Welcome to Political Science Level 2, Lesson 4: F*** the Police! If you haven’t studied occupation in Black communities before, check out our lessons on the ghetto here and here

In this lesson, you will learn about:

The role of the police
Police functions
The history of the police
The police and the law
Police brutality
Police militarisation
Investigations of the police
Combating the police

Primary Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you will understand:

What “copspeak” is
What the primary roles of the police are
How crime is intrinsic to police existence
The role of the media in policing
How the police developed
How and why the police are institutionally racist
How the police are linked to capitalism
How laws are created and selectively enforced by the police
What laws allow for racist policing
The various forms police brutality can take
How the police were militarised
How Black groups have combated the police through history
How we can combat the police today

Additional Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you may understand:

Why crime is integral to racial capitalism
How police use the concept of safety to justify racism
How modern police were born from colonialism
What the slave patrols were
How the police are integral to internal colonialism
The true purpose of stop and search tactics
How the war on drugs increased police violence
How the police are incentivised to arrest
What “broken windows” policing is
The similarities between the police and the military
How the police use surveillance technologies
How ghettos and the police are intrinsically linked
What the IOPC and IA are
How the UNIA, the Black Panther Party and the Black Lives Matter movement have challenged police
How a Community Force can work for today

Most children growing up are taught that the police are a force for good. They are the real life superheroes that protect us from the horrible criminals that seek to do us harm. Composed of everyday men and women that put themselves in the firing line, the police are marketed as the glue that prevents society from falling into chaos. However, this fantasy is nothing but “copspeak”: a language that intentionally limits the ability to understand the police as anything other than essential. The truth is they are anything but, and by the time most Black children become adults, they are fully aware that the police are not a force for good. But what is the police’s real role in society?

PROTECT AND SERVE?

Across the world, the police as an institution functions in a similar manner. Through media propaganda such as Hollywood films, television, promotional material and news reports, the police are portrayed as the bastions of justice - to protect and serve the public. The reality is the police are paid for by the public, but are charged by the state with protecting the richest, occupying the ghettos, keeping people in their places along racial and class lines, and ruthlessly preserving establishment and economic interests. Though police emerge from differing histories and places, and may have slightly different goals, there are certain shared realities no matter which nation they operate in.

The police are first and foremost an institution of state-sanctioned violence. Police officers are violence workers, carrying out the state's desires through the structural framework of the law. This is evidenced during mass protests against the state or the rich. As seen with countless peaceful demonstrations throughout recent years, when people want to make their voices heard, the barrier between them and the powerful is the police. And when the people who want to be heard are Black, the barrier more often than not becomes a weapon, as police use their authority to brutalise the innocent. This has happened in Ferguson, Tottenham, Rio de Janeiro, Port-au-Prince, and countless other places in the last few years.

Violence is the police’s backbone, although using copspeak, officers try to distance themselves from this reality. The word “violence” is replaced by phrases such as “I will have to use force.” Force that is justified through the notion of maintaining order (they are called the Force for a reason). Those whose excessive violence is captured are said to be “bad apples.” However, police violence is a matter of the structure of their institution, which permits individuals to carry out these deeds. The police’s threat of violence is a public announcement, and their message to Black men in particular is clear: you can be as nice and polite as you like, or as aggressive and intimidating as you like. We can elevate you to the status of superhuman, and we can project our fears onto you. But ultimately, we can arrest you, put you in handcuffs, and take you to jail because we can kill you. The police are protected by the laws that give them power, and are free to murder with complete impunity under the guise of law and order.

One of the primary functions of the police is the protection of private property. Property cannot be private without the threat of punishment (meaning violence), and capitalism demands the existence and defence of private property. Instead of helping the homeless find shelter, the police remove them from the site of someone's property. Instead of aiding the poor, they help the landlord evict them. Of course, for the poor and Black, these courtesies are seldom applied, evidencing who the police truly work for. Consider the emcee Stormzy, who’s front door was smashed in by the police in London after his neighbours had called to report a suspicious Black man in the area. Or Fred Hampton, who was murdered in his bed by the Chicago Police Department after they raided his apartment. There are countless other examples.

