Kind Words for Black Families, But U.S. Won’t Quit its Cops
Capitalism and Right-Wing Cops Go Hand-in-Hand
When cops go wild and get caught — remember George Floyd — they and their bootlicking boosters take quick action to distract from examination of U.S. policing’s rotten core.
White leaders — lawmakers, politicians, Christian pastors, and big-money sports guys (NFL, NBA, and now the NCAA — just look at the filthy N.C. Tarheels) love to come forth after cops murder young Black women and men to offer their white-savior takes while giving cover to police in their big cities or tiny towns.
Tyre Nichols, a young Black man who excelled at photography and skateboarding, was beaten to death by five Memphis cops after they pulled him over for “reckless driving” in January.
(Why is that cops are always involving themselves in traffic fender-benders or many other minor traffic violations?
Because cities like Memphis want every opportunity for police to terrorize Black people — it is that simple. U.S. Capitalism ballooned and flourished because of enslaving Black people, free labor is wonderful for capitalism’s bottom-line, and it thrives on continued law-and-order oppression of Black people, poor people, and other groups deemed outliers by white America.)
After Nichols was killed — brutally so — by five on-duty cops, the Memphis Police Department fired them and charged them with murder, which is what some cop departments will do when caught so blatantly enjoying their jobs of terrorizing and killing Black people. A gaggle of white nitwits in the MSM gave plaudits to the Memphis cop department for its “swift” handling of the allegedly five rogue cops.
Remember, however, that Tyre’s murder by cops comes less than three years since Minneapolis police killed George Floyd and not a decade since Baltimore cops beat Freddie Gray to death.
Any change MSM and police boosters want to wave around now is cheap, insulting to Tyre’s family, and Black youth from coast-to-coast. The future for them looks bleak, substantial change in U.S. policing can’t come quick enough.
But apologists, law-and-order crazies, and cop boosters are protectors of the status quo and go together with U.S. capitalism which rewards competition and shrugs its collective shoulders at death (think covid19 for example).
I once worked with a white guy from Wisconsin, Buttermilk, Wis., I believe. We worked in the milquetoast “progressive legal” group the American Constitution Society. As the name suggests it was a real snooze fest and still is. The Wisconsin white guy’s father was a cop, so he always took umbrage whenever I would mock cops or pigs. I wrote even then frequently about racist inequalities in the nation’s so called justice system. A law course in “criminal law” or “criminal procedure” or chapter 6 of The 1619 Project teaches that U.S. protects property and profits, and any constitutional rights to life, liberty, let alone the pursuit of happiness are always aberrations.
My former colleague let’s call him Kevin Guqberryite, like Karens from coast-to-coast are semi-cops themselves — they are infused with a Nixonian America where U.S. cities are dirty havens for by Black men and women poor people, filthy socialists and communists, and queer people who mock law-and-order zealots.
Cop boosters will be heard now while big city mayors warn public protestors of anti-police brutality to do no harm to property and not be too loud either. And when cop boosters are not trying to change the subject of racist policing, you’ll have well-meaning but milquetoast white leaders who love words and symbolism but not much action.
President Joe Biden is a good example. While running for the presidency he touted “reforms” in policing and prosecuting, but as The Guardian reports no action has occurred yet in Biden’s administration about policing or the federal governments habit of handing over military weapons to police departments nationwide. Biden visited with the family of Tyre Nichols and no doubt offered gracious words and comfort.
Some context though, when Biden was a U.S Senator he was a flamboyant law-and-order booster representing the wildly diverse state of Delaware. Biden helped pass crime bills to give cops more power to terrorize Black people and bills to build more prisons all over the damn land, screw the environment too.
It may be regardless of Tyre Nichols’ death that the Biden administration will do little to curb police brutality abuse in a nation so in love with cops.
There are reforms, however, that need to happen:
The close relationship between prosecutors and cops needs to end.
The federal government must stop giving military weapons to cop departments.
Chokholds must end.
Cop squads targeting “high-crime” areas in cities need to be disbanded and the cops fired.
Associations of cops are not a part of the labor movement; they are protectors of U.S. policing and prove impediments to reform. Associations must be outlawed.
No more cops at traffic violations or accidents. See this BLM letter and then contact your local reps to tell them to stop using cop force at traffic-stop violations.
Identify pro-cop boosters in your city and expose them as defenders of status quo and police brutality. (For example, Atlanta Police Foundation is well-funded pro-cop lobbying outfit supporting a large cop-training center planned for outside Atlanta.
Beyond those reforms, which cops resist, the “cop city” being built in Atlanta, needs to stop. Cops have murdered a protester of the planed cop-training facility and prosecutors are bringing “ominous” charges against the protestors.
Reforms of policing do not result in massive defunding of departments— in a society this in love with ruthless capitalism, it won’t happen. But the reforms listed above are ones that have been advanced by centrists and leftists both.
In Memphis, the squad that killed Tyre Nichols was disbanded quickly, but as local advocates note, there is a lot more work to do and they are galvanized to so see them through.
