Policing in America:
Modern Day Slave Patrols, Destroying Black Lives with Impunity
By Solomon Comissiong
Baltimore police recently brutally murdered an African/black man by the name of Freddie Gray. On April 12, 2015 Baltimore police brutally beat Mr. Gray so badly that much of his spinal cord was severed. He died several days later, on April 19th, due to horrendous injuries sustained from the savage beating. Freddie Gray’s crimes ostensibly were that he was black, he looked a white officer in the eyes and that he ran. Baltimore police found justification to see Freddie Gray as a potential “criminal” simply because he looked them in the eye and because he ran. This was apparently all the cause they needed to horrifically murder an African/black man in cold blood.
These barbaric Baltimore police officers, like many ‘law’ enforcement officials throughout the United States, frequently carry out these kinds of crimes on people of color. They usually do them with utter impunity. Recently the Detroit police officer (Joseph Weekley) that, in 2010, shot and killed a 7-year old African/black girl, while she slept on her family’s couch—was admitted back on the city’s police force. Her name was Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Manslaughter charges were dropped against him and he has now been allowed to maintain a living as a police officer—even after murdering a young girl. No justice for her or her family. This beautiful little girl can never be brought back to this earth and the man who murdered her never went to prison for his crime. There is no justice, because United States society is one that unofficially sanctions the state sponsored lynching of African/black people. Any intellectually honest person can hardly refute this—-the facts don’t lie.
It may be 2015, however numerous police are murdering African/black people as if it was 1815. Many US police departments are emulating the heinous origins of policing in America. They are behaving like modern day “slave patrols”, and carrying out actions that would make the Ku Klux Klan blush with envy.
The origins of the US’s system of policing was predicated on the establishment of “slave patrols” in the south, whose primary purpose was to protect the “property” of white plantation owners. Enslaved African/black people were their so-called “property”, as well as the land they stole from Native Americans. These slave patrols hunted down slaves who had escaped just so they could be brought back to vile slave maters. These enslaved African slaves would then continue to live out the remainder of their lives within the hell known as the plantation. The enslaved Africans would often be murdered in the process of being hunted down—or beaten to death upon being brought back to the good-for-nothing slave masters.
It should be noted that several of Euro-America’s Founding Fathers” were, in fact, also slave masters. This putrid list of loathsome human beings includes the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, to name a few. This context is vastly important, as it paints an honest picture of the legacy of a country that has yet to rectify the human rights violations of its odious past. And by openly glorifying slave masters, land thieves and mass murderers, they have made exceptions for these criminals, simply because they were white.
When police officers continue to murder unarmed people of color, what really has changed except for the method of assassination and the weapons being used? African/black people are still being killed for the audacity of looking a white person in the eye and running while black, as was the case with Freddie Gray of Baltimore, Maryland. The police murdered Mr. Gray as if they were rabid animals attacking anything within their vicinity. However, these animals were not interested in attacking just anything—-they wanted to attack African/black people. It incensed these racists that a black man would even dare to stare them in the eye and run. That action, in their sadistic world, was enough reason to destroy his life a most brutal fashion.
These modern day slave patrols kill with impunity. They are routinely on the hunt for people of color to serve within the world’s largest modern day slave plantation—the United States prison industry complex. Like past slave plantations throughout the south, the US prison industry complex is also largely predicated on profits. Despite making up 13 percent of the US population, American born Africans comprise close to 50 percent of the prison population. African/black people are profiled and marked as criminals and commodities. If the United Nations were any sort of effective organization it would have issued resolutions/condemnations aimed at intervening on behalf of African Americans. However since the United Nations is a footstool for the US government, it regularly picks on whatever nations the United States tells it to.
While fork-tongued American politicians globetrot lecturing much of the world regarding human rights, the US stands as one of the greatest violators of human rights. Much of the American populace has been systematically programmed never to recognize the rampant hypocrisies riddled throughout their society. Meanwhile, unarmed person of color, after unarmed person of color is murdered by law enforcement throughout the manufactured borders of the United States. This ruthless trend must stop!
If people of color are to ever see an end to these injustices, there will have to be a social revolution. It will have to be a social revolution that includes the complete abandonment from mainstream political organizations like the Democratic and Republican Parties. These political outfits have never supported the overall self-determination oriented interests of people of color. This is why they have never adopted platforms geared towards the ending of white supremacy and institutional racism. They are, in essence, white supremacy and white privilege masquerading as allies. The development of independent political organizations is critical on many levels.
This social revolution needs to develop a system of community policing in African/black communities, absent of the hyper police state pervasive throughout oppressed communities. Police officers, also need to be prosecuted in the same manner a civilian would be if he/she were to brutalize or kill someone in cold blood. Right now, this is absent from the United States’ vastly flawed so-called justice system. Even when African/black people are murdered on camera by police officers, their killer has an excellent chance of never facing any jail time. This is a crime, in and of itself.
United States society continues to harbor an unofficial new age Jim Crow system. This system is far more cleaver than the previous version. Today’s Jim Crow carefully and methodically programs the masses to believe that institutional racism and white supremacy are things of the past. The conductors of this system do so by way of distracting people with reality TV shows, movies, and sporting events that showcase faces of color, somehow proving that these black and brown faces would never be “rich” and famous if there was institutional racism. It matters very little that the imagery shown on Hip Hop music videos are often hyper racist and racially stereotypical. And it certainly does not matter that the communities from which these celebrities come from, are catching hell, including by way of racial profiling and police brutality.
This social revolution needs to cultivate a sustained critical consciousness regarding a number of racial and class based social issues. Social apathy must be a thing of the past. We must all do our parts in elevating this critical consciousness and sustained engagement of community activism. We all have role to play in this struggle for human rights and self-determination. Let us do it for Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Mike Brown and the countless other victims of police brutality and terror. Let us do it for the next generation, so they may never experience these kinds of crimes against humanity!
Solomon Comissiong (www.solomoncomissiong.com) is an educator, community activist, author, and Founder of the Your World News Media Collective (www.yourworldnews.org). Mr. Comissiong is also a founding member of the Pan-African collective for Advocacy & Action. Solomon is the author of A Hip Hop Activist Speaks Out on Social Issues. Solomon is also the writer and producer of the documentary, Hip Hop, White Supremacy & Capitalism: Why Corporations Infiltrated RAP Music. He can be reached at: solo@yourworldnews.org
