Until mass incarceration, over-policing, police brutality and the many other issues associated with police officials are permanently resolved those who maintain these injustices should not be celebrated. They’ve obviously failed. There’s no problem with the celebration of professions that contribute to the benefit of our society as a whole. When thinking about those who serve the public selflessly we often think about coaches, teachers, even firefighters and other role models, but to celebrate a police officer for their slogan, ‘to protect and to serve’ when this isn’t actually what’s being done is a farce at best and a threat to the masses at worse. It’s insane that we give so much credit to people who are actively contributing to the destruction of communities everyday. In news feeds we continuously see innocent people being killed by police officers. Over and over again we see the police force being complicit to these destructive actions that take place, often focused more on protecting themselves and their job security over the lives of those that their tasked to serve.
Problematic Celebration of National Police Week
Instead of celebrating those who maintain the unjust police systems and horrific corrections department that contribute to the destruction of our communities, we must celebrate those who are committed to developing solutions to the these broken system, centering those who’ve been directly impacted by those systems, including incarcerated activists like Jailhouse Lawyers Speak whose members who risk their lives to draw attention to the critical issues that contribute to the protection of the prison industrial slave complex (PISC).
It’s dangerous for us to celebrate police officers because we can’t ignore the history behind where the profession has evolved from. Today’s officers, beginning as patrollers of runaway slaves, their badge is still eerily similar to the ones of the seventeenth century slave patrollers. Along with this, even the cuffs we use to arrest people today are a modern evolution of the restraints that we used to capture enslaved people during the slave era. The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, a leading organizer behind New Jersey’s right to vote bills A3456 and S2100, recently posted an image that compared restraints used in 1619, 400 years ago with the ones that we use to arrest individuals today.
It’s already been proven that our criminal justice system is an evolved form of the chattel slavery that existed during the slave-era and that are police officers are an evolved form of the runaway slave patrol from that area. We’ve already established the fact that as a nation we are completely disgusted with the activities of the slave era, so how is it that we can blindly support a National Police Week when officers represent those aspects of an era that we are absolutely opposed to?
It’s insane for us to engage with such a celebration, looking not only the evident history but also at the actions countless actions of officers today who do little to serve the masses, but selfishly serve themselves and their fellow police officers JLS cleverly labeled police forces as ‘servants of the rich’ not of the people and especially not for poor people or people of color where a call to the police is discouraged due to their delayed action if any action is taken at all.
Celebrating a Broken System Contributes to its Continued Failure
Understanding that false convictions, police brutality and genocidal killings are all normalized aspects of policing and corrections departments, I don’t see what there is to celebrate for even a day, especially not for an entire week.
How could the people celebrate a group that they do not trust?
How could the people celebrate a group that consistently miscarriages justice and constantly overcharges individuals without ever being charged for their own crimes?
How is it that corrections officers themselves cannot be corrected, held accountable or persecuted when they commit crimes?
How is it that the job of an officer has evolved into this elite class that can avoid persecution or correction from unjust persecution of the people that they are paid by to serve?
There are obvious distortions within our systems of policing and corrections. This is why we must refuse to even recognize any week that celebrates until those distortions. Until they are corrected, praising them only praises problematic behavior. Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, the incarcerated group of activist who’ve called some of the most popular demonstrations in most recent years, including the National Prison Strike of 2016 and 18 as well as the Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March are now calling another form of action, Smash White Supremacy Week, which calls out the gross injustices of our police and corrections departments whose goal is not to protect and serve the people, but to maintain White Supremacy, and perform state funded terrorist tactics across the country.
We are joining JLS in this call by refusing to allow them to use a week to celebrate what has yet to be accomplished: an end to mass incarceration and unjust policing of poor and communities of color. If you’d like to participate you can do so by sharing this article to raise awareness, sharing JLS images included in this piece and on the dates of May 12-18 burning the blue stripe flag along with posting on social media. For those that are concerned about disrespecting officers who they feel are actually doing good, I want to present the argument that there are no good slave catchers. Speaking from the perspective of someone who has corrections professionals in my family, I can confidently say that anyone who makes the decision to enroll into a system that unjustly polices and persecutes is complicit to that system and as I’ve already stated earlier, being complicit to violence is another form of violence.
Fuck National Police Week