Dealing with crime may be what many think the police’s primary function is, but this is far from the case. Consider for a second, if all crime disappeared. No arrests would mean no imprisonment, and the elimination of prisons would lead to many private companies going bust. Billion-dollar companies that own prisons, lease out security and develop tags, such as the Corrections Corporation of America, would disappear. An elimination of prison labour would leave hundreds of corporations searching for a new source of workers, such as McDonald’s and Walmart, and the entire prison industrial complex would fall apart. How many millions are directly or indirectly employed by the criminal justice system? Police officers, prison wardens, politicians, psychologists, doctors, forensic scientists, judges, lawyers, newscasters and more. Therefore, the elimination of crime is far down on the police’s list of duties, and although pockets of criminality are pursued by individuals within the police force, as an institution, their function and existence depends on crime.

Crime is also a word that is completely dependent on context. Exactly what type of crimes are people thinking of when they declare that the police deal with crime? Is it the crimes of billionaires, whose corporations pay no tax towards the economies in which they operate? Is it the crimes of politicians, who wage wars in the name of a white supremacist brand of justice? Is it the crimes of bankers, who siphon money from the taxpayer to their own pockets? Is it the crimes of monarchs, who steal lands, minerals and precious jewels for their own keeping? Is it the crimes of religious leaders, who engage in paedophilia? Is it the crimes of the police themselves, as countless officers have been caught on camera brutalising and murdering people with no repercussions? Or is it the criminals accused of petty theft and small-time drug dealing that fill up our prisons? The police only punish what are considered to be poor people's crimes, while the richest, whose crimes cause far more lasting damage to society, get police protection. Where Black people are concerned, just existing is a crime. Walking in what the police consider to be the wrong neighbourhood, standing on the wrong corner, or driving the wrong car can get a Black person arrested and charged with the crime of “...while Black.” For example, a sergeant in Baltimore ordered his officers to clear a corner where young Black men were congregating. When an officer asked what crime they were committing, the sergeant replied, “Make something up.” The power to define what is or is not crime lies with the police.

“Safety” and “security” are two words that are routinely spouted with regards to police. Often people will justify their existence with the sentiments of “they keep us safe.” The reason they are so heavily present in the Black community, for example, is to keep white society safe from the mythological Black man - the violent criminal capable of raping a white woman if not kept in check. The way in which security and safety are framed in discourse regarding the police eliminates any examination of a society’s shortcomings. White supremacist capitalism requires racism and classism to function, and these structural boundaries are maintained by the police. By twisting concepts like “safety” and “security”, the police can convince the public that they are required. Although many countries, particularly the USA, place an emphasis on the concept of “freedom”, the police ensure that individual liberty can be taken away whenever the state deems it necessary in the name of “safety.”

Overall, the police’s mission is to maintain order - the order of white supremacist capitalism - as Black people remain the biggest threat to society. But how did the police come to function in this way?

POLICE ORIGINS

The concept of having a workforce that protects and serves the public at large is not a new phenomenon. Ancient and medieval societies worldwide developed institutions to protect their people and their empires. The Roman Empire used an international network of soldiers as on-the-ground security, Ancient China had their own employed police force, and the city-states of Hausaland had their own state-sponsored police sector, complete with a chief of police. The roles of these various police institutions varied, and the politics of the time certainly influenced their actions, but their primary concern was the protection of their citizens as well as the maintenance of their society.

Modern era policing, however, can mostly be traced back to England. In the 12th century, small units led by a constable would be employed by lords and noblemen to enforce their will on the lands they owned. These constables soon became tax-supported, despite working for landowners. Over a century later, private watchmen were also hired by landowners to carry out these same functions.

THE BIRTH OF CAPITALISM, THE BIRTH OF MODERN POLICING?

In the late 15th and 16th centuries in England, landowners began to displace many of the poor, and the police were their bastions of displacement. Many were driven from their homes and turned into vagabonds by the police, allowing the rich to seize more and more land. These vagabonds were imprisoned by law, and crimes such as petty theft were given extremely harsh sentences. Laws were enacted that allowed for the transportation and subsequent labouring of the recently dispossessed.

