The Roots of Police Violence and Brutality
Police brutality and violence against the public is an accepted fact of life in the West, especially in the US. And, the target of police brutality is always the ‘working class’—the poor. The roots of police violence and brutality lie in its very inception—Police force was created to Protect and Serve the wealthy and their property — And, to keep the working population under control.
Police, from its very beginning, has been an instrument of suppression – a ruthless force in the service of the ruling elites. It was created to use violence to intimidate and subjugate the working people, make them obey the Law of the ruling elites, and to make them work longer and harder to produce more wealth for the wealthy class. From its very inception it has been a force essential to implement the Parasitic Economic Order that was envisioned by the Ruling Elites back in the nineteenth century.
The concept and formation of police force in the United States is based on the model of development of policing in England where police was created as part of the post eighteenth-century economic order. To understand the police violence against common people in the US, it is essential to understand the ideology that was behind the formation of modern police in England.
Police: The Economy and Labor Management
The blue print for the formation of the ‘modern police’ was presented by Adam Smith in his magnum opus (great work !) ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’, commonly known as ‘The Wealth of Nations’ in 1776. In it he outlined the actual details of the labor process to the world market of commodities. He proclaimed, “civil government, so far as it is instituted for the sanctity of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor.”
Previously, back in 1763, he had presented the ‘idea’ of Police in his Lectures on Police – a new hub in the Atlantic economy for banking and commerce of tobacco plantations. He had defined police as a force essential for establishing the order of “cleanliness, security, cheapness and plenty.”
Adam Smith is the delegated ‘Father’ of the modern capitalist economic system in the West. Adam Smith et al, in cahoot with the other economists of the era – from the same schools of thought, defined the role of “police” in context of the ‘modern economy’ which is based on the concept of ‘labor management’ – an economy that thrives on low wages and exploitation of labor of the workers.
His student, Adam Ferguson, put it quite blatantly, “wealth comes from inequality.” – The poor create wealth with their labor and work, and the rich own that wealth.
J Cunningham, another economist with the same school of thought as Adam Smith, in his essay ‘An Essay on Trade and Commerce (1770)’ declared, “A multitude of people being drawn together in a small territory will raise the price of provisions; but, at the same time, if the police be good, it must keep down the price of labor.” The poor house must become “a house of terror.” The workers are “a many-headed monster which every one should oppose.” To establish the six-day working week, “a good police must be established.”
The central argument of the essay is how workers should be made to work longer hours – and the ‘good policing’ is essential to this objective. Mr. Cunningham further elaborated in the same essay:
Put all the necessaries of the poor under one denomination; for instance, call them all wheat, or suppose that … the bushel of wheat shall cost five shillings and that he (a manufacturer) earns a shilling by his labour, he then would be obliged to work five days only in a week. If the bushel of wheat should cost but four shillings, he would be obliged to work but four days; but as wages in this kingdom are much higher in proportion to the price of necessaries … the manufacturer, who labours four days, has a surplus of money to live idle with the rest of the week . …
I hope I have said enough to make it appear that the moderate labour of six days in a week is no slavery. Our labouring people do this, and to all appearance are the happiest of all our labouring poor… but the Dutch do this in manufactures, and appear to be a very happy people. The French do so, when holidays do not intervene. But our populace have adopted a notion, that as Englishmen they enjoy a birthright privilege of being more free and independent than in any country in Europe. Now this idea, as far as it may affect the bravery of our troops, may be of some use; but the less the manufacturing poor have of it, certainly the better for themselves and for the State.
The labouring people should never think themselves independent of their superiors…. It is extremely dangerous to encourage mobs in a commercial state like ours, where, perhaps, seven parts out of eight of the whole, are people with little or no property. The cure will not be perfect, till our manufacturing poor are contented to labour six days for the same sum which they now earn in four days.”
To this end, and for “extirpating idleness debauchery and excess,” promoting a spirit of industry, “lowering the price of labour in our manufactories, and easing the lands of the heavy burden of poor’s rates,” our “faithful Eckart” of capital proposes this approved device: to shut up such labourers as become dependent on public support, in a word, paupers, in “an ideal workhouse.” Such ideal workhouse must be made a “House of Terror,” and not an asylum for the poor, “where they are to be plentifully fed, warmly and decently clothed, and where they do but little work.”
