bad ones. There's no way to know if any specific ex-cop has had an honest reckoning with the harms done by the institutions they served, and I certainly don't expect the broader membership to take that on faith.

What if they come out-of-uniform and don't mention any police stuff?

I will admit, there's something darkly funny about instituting a reverse "don't ask don't tell" policy.

However, it'd be a profound betrayal of the trust of VoxOffice members to smuggle a police officer into their midsts and then lie to them about it.