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The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People, Not ‘Serve and Protect’
from In These Times:
The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People, Not Serve and Protect
BY SAM MITRANI
In most of the liberal discussions of the recent police killings of unarmed black men, there is an underlying assumption that the police are supposed to protect and serve the population. That is, after all, what they were created to do.
If only the normal, decent relations between the police and the community could be re-established, this problem could be resolved. Poor people in general are more likely to be the victims of crime than anyone else, this reasoning goes, and in that way, they are in more need than anyone else of police protection. Maybe there are a few bad apples, but if only the police werent so racist, or didnt carry out policies like stop-and-frisk, or werent so afraid of black people, or shot fewer unarmed men, they could function as a useful service that we all need.
This liberal way of viewing the problem rests on a misunderstanding of the origins of the police and what they were created to do.
The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid- to late-19th century from the threat posed by that systems offspring, the working class.
This is a blunt way of stating a nuanced truth, but sometimes nuance just serves to obfuscate. ...............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17505/police_and_poor_people
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The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People, Not ‘Serve and Protect’ (Original Post)
marmar
Jan 2015
OP
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)1. All Too True
eom
gregcrawford
(2,382 posts)2. Dead on...
... History is never kind to the wealthy. The truth of their perfidy is always exposed sooner or later.
adirondacker
(2,921 posts)3. Interesting perspective and history lesson. Thanks for posting! nt
Judi Lynn
(160,545 posts)5. Thank you, marmar. Rec. n/t