The Police Can’t Be Reformed: Justice for Donovan Lewis

On Tuesday, the Columbus Police Department went to serve a warrant at Donovan Lewis’s family household around 2:30AM. Within a short time, officers had entered the home, broke into Lewis’s room and within one second, shot Lewis. By now, you’ve probably heard the horrible details of the proceeding exchange between CPD and Lewis and can fill in the blanks. Lewis was later pronounced dead at 3:19 a.m., less than an hour after police had knocked on his door.

It has been since Tuesday that the story has broken, along with police body cam footage that clearly shows the officer murdering Lewis. Communities inside Columbus,  Ohio, and stretching across the states, far enough to the point of making it on international outlets, have expressed their outrage at the cycle of murder by the hands of the police—and thereby the state—while also being flooded with questions of “why?” in regards to the tragic loss of life. 

At the time of writing this at midnight on Wednesday, Columbus Mayor Ginther has not spoken. Cincinnati Mayor Pureval, Governor DeWine and President Biden have all yet to speak on the subject. Our leaders won’t genuinely and openly condemn police violence before it is politically convenient to do so, let alone enact a modicum of meaningful change. Because to do so, they’d have to grapple with the very real blight of systemic racism that is baked into the foundation of law enforcement. To do so, they’d have to indict many of the institutions into which racism is embedded and then confront the fact that this isn’t something that can be reformed.

The violence didn’t start when police barged into Lewis’s room. It didn’t start when CPD violently banged on the door of the house. It didn’t start when CPD made the decision and proposed a warrant for the early hours of the morning while the house was asleep. This violent cycle has ran alongside the building of the American empire which was founded on the premise of slave labor. It ran alongside the century-and-a-half British enslavement of Africans in the millions, in creation of the trade route that supplied America its slave labor. This history has continually informed America’s treatment of Black people and other people of color.

These are decisions informed by a demand for an unending growth of profit. Capitalism operates off just that: capitalizing on vulnerable communities and exploiting their labor. This is made possible by a socially exclusive set of norms in attempts to justify the many forms of violence carried out to this day, including (but not limited to) the over-policing and -incarceration of Black people and other communities of color, LGBTQ+ people, the working and workless poor, the homeless and other historically disenfranchised communities. 

The police are the extension of the state that perpetuates this trend. It’s a waste of time trying to figure out which cops are racist and which ones aren’t without accepting that it doesn’t matter what you are: the system will use you for race and class warfare. This is undeniable at this point. 

Cincinnati Socialists condemn the murder of Donovan Lewis by the Columbus Police Department. We urge our city leaders—all over Ohio—to defund police and reinvest into services that treat the primary driver of crime: poverty. Reinvest into housing, education and health services that help treat our communities with care rather than punishment. We urge the working class—the people—to imagine other solutions. We can make decisions to fund programs and services that serve our communities while fighting for a radical transformation away from profit-driven, senseless violence. We’re well within reason to say that this isn’t working, we’re well within reason to demand a change. 

The power of the oppressed is to be measured and actualized in its numbers, a power that can crush its oppressor and beautifully build a society that prefers the health and growth of its people, in the many directions that is beyond numbers: the safe expression of sexual and gender identity, the fostering of communities, the health of our planet and the animals on it and so much more. 

Capitalism teaches us that war, crime and violence are inevitable. It can’t ever provide a reason why, it just points to it and dares us to accept the logic without question. If you’ve ever asked: is this inevitable? The answer is: No. Together, we can fight these systems, and more importantly, we can win.