This process of course went hand-in-hand with Europe’s colonisation of the Americas and enslavement of Africans. Indentured labourers were required in the colonies of the “New World”, and hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were shipped from England to the Caribbean and North America. Many poor English, as well as Scots, Welsh and Irish, were transported in droves, and lots of them were put to work as overseers on plantations. Their duties were simple: to terrorise the enslaved Africans by any means necessary. In mainland America, local elected officials became the first sheriffs, as police departments began to establish themselves. One of the primary duties of these departments was to capture runaway slaves and return them to their plantations. As the American colonies expanded, so did the police, and many descendants of indentured servants joined their ranks - particularly the Irish in what became the New York Police Department.

In the Southern States, slave patrols were developed. This was an institution exclusively dedicated to enforcing slavery laws and brutalising Black people. They would prevent Black people from meeting in groups, stop and check slave passes, and would regularly search the lodgings of the enslaved. They also would act with fierce brutality, and were instructed to viciously beat any Black person without a written pass. Funded by taxes, they enforced a social order based on the theft of Black life and Indigenous land. Slave patrols were also known to rape Black women, and to kidnap and sell free Black people into slavery. In the Caribbean, a colonial police force was established, carrying out many of the same duties as their mainland counterparts. They often came into direct conflict with the Maroons.

At the same time, the Portuguese enacted a similar policy, creating local police units and a coast guard throughout Brazil in the 17th century. The French, who had a whole class of white workers in their colonies, also created a colonial police force similar to that throughout the British Caribbean. All of these institutions functioned with the same goal in mind: to protect the assets of the rich by ruling the majority population - Africans - with terrorist tactics. From the 18th century and beyond, the practice of establishing a police force within invaded countries was a tactic repeated by Europe. Colonialism and white supremacy would have been impossible without the creation of police forces - the fists of settler colonialism.

As the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade led to the birth of capitalism, the empires of Europe began to restructure their economies, creating a class of wage labourers within their mother countries while simultaneously extorting labour from Black and brown people. This restructuring required a change in laws - changes that were enforced by the police. Sir Robert Peel is credited with developing the blueprint for these global institutions, forming the largest organised gang in history (he has in fact been referred to as “the original gangster”). In the USA after abolition, white terror was the response to the newly freed Black masses. The police, far from protecting and serving those in need, aided and sometimes directly perpetrated white terrorism on Black people. In some Southern cities, slave patrols were directly transformed into the police department. Others were not directly transformed, but the slave patrol provided the template for police organisation.

The most obvious and violent form of white terrorism were lynchings, which occurred in the thousands. Police would often oversee lynchings to ensure no interference, as white men, women and children would put on their Sunday best to watch a Black person hanged to death. The police not only made lynching possible, but made it legal, as they both perpetrated and observed it. According to studies, cops were involved in roughly half of the lynchings between 1930 to 1933. Decades of this policing ensured the maintenance of white supremacy in the US and allowed capitalism to continue unabated, as white workers were protected from the threat of Black economic power.

In Australia, the police were created in the mid-19th century as a weapon against the Indigenous Australians. The laws they practiced were racist colonial legislations and the order they maintained was white supremacy. As in the other settler colonies, they were the class that excluded and terrorised the natives, allowing the rest of the colonisers to enjoy land that was not theirs. In Brazil, the police were combined with military units to create a new institution, one that was committed to controlling and ending Black and Indigenous life. Throughout the world, by the early 20th century the police were firmly established as the maintainers of colonialism and racialised capitalism.

POLICE AND THE LAW: THE HAND MEETS THE GLOVE

The police are simultaneously the enforcers of law and protected by law. They decide how to interpret the law and when the law needs to be applied - or more accurately, who it needs to apply to. They even create the law through their actions. But what are these laws, and how do they give them power?

As already demonstrated, throughout history the police have enforced the laws of racism and power. Today, this dynamic has not changed. Racial profiling - choosing who to target based on their race - is an obvious legacy of these laws. Using the law, police can disguise their racial profiling in a number of ways. The legal concept of “reasonable suspicion” provides cover for much of the racial profiling that police practice. “Reasonable suspicion” refers to the various laws that allow a police officer to stop, search and arrest a person that they deem suspicious for whatever reason. In Britain, the sus law was created in order to allow this. In the US, during the case of Terry v. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled that a police officer could stop and frisk a suspect on the street without a search warrant. These laws and others like them allow cops to target whoever they feel is a possible criminal using their own intuition. This means that by law, a cop can use any excuse - hands in pockets, standing alone, standing in a group, running - to justify their racism.

