In recent weeks, social media has spotlighted police brutality. The primary lens through which police brutality has been viewed is a racial one. Despite the current climate, it is crucial to understand that policing is also a fundamentally propertarian-capitalist concept. For example, policing in the UK was founded as large groups of armed men to work as strike-breakers. While the history of the police is nuanced, there are fundamental economic factors still at play.
It is uncomfortably easy seeing the roots of US policing in slave patrols, but racism permeates as an economic tool that is central to the capitalism of the US (reading J. Sakai on this can be illuminating). Remember: not only the blatant murders committed by police motivate the slogan ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards), but also their protection of private property, through which they deprive people of necessary resources. This is the police functioning as intended, indeed one of their most central functions. While this is just a taste of the extent to which police brutality is ever present in society, knowledge is power, however small the drop in the ocean may be.
Written by Oliver Haythorne
Media by Ben Hyland
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