The economist like Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and J Cunningham were the mouth piece of the ruling elites in England, and all over the western hemisphere. They were commissioned with the task of convincing all parties in the corridors of power to adopt and implement a policing policy to control, manipulate and suppress the labor – which was essential to increase wealth of the wealthy.
Formation of Police Force – To Protect and Serve the Wealthy
Following on those ideas and economic philosophy, in 1829 the first Metropolitan Police Act was passed in Britain. British Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel, was given the task to form the first Metropolitan Police Force in England – It was the birth of era of suppressive policing in the West – Police is the service of the wealthy.
The same ‘concepts’ and parasitic ‘Economic Modality promoted by the likes of Adam Smith and Cunningham was adopted in the formation of police force in America. But, unlike England, policing in America remained informal well into the early nineteenth century – well after the revolution. In those early days, it was more a force to monitor and control slaves, minorities, and the labor class.
Lineage in The Slave Patrols of The Past
The institution of slavery and the control of labor class, indeed, were two of the more formidable historic features of the early policing in America. Slave patrols and Night Watches – which later became modern police departments, were both formed to control the slaves and labor – the two most oppressed and suppressed classes in America.
It was late into the 1830s that the idea of formal municipal police department – on the lines of police departments in England, first emerged in the United States. City of Boston was the first city in the US to establish the very first formal American police force in 1838. Following on the lead of Boston were; New York City in 1845, Albany, NY and Chicago in 1851, New Orleans and Cincinnati in 1853, Philadelphia in 1855, and Newark, NJ and Baltimore in 1857 (Harring 1983, Lundman 1980; Lynch 1984). By the 1880s all major US cities had municipal police forces in place – all on the pattern of the old slave patrols.
The similarities between the slave patrols of the early days and modern policing in US are very obvious – the same mentality of violence and brutality against the general public – the poor, minorities, and the working class. No wonder, the modus operandi of the ‘modern’ American police force is still the same as the slave patrols of the past – the rampant use of violence and brutality with the objective to intimidate and control the masses.
Out-Classing Its Progenitor – The Slave Patrols
Police brutality in the US is rooted in it history. Police, following on its ‘slave patrol’ roots, has always acted with utmost violence against the poor and the working class. It has a long history of brutality against the masses: From the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, to the Pullman Strike of 1894, the Lawrence textile strike of 1912, the Ludlow massacre of 1914, the Steel strike of 1919, the Hanapepe massacre of 1924, and the massacre of the students during the Vietnam war era, the police has alway proven its loyalty to the masters – The wealthy ruling class.
During the early 1900’s, the brutal beating of suspects was a prevalent and accepted practice. Even the judges were on record commenting on the number of citizens being brought through the courts with broken hands and bruised bodies as a result of the so called ‘need for force’ in order to make the arrest.
Police force has since been methodologically improvising, refining, and polishing its skills in brutalizing the common people – the poor, the weak, and the defenseless. It is a force that invokes fear and terror in the hearts of innocent people.
There has been only one constant in police behavior – One is guaranteed a violent response from police whatever the call may be – Albeit with one exception, police brutality against the public is on a sharp upswing since the ‘terror attack’ of 9/11 – Police has no regard even for the very old and fragile or the very young – every one is terrorized with equal ferociousness.
The news headlines of police brutalities like these below are too familiar to elaborate any further:
- A San Antonio police officer Rapes a 19-Year-Old Girl after forcing her to stop her car.
- Cop Breaks 84 Year Old’s Neck For Touching Him.
- She Dialed 911. The Cop Who Came to Help Raped Her.
- California Cops Burn Man’s Genitals For Littering.
- Californian police officers who shot two innocent women will be sent back to field.
- Surveillance video of Chicago Police Brutality on Woman.
- GRAPHIC VIDEO: Homeless Man Shot During Camping Arrest.
- Police shot dead an unarmed man with hands -up.
- An unarmed man was killed by police in volley of at least 34 bullets.
- 23 Miami Cops unload 377 bullets at two unarmed men.
- Pasco police won’t say how many bullets fired at unarmed man shot dead by police.
- Cops rape woman in Courtroom.
- Boynton Beach police officer rapes a woman at gunpoint at a checkpoint.
- Houston police shot to death a double amputee in a wheelchair.
- 12-Year-Old Boy Dies After Police in Cleveland Shoot Him.
