Law enforcement exists primarily to protect the ruling class of any society. Institutions can survive longer than any individual, they sometimes have a history of centuries and therefore are likely to have some deeply embedded traits that have been replicated throughout their time of existence, despite changing on the outside. Law enforcement agencies that have developed into today's police force are such institutions. So here's a brief history of policing, specifically in America, how it has always been a tool of the elites and big business, and how it is rooted in slavery.
source: reddit
When reading my posts it's easy to label me a class reductionist, which is why I'd like to make this disclaimer; racism and other social also antagonisms exist without the overwhelming influence of the overarching class-struggle. Prejudice against trans people, for example, is in no way related to economical class-struggle that I can conceive of, other than it being a side effect of the ruling class' need to divide the populous along as many lines as possible. Likewise, racism is a deeply rooted human trait found in any ethnic group, and is caused by fearing the unknown and prioritizing the well-being of the indigenous population, that has to be dealt with separately. However, the phenomenon of the lower classes being policed, while the upper classes are being protected by the law enforcement apparatus, and the "special" treatment of black Americans by the American police, as well as the police acting against labor movements throughout history, these ARE directly related to the class-divide and its resulting struggle. When we talk about "systemic racism", nowhere is this so apparently visible as in the police brutality aimed at African Americans, and more recently against Hispanics from Central- and South America. Heck, in America's early history, when it was populated primarily by English and Dutch people, it were the Irish, Germans and Italians who got the wrong end of the stick:
Beginning in the early 19th century, large numbers of immigrants from Germany and Ireland settled in the steadily growing urban centres of New York City and Boston. Their cultures and lifestyles initially offended the sensibilities of Americans whose families, mainly from England and The Netherlands, had settled in the country in the previous century or earlier. Indeed, the existence of large immigrant populations in the crowded cities of the East was perceived as a threat to the very fabric of American society. Eventually, the political, economic, and social dominance of Americans of English and Dutch extraction was eroded.
source: ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
How American Slavery Helped Create Modern Day Policing
One of the earliest forms of policing in what later became the United States of America was done by the Slave patrols. Called patrollers, patterrollers, pattyrollers or paddy rollers by the slaves, this was an organized group of armed white men who monitored and enforced discipline upon black slaves in the antebellum U.S. southern states:
Slave patrols first began in South Carolina in 1704 and spread throughout the thirteen colonies, lasting well beyond the American Revolution. As the population of black slaves boomed, especially with the invention of the cotton gin, so did the fear of slave resistance and uprisings. The development of slave patrols began when other means of slave control failed to instill slave control and obedience. Their biggest concern were slaves on the plantations since that is where slave populations were highest.
source: Wikipedia
Back then and over there in the New World the elite consisted in large part of slave holders; only a handful of the Founding Fathers of America did not own slaves, including John Adams and Thomas Paine, and slave-owner Thomas Jefferson actually wrote a draft section of the Constitution absolving Americans of responsibility for slavery by blaming the British. Observe however that policing was aimed at protecting the property of the white slaveholders, it's coincidental that this property happened to be black people imported from Africa. After the industrial revolution and the automation of production that made slaves relatively expensive for the owner class, the police was given a new task while also keeping true to their original task of protecting whites against rebellious blacks; they now became the bane of the leftist labor movements and became instrumental in the practice of union busting.
Minneapolis is Doing it. They're Abolishing the Police.
The most infamous example of this in America is without doubt the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, a private security guard and detective agency established in the United States by Scotsman Allan Pinkerton in 1850 and currently a subsidiary of Securitas AB:
In response to intrajurisdictional crime waves in the second half of the 19th century, states enacted laws giving many business corporations the authority to create their own private police forces or to contract with established police agencies. [...] The most famous independent police force was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Created in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton, a political fugitive from Scotland whose father was a police sergeant, the Pinkerton agency provided a wide array of private detective services and specialized in protecting trains, apprehending train robbers, and strikebreaking and other activities directed against labour unions.
source: ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
In our times the police is used to break up peaceful protests and incite violence from protesters in order to justify using violence themselves; just look at the 1999 Seattle WTO protests (AKA "the Battle of Seattle"), and how Occupy Wall Street was eventually forcefully ended by the police. And notice how both political sides are intent on perpetuating this arm of systemic class- and racial suppression by refusing to propose any meaningful change to policing. With this in mind it's infuriating to witness the virtue signalling by Democratic party leaders that changed a memorial in honor of of the death of George Floyd into a cheap photo-opportunity. I mean, how can you criticize Trump for grandstanding in front of a church, holding up a Bible he's never read, when you yourself wear an African scarf you have no connection to whatsoever while kneeling supposedly in respect for Floyd and so many of his peers that were slain by the "long arm of the law"?
Pelosi's CRINGEWORTHY kneeling display as Biden rules out defund the police
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