What’s the role of police under capitalism?

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On June 9, 2017, a Philadelphia police officer, Ryan Pownall, shot David Jones multiple times in the back as he ran away. Pownall had stopped to search Jones, who had been riding a dirt bike. While police claim that Jones had a gun, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he “had already dropped the loaded 9 millimeter gun” when the shooting occurred.”

Reports state that this is the second time that Pown­ all shot a fleeing “suspect” in the back. The question of why a police officer would fire at an unarmed and flee­ ing person remains. David Jones was not a threat at the time he was shot.

Jones’s father, Thomas Jones, said, “I didn’t think my son would get shot in the back, I thought there was a procedure where you would tase a person first, or shoot a person in the leg. I didn’t think you would shoot to kill if a person is running away. If someone is running away from you, why shoot him in the back like an animal?”

On June 16, a Minnesota jury acquitted the police offi­ cer who gunned down Philando Castile last year during a traffic stop. Castile, a legal gun owner, had notified the officer that he was in possession of a firearm and had a permit to carry. The cop opened fire, killing Castile. The failure of the system to convict the cop who murdered Philando Castile is just one more in a long series of out­ rages that expose the lack of justice under the current system. The courts will not protect our rights when the police are involved.

Epidemic of police violence According to the Washington Post, police nationwide shot and killed 492 people in the first six months of this year. At this rate, police killings will exceed 1000 for the year—for the third year in a row. A quarter of the deaths have been Black men, although they represent only six percent of the population.

Police brutality, and the ex-judicial murder of people of color, extends back as far as the history of police. In cities both North and South, police have enforced the existing social order against any perceived threats. These threats could be communists, labor organiza­ tions, LGBTQ people, or oppressed nationalities.

Recent years have seen countless victims of police murder and violence. Many incidents have been caught on video by witnesses, with little or no consequences for the police involved. The Black Lives Matter move­ ment, which began in response to the murder of Tray­ von Martin, has continued to mobilize as police mur­ dered Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and so many others.

Of course, there has always been resistance to police repression. In Houston, in 1917, Black U.S. Army troops took up arms against local police after cops attacked a member of their unit. During the 1960s, there were rebellions against police repression in Detroit, Los An­ geles, Trenton, and other large cities. In the 1990s, the Los Angeles rebellion followed the acquittal of cops who savagely beat Rodney King. More recently, Fergu­ son, Mo., and Baltimore exploded after the cop murders of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray.

Capitalism, police, and the state The question of the police and their relationship to society is an important one for socialists. Many union­ ists, members of oppressed nationalities, and social movement activists have experienced police repres­ sion. Any worker who has been on strike knows that cops are called to suppress workers’ picket line actions and break strikes.

The police attack on counter-protesters during a re­ cent far-right demonstration in Portland is another example of the reactionary role of cops. During the far right “free speech” mobilization, there were friendly ex­ changes and “high fives” between police and ultra-right protesters. Cooperation with rightist “Oath Keepers” extended to one of the reactionaries assisting police with the arrest of a counter-protester.

The state is not something particular to capitalism. The state is the expression of the division of society into social classes with conflicting interests. In “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State,” Freder­ ick Engels writes that the state is “a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcil­ able antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with con­ flicting economic interests, might not consume them­ selves and society in fruitless struggle, it became neces­ sary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.”

The state does not exist to “reconcile” the interests of the various classes; The state exists for the subjugation of workers and oppressed people by the dominant, or ruling, class. This is expressed in the formation of po­ lice, armies, prisons, and other instruments of coercion aimed at keeping working people in line.

In the U.S., policing cannot be separated from the rac­ ist nature of the system. The origins of police in the U.S., especially in the South, can be partially traced to the slave patrols formed to catch runaway slaves. Later, police were the enforcers of Jim Crow segregation. They remain an essential component of the regime of mass incarceration, which imprisons hundreds of thousands of young Black and Brown men and women. Police and fascism In Italy and Germany, during the rise of fascist move­ ments, there was cooperation between police and fas­ cist groups. This cooperation extended to Italian police training of Mussolini’s Black Shirts. In the U.S., there have been demonstrated links with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and neo-Nazi groups.

For instance, in Houston, in the 1970s, it was estimat­ ed that as many as 40% of the police department were members of the KKK. The same could be said of police departments across the South.

