#it's deeply complicated obviously there's so many layers to the RCM's founding and their legal position with the moralintern

[stressfulsloth]

The thing is, when the game takes place, in Martinaise, they're already without the RCM. The RCM abandoned the district. It's an orphaned district, because of turf wars and budget squabbling between precincts. An entire district of people, supposedly meant to be served by the RCM, abandoned because of a few officers egos. The RCM does nothing for Martinaise until it is too late and even then, Harry and Kim try to calm the storm while the uniformed representitives of the RCM sit in a canteen and then head home before the bulk of the danger arrives.

The RCM are shown to be a disorganised demoralised force struggling against other forces to keep what little power they have, indulging in violence and petty crime themselves to placate personal woes- Harry is not the only RCM officer who steals, and like I said his kill count of three pre-game is considered good in comparison to other officers. Officers are misogynistic, dismissive, violent, aggressive. At least one officer brags about his extrajudicial kill count as a point of pride. There are functions that they undertake that benefit the people of Revachol, it is true- for example the crumbling tenement- but these are all functions that could be undertaken by another non-policing body with reasonable funding.

They have no desire or ability to be really effective; their hands are tied when it comes to violence by gun restrictions, purposefully made ineffectual by Moralintern legislation to keep them weak in event of an uprising while allowing them to exist symbolically as a token of Revachol's sovreignity, and they are tied by their remit to operate within the laws that are made to benefit the ruling classes while also disregarding the said rules when they would serve to curtail some of their excesses in harming people outside of a position of power. They're essentially just another gang, in limbo with the rest of them, except that rather than beholden to their members they are instead beholden to the Moralintern (for allowing them to exist) and the ruling class of Revachol. The Union is their mirror image, their foil; they are the ones who took up the mantle of trying to look after the people of Martinaise when the RCM pulled out. They're not great either! They're corrupt as hell, quick to get violent, essentially functioning as a gang. But they're a perfect mirror of the RCM and they show just how the RCM would appear without the thin veneer of legitimacy that their position as a police force grants them.

You understand that Kim's perception of himself as a "good cop" is a character flaw that is meant to be questioned, yes? That he is a good man but equally he is petty and mean and embittered by years of living through the racism he experiences on the force and he takes that out on the people he's meant to serve and protect. Taking the jackets from Pissfaggot and Fuck the World? A cop grasping for a little bit of power in a situation where he feels powerless. He looks better in comparison to the other cops because they're terrible. He's a good man but a bad cop. The RCM, the power, the racism, the violence, is a dead weight hung around his neck pulling him down.

Harry's attempts at being a good cop are explicitly futile; he is working for an organisation that is killing him by inches, killing Martinaise, killing Jamrock. He can try and try to be better; people still die because of the inaction of the police. He's held up as a cop with a low kill record before the game. He still killed three people. The copness is a malicious consuming force for him. Why do you think he tried to flush his case papers down the toilet and sell his gun? He's chronically physically and mentally ill and his healthcare is tied into an organisation with a monopoly on legalized violence. He hates himself for leaning into the violence and he also can't escape it. His status as a police officer keeps him trapped in it, no matter how hard he tries to be a good cop, to emulate Dick Mullen, however warped his idea of that may be.

Disco Elysium never presents the idea of a good cop as a truth, a certainty. Only ever as a fun house mirror, a reflection of what we actually are given, distorted by layers of media and irony and the sheer impossibility of people responding well to that level of power. Revachol's cops are corrupt. They kill, they brag about it, they steal from homeless people, they sit idle while crimes- not even crimes but the extrajudicial execution of the union workers- are committed. Better than the worst of them does not mean good, does not mean justified. The RCM cops are like kids playing police based off what they saw on TV, with their nicknames and their quips and their laissez faire attitude towards the law applying to them. Perhaps they try to perform the role of good cops. But anything deeper than surface level will reveal that it is exactly that; a performance.