Economic crisis brings more attacks on cops as their role as defenders of the rich becomes clearer

Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime. Emma Goldman

Police Attacking Puerto Rican students

The huge jump in law enforcement deaths over the last year is beginning to cause some concern among government officials. Two cops were gunned down on the street in Alaska, what has been described as an ambush, and two others were gunned down along a highway in Arkansas.

A man wanted for writing a bad check shot and killed two Tampa, Fla., police officers in June of this year and there have been many more similar incidents, what the authorities describe as “cluster killings.”. The AP reports that Fifty-nine federal, state and local officers were killed by gunfire in 2010, a 20% jump from 2009. In all, cop killings, what the media terms death “in the line of duty” rose 37%, from 117 in 2009 to 170 this year.

"We're asking our officers to do more with less. We're asking them to fight conventional crime, and we're asking them to serve on the front lines in the war against terror," one official told the AP. Another expert, Maria Haberfeld, a professor of police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice claimed that it the rise of community policing that has led to less respect for the police.

One analyst said that the deaths do reflect a declining respect for the police. She was brutally honest although I would say unintentionally so, saying that "It's a cascading effect of the people thinking police are here to serve and protect them on an individual basis instead of acting as an arm of the government.” she added, "We spend hours teaching children about Shakespeare and history, but we don't devote even an hour a week to the role of police in creating the world in which we live."

Police on picket line British Miner's strike

She hit the nail on the head. It is indeed the world in which we live that is increasing the hostility to the police as their role is less obscured by the increasing class polarization and war against workers. Who the police are actually here to “serve and protect” becomes much clearer in times of economic crisis.

I have been to numerous rental or foreclosure protests where the police have turned up in order to evict families form their homes on behalf of either slumlords or bankers. I was active in the student movement here in California and the police are clearly on the side of the corporations, that cannot be denied in times of heightened class struggle. The class nature cannot help become clearer under these circumstances. Workers and youth are not idiots and we are not blind. We see the role of government as it plunders the resources of society on behalf of the super rich, on behalf of the capitalist class and wherever workers, renters, homeowners and youth resist these attacks, the police are there, as they have always been, to enforce the laws. They are pledged to enforce the laws of the land and the laws of the land are made by the rich to protect their interests and profits.

The man that entered that school board in Florida shouted out that his wife had lost her job and needed a job before killing himself. People are losing all that they have. They have done everything right, worked hard, trusted the authorities and have lost everything; this drives people crazy, especially so in the US where the capitalist propaganda that we are all in control of our own destiny and that the good life is out there if you work hard and take the opportunities offered you is very strong. This false ideology is echoed by the Union leaders, the preachers and the majority of the academics in their universities. There is limited counter to it so when people fail they blame themselves with catastrophic results.

There are millions of people who live this every day of course, the poor, and people of color who have much less faith in the government as in these communities, the police are an occupying force defending the system that cannot house, feed, or employ people productively, offering only prison, or death, as a future.   But the ranks of this group is growing, being filled with people who have had their world shattered by the market and have faced situations they never dreamed of, like sheriffs forcibly removing them from their homes.

This increased assault on law enforcement is a result of the continuing economic crisis and attacks on workers and the middle class. It is also fueled by the lack of an organized mass movement that they can turn to that can drive back this offensive of capital. The trade Union leaders shoulder great responsibility for their refusal to use the resources at their command to build such a movement. Without an organized offensive, people lash out and turn to acts of individual violence and desperation; that is also what these suicides and family annihilations are about.

It is quite likely we will see more attacks on the police as the crisis continues and the response to it takes more organized form. And along with this, a growing police presence in response from the state.