Stop and search is the most visible practice with regards to racial profiling. Copspeak enables public support for stop and search, as the police pretend they are fighting crime by combating it before it starts. However, stop and search isn’t really about combating crime. It is about letting Black people know their place. The effectiveness of stop and search for reducing crime has been debunked in countless studies, and that’s because the goal isn’t to reduce crime, it is to terrorise the Black population just like during slavery. Black people can be as rich and as famous as they like, but they will never truly be a part of white society, and the police let them know this by pulling them out of their cars and stripping them down for no other reason than the fact that they are Black. According to the New York ACLU, 9 out of 10 of the 650,000+ people who were stopped and frisked by the NYPD in 2011 were innocent of any suspected crimes, and over 91% of these people were “people of color.” During the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Swamp 81, almost 1000 Black people were stopped and searched in Brixton over just 3 days, and today, Black people in London are 20-40 times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts.

In the US during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations, the War on Drugs became the perfect vehicle for police harassment. Police used new laws regarding drug use and sentencing to justify their racist stop and search practices. For example, pretext stops, which are motorist stops due to minor traffic violations such as failing to stop an adequate distance behind a traffic light, allow the police to raid a person's vehicle on the preface of looking for drugs, often destroying the interior in the process. Refusal to give consent to these searches leads to intimidation tactics by the police, who will often threaten to make up a violation and arrest the innocent Black citizen. Operation Pipeline saw the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) train police across the US on how best to conduct racist stops and searches while preventing the victims from resisting.

Predictive policing, also known as data-driven or intelligence-led policing, is the practice of collecting demographic and crime data and using it to predict where crimes will take place. Predictive policing states that stop and search is based on computer algorithms, not racism, and thus is a necessary practice for the police. This is how someone like Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London, could state that the police were “no longer institutionally racist”, it was just that Black boys were statistically more likely to commit “knife-crime” - despite places where no Black people live having the highest rates. This is also how the various presidents of Brazil have been able to declare the favelas as crime-ridden neighbourhoods, and justify the use of police occupation and extermination in these areas. However, not all data is created equally because not all laws are applied equally. As mentioned previously, so-called poor people crime is the driving force of this data, with the crimes of the rich and white often not even considered as crimes under the law. The most obvious example of this came during the War on Drugs, where crack cocaine possession received a sentence 500 times harsher than powdered cocaine possession. As crack was associated with Black ghettos and cocaine with rich, white bankers and businessmen, crack was deemed a far worse drug and therefore required a far harsher sentence. This was despite their pharmacological identicality. This allowed the police to enforce white supremacy without reprisal, as the laws declared that their occupation of the Black community was justified, as these areas were riddled with crack.

Of course, the police’s power to arrest is another that is granted under law. Officers throughout many countries are given the incentive to arrest as many people as possible. Promotions, pay rises, grants and more are all promised to the police by their superiors in government if they manage to arrest a certain number of people. For example, during the War on Drugs, the Reagan administration allowed various agencies to keep, for their own use, the vast majority of cash and assets they seized. Suddenly, the police were able to take the cash, cars and homes of those suspected of drug use or sales. This fuelled the USA’s prison industrial complex, imprisoning millions for slave labour, while simultaneously excluding them permanently from society: a person arrested and charged could no longer vote, apply for welfare, or secure employment. A Black underclass was created and, throughout the world, maintained by the police and the law.

POLICE BRUTALITY

In the same way the media has combined with politics to convince many that the police are a force for good, media and politics (along with racial “science”) have sought to cement Blackness with criminality. This association has been the primary excuse and justification for police brutality - the most overt form of police violence. However, police brutality is seldom proved to be racist in the court of law, as the law favours the police’s actions. The police even have particular codes to refer to Black people or Black neighbourhoods without having to mention race. The concept of “broken windows” policing refers to the notion that particular areas - those that stereotypically have dilapidated buildings and broken windows - give a license for crime to take place. Therefore, to prevent this crime from taking place, the police need to be deployed throughout these areas, using any violence they deem necessary. This type of policing leads to consistent police brutality in Black neighbourhoods.