That is how the Slave Patrols used to terrorize the slaves in the past. Police force is still the same salve patrol of the old – The only things that have changed are the badges and uniform.
The cases of police violence and viciousness are almost every day’s stories. Further, most cases of police brutality, where police beats its victims viciously and break their limbs and faces, are not reported due to the fear of more police violence. As the victims of police violence are always the weak and poor, police act with impunity, their crimes are never punished.
Such acts of violence that the police carries out against the general public are not the consequences of the brutality of individual officers, but are the consequences of careful policies designed to have a police force that is trained and indoctrinated to use extreme violence to intimidate and control the working class to serve the needs of the economic order that thrives on low wages – consolidating the wealth in the hands of the wealthy class.
Police officers see themselves as part of the wealthy upper classes – the enforcers of Law – The Law of Ruling Elites – even while the upper classes see them as mere low level enforcers. As a reward for their loyal service to the masters, police are guaranteed a decent living. Unlike other workers, they are not subject to layoffs or pay cuts. These special ‘perks’ make them see themselves separate and apart from the ‘working class’ and also make them see the poor as their enemy. Police believe in an “us against them” attitude against the poor – and acts accordingly – with all its brute might and power. Because their targets are the powerless and poor, police can act with virtual impunity.
Expanding Role of Police – Morphing into an Occupation Force
With the unavoidable coming changes on the economic and financial front, the ruling elites are expecting a complete breakdown in the established ‘social order’ – and getting ready for it. In preparation for the public uprise and the resulting turmoil in the western hemisphere, police force – all over the West, has been transformed into an occupation army. That is the reason for a sharp increase in police violence against the people – it sees the public as “enemy”, and responds accordingly.
To fulfill its role as an occupation force, police has been armed with military grade weapons – “Counterterrosim” is the mantra to justify the militarization of police in the West. since 9/11, police departments in America have used more than $40 billion in grant funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to militarize in the name of counterterrorism.
Armed to the teeth, police departments across the country now carry military-grade weapons. They sport Humvees and armored personnel carriers designed for use on a battlefield, machine guns, sniper rifles, helicopters, tanks, and armed drones.
Police has now metamorphosed into an occupation force – and acts like one. Its SWAT unit regularly conduct military style operations in the neighborhoods. As the “Economist” commented in , every year, there are approximately 50,000 SWAT raids in the United States, according to Professor Pete Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies. In other words, roughly 137 times a day a SWAT team assaults a home in US and terrorizes the surrounding community.
Reforming The Police – Rooting Out the Violence
We have to recognize the fact that the roots of police violence and brutality lie in the Parasitic Economic Order that has been in place in the West since the early eighteenth century. Police force was created to subjugate and intimidate the labor to make them work longer and harder to create more wealth for the wealthy class. From its very beginning, it has been an instrument of suppression – a ruthless force in the service of the ruling elites.
It was created to Protect and Serve the wealthy, and to keep the working population under control. It has always been a force essential to implement the parasitic economic order of the ruling class.
So, Stop Kidding Yourself. There is no way to ‘reform’ police. It is part of the Parasitic Economic Order that is has been in place for more than Two Centuries.
Want to reform the Police: Change the economic system – Otherwise, don’t Kidd yourself.
Oppression and tyranny only work for so long, and as long as the victims of it tolerate it; however it is a fact that at some point there comes a breaking or reckoning and the tables get turned and the aggressors become the subject of their own medicine, an deservedly so as they have willingly brought it upon themselves by allowing their actions to be deviant and cruel.
You connected the dots between the early days ‘Slave Patrols’ and the present day ‘Police Force’. It is the same ‘force’ – a force to suppress and control the poor and pressed. That is what is behind all the atrocious behavior of the police.
Shooting and killing unarmed citizens with impunity – tortures, and rapes, And, enjoy the hubris of Obama:
“One of the things that sets Americans apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional is our willing to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.”
Anyhow, so pleased to discovered this site – Thanks to The News Scouter: http://newsscouter.com/
To all the readers: Visit The News Scouter. It is an amazing news aggregation site – what a contrast from the crap at ‘RENSE’.
I thank The Truth Seeker for guiding me to The News Scouter that, in turn, brought me here. A great find. It made my day.
I have book marked both sites, News Scouter and Views and Previews.
