This is what Police Harassment Looks Like

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Member DSA

I want to urge followers of this blog to watch this in its entirety, including our many supporters abroad. It was sent to me by a friend in Louisville (Kentucky). I have a small speaker cube and it might be good to use one as some of the dialogue, particularly at the end, is a bit hard to hear.

This is a young 18 year old employed black youth stopped for a traffic infraction (an incorrect turn apparently). He has no record, as clean as a whistle.

The cops that stopped him belong to the Violent Crime Unit the officers says. Of course, the youth could be one of the top drug lords in the whole state who is a very good actor but my guess is he isn't. And the title "violent crime" would be more accurate if it was applied to the unit itself as its real purpose is not to make this community safer as one of them says, its purpose is to crush any resistance that might arise in response to the social conditions that exist there, poverty, poor housing, health care, schools, amenities for young (or old) people.

They will not indict the absentee slumlords who earn a living charging exorbitant rents to workers and the poor in this community. Just the opposite, if tenants go on rent strikes or refuse to pay they'll evict them from their homes like they did in the 2008 crash when there were more than 5 million foreclosures; that created a lucrative opportunity for speculators who bought many of them up.

This youth is not just stopped, they take him out of the car, they handcuff him, they get the canine unit in and have the dog investigate and apparently, the youth gets accused of possession based on the dog's say so. This is all for alleged minor traffic violation.

These representatives of a racist capitalist state are not making this 18 year old worker's life safer and the stop is not about a traffic infraction.  They are harassing him. They are looking for something, hoping to find something that they can get on him and lock him up. That will be a productive day for them; they can go home satisfied they did some good today; they are not equipped mentally to act as public safety personnel and that's not their purpose anyway. The cop who seems to have a problem with his hands picking at them all the time accuses him of being nervous. This is a suspicious marker he says. That this youth could be shot without recrimination and he know it doesn't enter in to it. The cop tells the kid to unclinch his fists and later on when he decides to remove the handcuffs asks why the youth has such a negative view of the police. This language is chosen as if any harm comes to the youth these comments, "clenched fists" "nervous" "angry" will all come out in the record along with the usual "I feared that my life was in danger" excuse reserved for police murders.

He asks the youngster to promise he won't run away or fight him if he takes the handcuffs off.  I think he might have even said "beat me up".  Either way, his and the their entire attitude is insulting and abusive. It is a scene that could have ended in tragedy. When his mother turns up the cop is equally offensive treating her with contempt and lecturing her about the law and traffic violations. When he raises their phony concerns about her son and potential violence, she tells him they "could run across the street too fast and you'd say it's violent", the mother doesn't back down and is not impressed with their phony attitude. Listen to the cop at the end saying the mother will lie, will put the video on the Internet it'll get "1000 likes" then refers to the activity as a disease. We learn things in life. In the last analysis our consciousness reflects the material world in which we live and both the youth and the mother are not fooled.

This is institutionalized racism in its purest form. It is not so much the actions of individuals, white people being rude, having an attitude or being directly racist in one way or another leaving aside white nationalists and fascists. After all, millions of us function with a certain degree of harmony and cooperation on a daily basis; on the subway, driving, at work. It is the weight of a racist society and its institutions, not just the police and the justice system, but education, housing, jobs, every aspect of daily life, that weighs down on its victims every second of every day. Capitalism does the same to all of us as I explained in the post about the youth suicides. But it affects the poor differently women differently and people of color differently. These special oppressions are an obstacle to class solidarity if those of us that don't experience them directly refuse to take them in to account, refuse to condemn them.

What frustrates and angers so many black folks and black parents in particular is when they get so little support or validation of their genuine concern from white working class people in particular. Most white liberals will speak out but often their concerns have roots in guilt and shame at their class and racial/color privilege.  For many of them, they will prove how non racist they are by attacking the "backward" white worker and their silence on the issue. In actuality, they have contempt for all workers but there is nothing they fear more than being labelled a racist. My personal view is the white liberal approach to this issue is one of the most condescending forms of racism, they feel sorry for black folks instead of being inspired by their struggles their dignity under extreme conditions, they fear disagreeing with them or taking a contrary position. They have this approach in general I believe. Class solidarity on the basis of material interest is the most solid form of unity but that too needs a movement to help it.

The silence of the heads of organized labor on all these issues is deafening to the point of being criminal.  Without a doubt, if they were to act, which they will not, certainly without massive pressure form below, they could transform this situation and help to unite all workers in the struggle to transform society and provide a humane existence for people. We tend to close our eyes to things we feel we cannot change, that to involve ourselves in will only threaten my existence, my family with danger.  But the point where fewer of us can do that is drawing closer. But at the very minimum white workers can speak up in solidarity, can validate the fears people like this mother has and her view of the world. Most importantly speak up and separate ourselves from those who use the slogans "all lives matter" or "blue lives matter.". No one says they don't. To raise this in opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement is siding with police violence and the racists in the most cowardly way and as a means of covering up for a racist and prejudicial view of the world.


I believe that if we look at history, when the class struggle breaks out in to the open, there is a powerful tendency for workers to seek class allies, to unite along class lines and suppress those social divide and rule tendencies propagated by the ruling class. As Malcolm X pointed out, "You can't have capitalism without racism". And we can't end capitalism and the poverty and social misery that is integral to it without class unity. So racism, sexism and other social obstacles to class unity are harmful to all workers.

The role of the police is to protect the rich and to ensure that no threat to capitalism gains traction. In the urban ghettos they are literally an occupying force. The conditions in some of the urban (and rural) communities are akin to those of third world countries and when the conditions become so unbearable people are forced to revolt in anger, the police are there to crush it. Even if it takes an organized political form and people occupy vacant homes or commercial property in order to live, the police will defend the landords and investors and their right to own empty buildings as tent cities are growing under freeways and in communities at an alarming rate.

At best this youth could have been given a citation and sent on his way.  But a traffic violation was not the motive for the actions of the police. What we see in this video is not the exception, it's the rule.  Driving While Black is not the punch line of a joke, it is a trigger for police harassment and worse.