One of the most common forms of police brutality is the body cavity search. This is disproportionately practiced on Black people and consists of the forced penetration of body cavities by a police officer following an arrest. This dehumanisation tactic lets Black people know that in this society, even their body doesn’t truly belong to them. Just like during enslavement, it is white property. This legally sanctioned sexual violence would be rape under any other circumstance, yet the police, protected by law, are allowed to proceed without recourse. So-called “sexual misconduct” is also a common police practice, as often officers will rape a woman in exchange for dropping charges. Rape is the second most common complaint lodged against police by victims of police violence. Once again, this is a legacy of settler colonialism and enslavement as rape was, and still is, used as a weapon to terrorise Black people. US cop Daniel Holtzclaw is perhaps the most infamous police rapist, found guilty of raping multiple women during his tenure - all of them Black. However, most cops who commit rape don’t get caught, much less tried and sentenced.

Police beatings are a common practice for those that want to exercise their authority through brutality. The police as an institution demand obedience, and when obedience is refused, they resort to control through beatings and assault. Through beatings, the police force a person to become obedient, restoring the order of society. Beatings are disproportionately practiced on Black men - who society already deems dangerous, threatening and criminal. As a far-right organisation, the police are composed of those that are attracted to their ideology, and many salivate at the prospect of being able to live out their racist fantasies without repercussions. They beat Black men because they know Black men cannot retaliate, and this keeps them in their place.

Death while in police custody is another common form of police brutality. Deaths are deemed to occur under “suspicious” circumstances, and police officers are never properly investigated, much less sentenced to murder. In Britain, there have been well over 1000 deaths while in police custody since 1990, with 0 officers being convicted of any crime. In places like France, the US and Brazil, the number is far greater. When a Black person dies while in the custody of the police, the structural racism of the institution sweeps it under the carpet.

Police murders are the most obvious and infamous faction of police brutality. For countless decades, the police have murdered Black people on the streets, in their homes and in their cars with complete political impunity. Since the invention of camera phones, many of these deaths have been captured, and still police are protected by the law, which rules in their favour. White society also often justifies these murders, as the association with Blackness and criminality, coupled with the notion of the police being a force for good, means that it can’t possibly be true that the officer in question is a murderer. The Black victim must have done something to cause the officer to kill them - an assumption that is helped by the media, who portray every Black victim as an assailant, complete with a mugshot. When reporting on a police murder, the media chooses its words carefully: never will they declare that an officer has killed someone. Instead, phrases such as “officers involved in a shooting” or “police suspect has died” are exclaimed by news reporters.

The criminal justice system’s method of dealing with police murders shows how racism is in the DNA of the various institutions it is composed of. The police officer(s) who commits the murder is given complete support by their peers - as seen after the murder of Eric Garner by the NYPD, who collectively wore t-shirts that mocked Garner’s dying words; “I can’t breathe.” The justice system refuses to prosecute - as evidenced by the fact that 0 officers have gone to jail in Britain for murder. The actions of the police departments do not alter following a murder - Rio’s police department averaged 5 murders per day in 2019, with 0 prosecutions. And families are rarely, if ever, afforded any form of justice - as seen when the family of Sean Rigg were prevented from examining his body due to the evidence of police brutality presented via his bruises and scars. The police can even murder Black celebrities and get away with it - as seen with ex-professional footballer Dalian Atkinson in 2016, and reggae artist Smiley Culture in 2011. Officers can even commit drive-bys on Black children on camera and avoid any punishment - as seen with 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

Many white people have used the threat of the police in an attempt to control Black people. Countless videos have circulated the internet showing primarily white women threatening to phone (or phoning) the police on Black people for not obeying them. This parallels the previous century, where white women would utilise the KKK and other white vigilantes to threaten and kill Black people, with the most infamous example being the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till. White people are essentially calling on the law to lynch a Black person, as they know that Black people are not citizens but subjects of white society.

MILITARISATION

Militarisation refers to the introduction of advanced military weaponry, technology and practices within the police force. For some, this doesn’t make sense, as the police and the military are seen as two separate institutions. The reality is, the police and the military are one in the same. What the military of white supremacist nations does abroad, their police force does internally. Both are state bodies that are sanctioned to exercise violence in the name of “security”, “freedom” and “order”, which are just copspeak for the protection of private property and white supremacy.

