By Gabriel Mangano
The police murders of working class and oppressed people continues without end, rising to 277 by early April.
Especially targeted are African Americans who are 31% of police murder victims but 60% of unarmed victims. In Brooklyn, 4 police shot Saheed Vassel, a mentally ill Jamaican immigrant, 10 times within 10 seconds of confronting him. He was holding only a showerhead and was known as harmless and helpful to people throughout his neighborhood. Demonstrators demanded justice and condemned the lack of mental health services.
In late March, police in Sacramento, CA shot Stephon Clark, a 22-year old father of two, 8 times in the side and back in his grandmother’s back yard. He was holding a cell phone. Thousands demonstrated against this murder blocking freeways and forcing the cancellation of two NBA games. And in Louisiana, right-wing state Attorney General Jeff Landry refused to indict the cop who murdered Alton Sterling. Even after a video shows Officer Salamoni telling Mr. Sterling that he would murder him if he moved, he was not jailed, just fired.
As of yet none of these murderers have been indicted.
In California, state legislators proposed a law that would change when lethal force can be used to “only when necessary” from “when reasonable”. All this will change, however, is the language the police will use to justify their killings.
Since the murder of Trayvon Martin, millions of people have demanded justice for these police and vigilante killings. And many reforms have been proposed and put into practice. However, all of these reforms are doomed to failure. For example, civilian review boards have been highly touted as a way to control brutal “bad apples”. Yet after years of struggle, the Newark, New Jersey civilian review board was effectively broken by a judge’s injunction restricting its subpoena and investigatory powers. Body cameras are another minimal solution that has proven unworkable as police routinely turn them off. As well, district attorneys often fail to indict, and juries rarely convict those who are indicted despite overwhelming graphic evidence of what would clearly be murder for anyone but a cop.
These reforms and other false cures cannot succeed because they are based on the lie that the police are here to serve and protect everyone equally. The role of the police is to serve and protect the ruling class, the owners and their property. And they can only do this by reigning terror on working class and minority communities. The rich know they stole their wealth from our labor, and they will use every means to keep us down.
While the revolutionary workers know that these reforms, although they may save a few lives, will not solve the problem of police terror and that the murder of working class men and women will continue unabated, we still fight for these reforms. Only in this way can we expose the rottenness of the capitalist system and the murderous thugs who help protect it. Only the overthrow of capitalism can finally end this plague on working and oppressed people.
Black mothers and babies die at more than double the rate of white mothers and babies.
Criminal racism, cuts to healthcare are to blame.
Black Lives Matter