Rarely do we find such well documented, well argued, and well articulated essay. Great work!
I am happy to have discover this gem, thanks to The News Scouter.
“It was late into the 1830s that the idea of formal municipal police department – on the lines of police departments in England, first emerged in the United States. City of Boston was the first city in the US to establish the very first formal American police force in 1838. Following on the lead of Boston were; New York City in 1845, Albany, NY and Chicago in 1851, New Orleans and Cincinnati in 1853, Philadelphia in 1855, and Newark, NJ and Baltimore in 1857 (Harring 1983, Lundman 1980; Lynch 1984). By the 1880s all major US cities had municipal police forces in place – all on the pattern of the old slave patrols.”
The slave patrols were the model in the antebellum South where all able bodied men mostly “poor whites” had to serve in the slave patrols aka militia aka “patty rollers” to watch out for run away Africans, monitor or break up groups of more than two or three congregating Africans and defend against perceived threats from Native Americans.
When waves of immigrants (Irish and Germans) came during the early 1800’s in the North they caused numerous problems for the city’s leadership so they organized paid “peace keeping” organizations to keep them under surveillance and used violence as the prime means of social control. Origin of the Police.
Crowd/population control/surveillance were their main functions and brutal violence was used to break up any threat or challenge to the status quo by slave insurrections, workers, trade unionists or organizers. That was the history of the police in the United States. Modern police departments still perform that role, they still function to protect and serve the interests of the ownership/ruling classes and violence is still their most potent tool/weapon.
The roots are cowardice, greed, pettiness, and fear. Anger is the emotional byproduct, and the ability to feel it and act on it protected by the state.
Apply this formula to all organized crime, and there you go.
“Smith says that 90 days would be a good enough “cooling-off” period where public unrest should dissipate on its own.”
Senator Smith is counting on the time honored short attention span of the wage slave, never
fails. How many police executions already in 2015…lets just call the state sanctioned murders
what they are shall we
“a fact of life in the West.”
Yeah? It’s hardly any different in Russia, both in Imperial days and under the Communists.
Not different under the monarchs in the UK and the Continent.
Not different under the Spanish Empire in South Amer., Mexico and the Philippines.
Not different in any christian country, ruled by the church in the past.
Nor in the Middle East under islam.
Nor in China under the Emperors, nor now.
And Africa. Then and now.
The poor people have always suffered the same
Another of your thought provoking essay. Well researched and well presented. You have put the historical facts and connected the dots very well. Police of the present is the same as the Salve Patrols of the past. The only difference is that now we are the slaves – slaves with no guaranty of two meals and the roof over the head,
But, since we are no one’s property, our lives are of no value. Police can use our bodies for target practice and for perfecting their torturing techniques.
Just a dream, but can you imagine, for a minute, what it would look like if police officers were trained in mediation? What if you called the police when you witnessed a violent fight; officers arrived ready to separate the parties, come to a non-violent resolution, and make sure each person got home safely.
When it happens, it will be a free and democratic country.
We are in a Police State. Police is a special class in itself. It has the license to kill. When they kill, and kill they quite often, the identities of the killer cops will be “sealed” from the public.
Law Proposed To Keep Police Officers’ Names Secret When They Shoot People :
Even though there have been numerous objections raised to SB 1445, the state Senate committee advanced a bill Wednesday that would keep the names of police officers secret after shootings.
Law enforcement agencies would be permitted to withhold names of officers involved in shootings for 90 days after incidences of deadly force.
The Tucson Sentinel reports that SB 1445 “would apply unless the officer is arrested or charged, a criminal investigation is complete, the Arizona Rules of Criminal Procedure require the release, or the officer consents to the release.”
The bill was drafted by Senator Steve Smith (R-Maricopa), who said that his goal in writing the legislation is “to protect officers and their families.”
“This bill came because we are trying to protect those who protect us,” he explained.
Smith says that 90 days would be a good enough “cooling-off” period where public unrest should dissipate on its own.
———–
We enslaved the rest of the world, and were very proud about it. We cheered the sufferings of other humans. Now, the same tyranny whose deadly deeds we were so pleased with, has turned the table on us.
It is our turn now.
We are being treated like the slave – rather, worst than slaves. Slave Patrols are now ‘watching’ us.
It is called, Karma. Payback time.
Scary! An eye opener to those who still believe that it is a ‘free’ and democratic country and that the “system works”.