Police have adopted military tactics and organisation throughout history, as seen with the development of Brazil’s police force - which was made up of various military units - and the US slave patrols - which began as militias. The use of police dogs is a common aspect of police militarisation. Police dogs have been weapons against Black resistance throughout history. Dogs were often brought into the colonies of the Americas by the military to tear the Indigenous and the enslaved to pieces. Dogs were present throughout the French colony of San Domingue, and were used as weapons during the Haitian Revolution. Throughout the 1960s, they were unleashed on Black civil rights protestors, eating alive those who dared to challenge racism. Today, they are used in the same way. At every mass Black protest, you can be sure the police will be there with their dogs on leashes. The dogs - almost always German Shepherds - are an extension of the police. Ready to attack and trained to sniff out drugs, these dogs are bred to be violent weapons. Daily in the US, police dogs are set on people, chasing them down and biting them, with the officers in command just watching. The trauma that comes from this ordeal cannot be overstated, and neither can the anti-Blackness of police dog use through history.

Recently, much of the weaponry and technology used in policing has been vastly upgraded. In Brazil during the 1960s and 1970s, the military dictatorship that was backed by the US declared war on the favelas. Much government spending was used to transform the police force, as Brazil’s poorest and Blackest neighbourhoods were declared public enemy number 1. The favelas were razed as police, with their machine guns and armoured cars, began a massacre that has ceased to end to this day. More recently, Brazil’s Pacifying Police Units have continued the war against the favelas under the guise of “taking back territory from drug gangs.”

When Reagan began the War on Drugs, huge cash grants were made to those law enforcement agencies willing to make drugs their top priority. Millions in federal aid was given to enforcement agencies willing to fight the war. This led to the proliferation of narcotics task forces. The Pentagon also gave away military intelligence and millions of dollars in firepower to state and local agencies willing to fight the drug war. Between 1997-1999, 3.4 million pieces of military equipment had been handed to approximately 11,000 police departments, including: 253 aircrafts (including 7-passenger planes), UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, 7,856 M-16 rifles, 181 grenade launchers, 8,131 bulletproof helmets and 1,161-night vision goggles. This was made possible under the Military Cooperation and Law Enforcement Act. SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams were trained and deployed during this time. SWAT teams train in military tactics - close quarters combat, urban warfare, assault and rescue, and civil unrest - and use military equipment when doing so, such as body armour, rifles, grenades, and armoured vehicles. Today, over 45,000 SWAT teams are deployed for raids. Drug raids by SWAT teams start with the police blasting into people’s homes in the middle of the night, throwing grenades, and shouting and pointing guns at anyone inside – often children. Many have been killed during these raids. In Britain, the police received an upgrade during the tenure of Prime Minister Margret Thatcher. The police were Thatcher’s “favoured class”, and her reign saw an increase in police numbers as well as pay rises. During this time, the police were organised into different military-style groups, each with a differing purpose. Special Patrol Group (SPG) was charged with dealing with the racialised crime of “mugging”, i.e. a crime for which only Black people were deemed responsible. Using predictive policing, SPG targeted “high crime” areas, and regularly brutalised Black people throughout the 1970s and 1980s. They policed the presence of Black people in certain areas under a policy of containment. At its height, the police behind closed doors referred to their operations as “nigger-hunting.” The Illegal Immigration Intelligence Unit was another division focused exclusively on harassing Black and brown people in Britain. These departments changed names throughout the years - SPG became TSG for example - and various other departments arose - such as Operation Trident, which was exclusively dedicated to the policing of so-called “Black on Black” crime. The implementation of overtly racist policies is always followed by an increase in police militarisation.

Guns are the weapon of choice for the police. Across the world, guns are prevalent throughout the institutions, and it is a myth that in some countries - such as the UK - the police do not carry guns. Some nations may not have local units with guns, but all police institutions have access to guns. Police may carry Glocks, handguns, semi-automatic assault rifles, bolt-action shotguns, pump-action shotguns, and flashbang grenade launchers depending on the action required. Most people worldwide that are killed by the police are killed by a gun - whether it be Rekia Boyd in the US, Mark Duggan in the UK, Aboubakar Fofana in France or Marielle Franco in Brazil. Tasers, the “less-than-lethal” weapon that causes people to experience 50,000 volts through their body, is another favourite weapon of the police. These weapons came from the use of cattle-prods on civil rights demonstrators during the Jim Crow era, and despite being labelled less-than-lethal, tasers kill more than 30 people every year in the US alone. Chemical agents such as tear gas and CS gas are also used by the police. In Britain during the racial uprisings against police brutality in the 1980s, CS gas was launched at protestors with cartridges intended for use against brick walls. In 2014, police in Ferguson, Missouri fired tear gas into buildings, directly at protesters, and into crowds that included children during the uprising against the police killing of Michael Brown. Bombs have regularly been used by the police in Brazil and the US, most infamously in 1985, when the Philadelphia police department used a helicopter to bomb the headquarters of MOVE - a Black liberation movement started by John Africa.

