Tag Archives | police brutality

America’s power brokers are hoping murals, kente cloth, and a series of half-baked legislative reforms will appease activists into giving up the fight for real change.

Abolition of the police begins with community control, in which community representatives not only hire, fire and oversee the cops, but decide the nature of the policing that is necessary and acceptable.

Defunding the police might end the armed and uniformed force as we know it, but the ruling class will then hire mercenaries to protect their wealth and enforce their will.

As the George Floyd protests against police violence erupted around the nation, a massive amount of evidence of police brutality was widely captured through social media. Unfortunately, very little of it made it to mainstream outlets until much later.

Reform efforts will fail. Only a power shift to communities can improve public safety.

“Mayor Downplays Rough Police Treatment of NYC Protesters” (AP, 6/5/20)

The NYPD is famous for violating civil rights so it comes as no surprise that protests over the police brutality in the city have elicited a violent crackdown from the city’s finest.

In the midst of national protests against racism and police brutality, President Donald Trump on Monday walked a short distance from the White House to St. John’s Church. The visit was for a photo op in which Trump held up a bible as though it were a ticket he had just plucked from a raffle drum.

Since protests have spread to all 50 states in response to the police murders of George Floyd and countless other Black people, law enforcement has responded with a violent show of force against protestors as well as journalists, street medics, and legal support.

The Civilian Complaint Review Board, New York’s independent office for investigating police abuses, has received 467 complaints since Friday, when the protests started, “and is committed to fully investigating them,” a board spokesperson told The Intercept.