The Ever-Growing Police and Military State is Rapidly Turning Inward: A Statement by Cincinnati Socialists

Photo of protestors being confronted by riot police
Credit: Amber Kipp

In the wake of the George Floyd protests, there has been little change in the landscape of systemic racism and wanton violence that permeates law enforcement. Three years later, killings by cops have only continued, police departments continue to receive a lion's share of every city's budget, and demands to "defund the police" are barely permitted in any mainstream news outlet. Meanwhile, the police have intensified their violent practices. More people were slaughtered by police in 2022 than in any other year.

In recent weeks, it has been announced that McDowell County in West Virginia is receiving a two-million-dollar grant to retrofit a former coal mine into a cop and military training "facility"—one to familiarize both occupying forces with forest warfare. This is happening alongside the $90 million Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, or "Cop City" as we've come to know it. That construction project will destroy over 85 acres of green space and forest, which at one point was being defended by activists a part of Defend Atlanta Forests, until police brutally murdered Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, also known as Tortuguita. It has been suggested by many outlets and offices, including the DeKalb County Medical Examiner's office, which ruled the death a homicide in their autopsy, that Tortuguita never fired at the police, contradicting the police reports. Tortuguita was shot 54 times. Since then, three activists are facing up to twenty years in prison for merely having made flyers that named the officers involved in the shooting and posting them around the area. Those three activists have been denied bail and were kept in solitary confinement for days.

In Taylorsville, Mississippi, Rasheem Carter, 25, went missing in October after telling police and his mother that he felt his life was in danger and that white men in his community were targeting him. A month later, officials found his remains. He was found decapitated, with his spinal cord disconnected, and his remains scattered over three different locations. Officials initially claimed his death showed no signs of foul play, even suggesting it was due to wild animals. Carter's family continues to be stonewalled by officials while in search of answers. Add to this the famously inept and cowardly response of the Uvalde, Texas police to the May 24, 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School, and we can see that there is little evidence that police brutality is a necessary evil for controlling violent crime. Even when the police are not overtly brutal, they are incompetent and cavalier. Skyrocketing police budgets have done nothing to make them less so.

The surge of domestic oppression isn't novel; history shows that during the Red Scares of both the 1920s and 1950s, as well as the nationwide labor uprising of 1877, police intensified brutality in response to working-class unrest. What is unique today is the crumbling state of both American imperialist hegemony and the capitalist mode of production itself. A sharp decline in US prestige and influence abroad necessitates more violence at home. Domestic policing tactics increasingly resemble the practices of occupying armies abroad. Ruling-class violence is now truly globalized, as oppressed people and workers in the US and abroad are surveilled, managed, and controlled with the same technologies and techniques

Moreover, since 2001, with the introduction of the Patriot Act in response to 9/11, police have drastically encroached upon personal autonomy in the US in the name of a sham sense of security. The pretext in 2001 was nebulous, yet ubiquitous, "terrorists." Yet those laws continue to contribute to a domestic culture of paranoia. The draconian sentencing requirements of the Clinton administration have also been shown to disproportionately target minorities and the impoverished, despite a historically low domestic crime rate. Yet, these statutes also remain on the books and are now being weaponized as much as possible in the face of rising civil dissatisfaction. Joining the bacterial culture of paranoia-driven legislation are unequal protections for state officials and police, as in the Florida case of a woman being charged for throwing wine on Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Meanwhile, the quality of life in the US continues to erode, as inflation persists and conservative economic policies continue their centuries-long gatekeeping of access to services and equity. Fascism is a reaction to the capitalist crisis in the state of imperialism we see today. As the diplomatic power of America wanes globally, state violence increasingly turns inwards to protect the semblance of order and control in the name of corporate interests. At the same time, global policing itself becomes hyperviolent, as military force becomes imperialism’s tool of last resort.

Cincinnati Socialists continue to call for the abolition of police, beginning with defunding the police and using those funds for services that address the causes of poverty. We continue to call for an end to the criminalization of poverty, including the removal of so-called resource officers from Black and working-class schools. Cincinnati Socialists call for more public health and safety but insist that more police are not the answer. The police mainly protect property, especially the property of the rich and elite. To borrow the calls from the late Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers, Cincinnati Socialists encourage the people to make the most important distinction: We are not the pigs and we are going to have to stand up against them if we want liberation and revolution.