Surveillance technologies that have been developed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan by the US military are now used domestically. Technology such as social network analysis software, sensor technologies, and drones with the capacity to suck up Wi-Fi data and track personnel, are all used by various police departments across the US. However, the use of military surveillance tactics by the police is not new. COINTELPRO, which was the FBI’s counterintelligence program between 1956 and 1971, engaged in a wide-ranging program of covert surveillance, intimidation, harassment and infiltration of primarily Black anti-racist movements. The likes of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the Black Panther Party were under surveillance, tracked, infiltrated and eventually killed and destroyed by COINTELPRO. In Britain, the families of victims of racism and police brutality, such as Stephen Lawrence and Christopher Alder, were placed under secret surveillance by the police.

The military industrial complex is a trillion-dollar industry, and corporations make their money from selling weapons and technologies to various militaries across the world. For the past few decades, they have also had a new market to sell to - the police. The militarisation of the police forces worldwide is an economic decision, and the police can simultaneously reinforce white supremacy while helping the wheels of global capitalism turn.

WHO INVESTIGATES THE POLICE?

When an attempt is made to bring the police to justice, various obstacles are placed in the way. Prior to an investigation commencing, the police department in question is given time by the system to “gather evidence” and “order the facts.” This of course gives the department time to bury the evidence and cover for the man or woman under fire. An inquest then proceeds under the supervision of the police. If the police have murdered someone, a coroner will examine the body of the victim to determine cause of death. The process that is undertaken completely eliminates the notion that “bad apples” are responsible for police misconduct, and that most cops are a force for good. If this were true, the majority “good” cops would have no problem arresting the “bad apples” that beat, rape and murder people. But the notion of “good cop, bad cop” is a ruse - just like the favoured interrogation technique.

In Britain, investigations are done under the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), formally the PCA and IPCC. In theory, this is an independent body for justice that examines police conduct and behaviour, and takes steps to prosecute them. Funded by the UK Home Office, all complaints about the police go through this body. In reality, the IOPC is an extension of the British police force, with over 80% of its members being ex-police officers. Many of the commissioners have also been ex-high ranking police officials. Throughout the years, the PCA, IPCC and IOPC - reforms that have changed nothing other than the name - have been a major barrier of justice for families, such as Christopher Alder’s, a Black veteran who was murdered by the police on camera while his killers made monkey noises over his dead body. His murderers received £40,000 packages and early retirement, while his family received £22,000 and the wrong body to bury, all under the watchful eye of the PCA.

Internal Affairs (IA) is the US version of the IOPC, except this division is unapologetically a part of the police force. IA is a branch that is responsible for investigating the misconduct of the rest of the department, as the police are able to police themselves with zero accountability. This is how Alton’s Sterling’s killers, who were caught on camera firing bullets at point-blank range, avoided any criminal charges, as IA determined their actions were justified. Self-investigation is a necessary part of the maintenance of the police institution, and shows that the entire justice system is not truly about getting justice, but about maintaining order.

COMBATING THE POLICE

Many Black individuals, groups and organisations have stood up to the police across the world throughout history. As far back as the slave patrols, Africans organised themselves into militias to fight and free their brothers and sisters from plantations. In Jamaica, the Maroon warriors were so effective that the British were forced to give them their own land!

Marcus Garvey’s UNIA continuously came into conflict with the police. J. Edgar Hoover, who would become the head of the FBI for more than half a century, led investigations against Garvey (and would later replicate this with other Black leaders during COINTELPRO). Garvey’s exceptionally large global network, however, made it impossible for the police to bully him. As the saying goes, there’s strength in numbers, and the UNIA’s members would often leave police officers in fear of reprisal if they attempted to clash with Garvey or any other UNIA members.