Racist policing is not something isolated to the South. Northern cities have enforced de facto segregation for years through racist policing. Philadelphia, supposedly the “city of brotherly love,” has a long history of racist cops. The most famous is the former police commis­ sioner and mayor of Philadelphia, Frank Rizzo. Rizzo’s cops were infamous for attacks on the Black commu­ nity. This included dropping young Black people in hostile white neighborhoods so that they had to run for their lives to get home.

Under Rizzo, the police violently attacked the Black Verdict for Castille’s killer protested ST. PAUL, Minn.—Four to five thousand people rallied at the State Capitol and marched through the streets on June 16, outraged over the unfair trial and unjust verdict in the case of Officer Jeron­ imo Yanez. Yanez shot Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn., on July 6, 2016, after pulling over Castile’s car for a broken tail light.

This is the first time a Minnesota police officer has ever been charged when a civilian is killed. The of­ ficer was put on trial for second-degree manslaugh­ ter, and two counts of dangerous discharge of a fire­ arm.

The atmosphere at the June 16 rally was tense and angry. Many speakers indicted racism and capital­ ism, as well as the “criminal justice” system, for the verdict. “The system continues to fail black people,”

said Philando’s mother, Valerie. “My son loved this city and this city killed my son, and the murderer gets away!

The make-up of the crowd was overwhelmingly young and extremely diverse. Indigenous people, people of Asian descendent, many Somalis, Latinos, Scott Olson / Getty Images (Above) Cops confront protesters in Ferguson, Mo., after the Aug. 9, 2014, killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white police officer.

Panther Party and Black civil rights organizations.

The racist attitudes of the Philadelphia police depart­ ment culminated in the May 1985 bombing of the MOVE house on Osage Avenue. On May 13, police surrounded the house, firing more than 10,000 rounds of ammuni­ tion at the home and used fire trucks to spray the house with more than 450,000 gallons of water. Later, a police helicopter dropped a bomb on the roof, sparking a fire. Rather than use the fire department to extinguish it, the decision was made to “let the fire burn,” ultimately de­ stroying 61 homes, leaving 250 people homeless, and killing 11 members of the MOVE organization, includ­ ing five children.

The only person to be imprisoned after this crime was MOVE’s Ramona Africa, the sole adult survivor of the attack (one child, Bertie Africa, also came out alive). No police or public official faced any legal consequences. Cop “unions”

Building resistance to police violence means exposing the reactionary role of police unions in society and the labor movement. Cop unions not only make excuses for the murderers in their ranks, they support racist and reactionary policies like mass incarceration. Within the ranks of organized labor, cop unions play a reactionary (continued on page 5, in “Cuba’s health system shows what’s possible”)

and whites joined the African-American commu­ nity in expressing anger that yet another killer cop walks free. n Duluth: For police accountability DULUTH, Minn. — On July 27, about 30 peo­ ple rallied at Minnesota People’s Power Plaza to demand the accountability and transpar­ ency of the police. The protest came in the aftermath of demonstrations against the “not guilty” court decision for Philando Castile’s murderer.

Signs included “Black Lives Matter,” “Stop Police Brutality,” “Abolish the Police,” and “Hold Police Accountable.

Many racist police incidents have taken place against homeless people in the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior. The next step is to coalesce an organization around police issues. So far, the “Twin Ports Cop Watch” has organized events.

— LUCAS ALAN DIETSCHE SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 2017 3

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Dylan Comstock (Left) No Justice, No Pride demonstrators in Washington, D.C.

to pay the bills. But No Justice, No Peace was aware of something critical that Washington Pride organiz­ ers ignored: Wells Fargo is an investor in the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is being built by force, with (of course) police protection, next to the water sup­ ply of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, while the pipeline studiously avoids the white city nearby. Wells Fargo has also been forced to pay $175 million for dis­ crimination against Black and Latinx customers.

Thus, with the police/corporate invasion, Pride has become an opportunity for pinkwashing, which is the use of gay inclusion to cover institutional misdeeds. In the cases of Wells Fargo and the police, the cover is for murder and economic violence committed by power­ ful institutions at the heart of the establishment.

And it isn’t just corporate sponsorship or the wel­ coming of authoritarian institutions that mark Pride’s dedication to established power; it’s also observable in the make-up of Pride organizers and celebrants, who are mostly white and cis, and often mostly male. Why would Pride be any more responsive to the needs of outsiders than Wells Fargo or the police when they are all overwhelmingly controlled by insiders?

Even tragedy has not moved Pride. The victims and survivors at Pulse Nightclub last Pride season were