I especially admired your NO BS analysis – No, there is no way to reform the police – without reforming the whole system. – That means, installing a new system – a system of economic justice.
And, don’t forget dumping the blood sucking ‘parasites’ in the hydrochloric acid first. There will be no just system as long as we are infested with the parasites.
Police is running its own Guantanamo style torture chambers to break our limbs and to make us “confess” to the “crimes” that we never committed. Here is one curtsey of The Guardian. And, don’t think it only the Chicago police.
Check out the good news:
Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site’:
The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.
“Homan Square is definitely an unusual place. It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.”
On a smaller scale, Homan Square is “analogous to the CIA’s black sites,” said Andrea Lyon, a former Chicago public defender and current dean of Valparaiso University Law School. When she practiced law in Chicago in the 1980s and 1990s, she said, “police used the term ‘shadow site’” to refer to the quasi-disappearances now in place at Homan Square.
This article takes a rather helpless stand, as if the public should just quietly accept this.
The public will not.
With each passing day that results in rising anger against police psychosis, the payback that will come
(and it is going to happen) will be too horrible to imagine. But yes, the revolt will certainly result in reformed
police.
Most importantly, police chiefs across the nation are being sent to israel to be trained on how to most effectively abuse and control the population. We are all Palestinians now.
A well researched article. You established the connection between the economic order and the police force very well.
I consider myself a well read person, but the thought of connecting the “slave Patrols” of the past with the present day police violence never occurred to me. Now I can understand from where this brutality is coming.
A great work.
Is it another of those “scare tactics’? Police doing its best in the given circumstances. They have to use force when justified. This they do only to protect us. Ever thought what will happen without police?
To protect us! You must be kidding.
Read this article again. It is well researched piece – check out the facts yourself. Does the police look like a democratic institution to you?
Look around… what’s it look like to you? What about the 2,770 armored personnel carriers purchased by Homeland Security, which also bought 2 billion rounds of ammunition? Or the troop and materiel movements all over the country? Do you doubt for one second who will be on the receiving end of all that firepower? Or the 800 FEMA camps all over the country? Who do you suppose will populate those? Martians? So, they finally got what they wanted, absolute power unrestrained by law, and the total, “legal”, destruction of your rights and liberty. “Freedom and Democracy”, those worthy fables so beloved by the American masses, are dead, and have been for a very long time. Now it’s “legal.” And before your eyes glaze over and you recite, mantra like, “Oh, that could never happen here…” read the whole “Martial Law” post. Guess what? It HAS already happened here…
People would be forced to defend themselves.
People may be forced to do more than defend ourselves. It is past time to nip this shit in the bud . We must reinstate our Constitution.
Defenseless people have no right to defend themselves from the piercing bullets – Police has the right to pump your body with hollow-point bullets. You have no right to own any bulletproof gear.
Here comes the Responsible Body Armor Possession Act to ‘Protect and Serve’ us:
A new piece of legislation (H.R. 378.) was introduced in the House of Representatives, labeled the Responsible Body Armor Possession Act, which if enacted would deprive law abiding citizens from purchasing body armor.
According to authors of the bill, bulletproof vests or helmets may prevent law-enforcers from doing their job properly. The bill may thus usurp people’s ability to own a truly defensive form of protection, with penalties for possession or ownership ranging from fines to jail time or both.
Police violence and brutality against the public is only going to grow more. See below the bright brain child of ‘our’ Congress:
Law Proposed To Keep Police Officers’ Names Secret When They Shoot People :
Even though there have been numerous objections raised to SB 1445, the state Senate committee advanced a bill Wednesday that would keep the names of police officers secret after shootings.
Law enforcement agencies would be permitted to withhold names of officers involved in shootings for 90 days after incidences of deadly force.
The Tucson Sentinel reports that SB 1445 “would apply unless the officer is arrested or charged, a criminal investigation is complete, the Arizona Rules of Criminal Procedure require the release, or the officer consents to the release.”
The bill was drafted by Senator Steve Smith (R-Maricopa), who said that his goal in writing the legislation is “to protect officers and their families.”
“This bill came because we are trying to protect those who protect us,” he explained.
Smith says that 90 days would be a good enough “cooling-off” period where public unrest should dissipate on its own.
Now, police can kill without any worries. Welcome to the land of Free.