The Nation of Islam (NOI), particularly when Malcolm X was a minister, were feared by the police. There are instances where the NOI would mobilise and demand the release of Black people from police stations. Malcolm X was always a huge proponent of self-defence against the police. In his own words:

“If a dog is biting a Black man, the Black man should kill the dog, whether the dog is a police dog or a hound dog or any kind of dog. If a dog is fixed on a Black man when that Black man is doing nothing but trying to take advantage of what the government says is supposed to be his, then that Black man should kill that dog, or any two-legged dog who sets the dog on him”

Inspired by Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence started off as a force to police the police. Founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale patrolled the streets of Oakland, San Francisco, Richmond and Berkeley, exercising their right to bear arms. They taught local Black people their rights within US law while spreading the party’s core message: “All power to the people.” The Black Panther’s patrols were a success - Huey himself wrote about how frightened and confused the police were to see young Black men walking around with guns. They would stop and observe any cop that was questioning a Black person, and ask members of the community if they were being abused. Most of the time, the cops would leave hastily.

As the party grew, so did the number of patrols, and the murders and brutality committed by the police fell sharply due to their actions. In fact, the Panthers were so effective at combating police brutality, that the government changed its laws! The Mulford Act, also known as the Panther Act, was passed by governor Ronald Reagan, and it banned the carrying of loaded firearms. This was yet again another incident showing how the law does everything it can to hinder Black rights. White supremacist states have always sought to disarm Black and Indigenous people, as they know that if Black people were allowed to defend themselves against the police and white racists, things would completely change.

In Britain throughout the 1980s, Black people rose up against the police. Consistent over-policing of Black events such as Notting Hill Carnival, police raids on Black youth clubs and police refusal to provide protection against racist violence led to many Black communities in Britain ready to explode. The police response to the New Cross Fire/Massacre, where 13 Black teenagers were burned to death by racists, the police killing of Cynthia Jarrett and the shooting of Cherry Groce, led to huge uprisings throughout Britain's Black communities. Brixton, Deptford, Tottenham and Hackney (London), Toxteth (Liverpool), Handsworth (Birmingham), Chapeltown (Leeds), Bolton, Luton, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Coventry, Reading, Bristol, Edinburgh and more saw Black people organised against the police.

More recently, the Black Lives Matter movement has become a worldwide campaign against police brutality. The initial movement led to Black and other communities calling for an end to racist policing - and an end to deaths of Black people at the hands of cops. Social media has allowed for the exchange of information across borders, and international solidarity around the issue has been firmly established through the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Despite the controversies surrounding the supposed leaders of Black Lives Matter, on-the-ground protestors have collectively faced down riot police, complete with rubber bullets, armoured personnel carriers, semi automatic weapons and of course, police dogs. While the Black man in the White House at the time, President Obama, dismissed these same uprisings as the handiwork of “thugs and criminals”, the Black Lives Matter movement has proven once again that international solidarity is possible - and that there is strength in numbers.

COMMUNITY FORCE

Today, it is clear that the problem of policing is an international one. Solutions to this problem however, must be community driven. Looking towards the future, the best method of combating the police would be a Community Force. This concept is a community-run institution that doesn’t just help police the police within the community, but also performs a number of other duties. For example: grocery shopping for the elderly, after-school clubs for children whose parents have to work long hours, breakfast clubs for people who may be struggling financially, physical training and fitness for children and adults, and more. The self-sufficiency of a Community Force is what sets it apart from other institutions, as it is funded by members of the Black community themselves. The workers are members of the community, particularly those who are young, struggling to find work, and are perhaps “ex-offenders.” Their job becomes the protection and uplifting of their community, paid directly by those they are helping. Worldwide, every Black community has the power to establish a Community Force, each linked through the internet, offering advice, training and resources to one another. There is strength in numbers.

Further Reading:

The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander
Policing the Planet, Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton
Police: A Field Guide, David Correia and Tyler Wall
Black Resistance to British Policing, Adam Elliot-Cooper
Untouchables: Dirty Cops, Bent Justice, and Racism in Scotland Yard, Laurie Flynn and Michael Gillard
There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, Paul Gilroy
Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order, Stuart Hall and others
The Condemnation of Blackness, Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Brazil: Mixture or Massacre?, Abdias do Nascimento
Black-on-Black Violence, Amos Wilson

"F*** The Police!"