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(en) UK, ACG: No Justice, No Peace, Abolish the Police (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]
Date
Thu, 21 Mar 2024 08:15:40 +0200
Once again we have been reminded of the role of the Metropolitan Police
with the recent BBC documentary and the first report of the Angiolini
review on the murder of Sarah Everard by Met firearms cop Wayne Couzens.
Couzens is not an isolated instance of criminal behaviour within the
Met. We have firearms officer David Carrick who committed a huge number
of sexual offences, 49 offences including 24 rapes, making him one of
the UK's most prolific sexual predators. We have Daniel Beegan, part of
the Specialist Crime Command, arrested on March 31st last year and
charged with sexual assault of a woman in December 2022. We have Perry
Lathwood of the Road Traffic Policing Command, charged with the beating
of a woman in front of her child, after wrongly being accused of fare
evasion; Christopher Brown, trainee detective with the Central North
Basic Command Unit, charged with groping a female colleague whilst off
duty; Ireland Murdock, also in the Central North Unit, sentenced for
rape of a woman. Adam Provan, of East Area Command Unit, guilty of
multiple counts of rapes against two women, one of them a police officer
herself, and the other a 16-year old.
Giles Kitchener, who told a deliberate lie, a High Court judge
concluded, after he gave evidence on racist assaults by the Territorial
Support Group. He then joined the City of London police. He was sacked
for a "joke" about the murder of Sarah Everard and other counts of gross
misconduct including homophobic and misogynistic comments. He circulated
an image of a cop killing a woman on WhatsApp. He was also seen drinking
beer at a police station before taking charge of a domestic violence case.
Sgt. Luke Thomas posted foul messages on a WhatsApp account, abusing
Chinese people and travellers, Arabs, and disabled people. He spoke
sympathetically about Nazis and child killers, and stated that another
cop who had got away with rape was "a legend in my eyes." Seven other
cops in a safer neighbourhoods team in Bexleyheath were involved in
these abusive comments, including posting offensive videos of disabled
people.
Chief Inspector Richard Watkinson killed himself after being charged
with conspiracy to distribute or show indecent images of children, three
counts of making indecent photos of a child, voyeurism and two counts of
misconduct in public office. Two other former cops were also charged
with similar offences related to the Watkinson case.
Hussain Chehab, a Safer Schools officer, was jailed for five years in
March over a series of child sex offences. He committed these offences
before he joined the Met. Farhan Ghadiali, charged with sexually
assaulting a child. Liam Boshein, sentenced to 42 weeks for having an
extreme pornographic image on his phone. Edward Oniba, of North West
Basic Command Unit, guilty of sexually assaulting a female colleague in
a police station gym. Special Constable Sergeant Ben Smith, charged with
sexual assaults on two women. An unnamed Met cop, charged with
performing a sexual act on a train, who escaped with a written warning.
Another serving Met officer, Benjamin Hannam, was convicted of being a
member of a neo-Nazi group.
Over the past five years more than 300 officers have been reported for
rape and 500 for sexual assault. Only ten of those accused of sexual
assault have been convicted. The vast majority - 350 - are still working
for the police. More than three quarters of the 375 officers and staff
reported for domestic abuse in the past two and a half years are still
working for the police, according to the Bureau of Investigative
Journalism. The Met was forced to admit that a total of 1,633 cases of
alleged sexual offences or domestic violence involving 1,071 officers
and other staff are also being assessed from the last ten years to
ensure suitable judgements were made.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, as it was revealed that an average
of one cop a week across the UK is accused of rape. The Met is
riddled with misogyny, racism, homophobia, and thuggery. The police are
feared and detested by many in ethnic communities, with daily
harassment, especially of young black and Asian men. The recent cases of
Couzens and Carrick etc. have now also made many women fearful of the
police.
Sir John Woodcock, a former chief constable, and HM Chief inspector of
constabulary, admitted back in 1992 that the police were "a mechanism
set up to protect the affluent from what the Victorians described as the
dangerous classes"; and David Bayley, an academic expert on the police,
stated in 1996 that "The police do not prevent crime. This is one of the
best kept secrets of modern life. Experts know it, the police know it,
but the public does not know it."
On the 40th anniversary of the miners' strike, we remember the brutality
of the police, particularly the Met, brought in to crush resistance in
mining communities. We see the increasing repression against
demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza. We remember the undercover Met
cops infiltrated into many political groups and campaigns, who burned
down Debenhams stores, had sexual relations with female activists and
even had children with them under false pretences.
Abolish the police
Anarchists were the first to look towards the abolition of the police.
More recently, this has been taken up by activists around Black Lives
Matter in the USA and here.
We are talking about the elimination of an institution that protects the
rich and the prevailing social order, that manages and controls the
general population. Such an institution would not exist in any humane
and just society.
As Connor Woodman, writing on the police, notes: "Vast swathes of police
work, including the policing of drugs, homelessness, sex work and
borders, could either be eliminated without replacement or rendered
redundant by proper investment in individuals and communities. As for
those areas of life that might maintain a need for some level of
coercion and investigation, there are models of non-state, proletarian
organisation that can be looked to for inspiration: the self-defence
forces of Rojava, community militias of 1930s Spain, neighbourhood
patrols of the Black Panther Party. Ultimately, there may be some vastly
reduced, heavy circumscribed functions of what we imagine - falsely - to
be the current functions of police and prisons in a future society. We
may want a small unarmed detective unit to investigate murders, and we
might need some limited and temporary confinement for certain
individuals who have been so damaged by society that they are a clear
and persistent danger to others. But given that, overwhelmingly,
actually-existing policing in capitalist societies exists to enforce an
unjust and unequal racial and class order, we should organise for total
abolition and the reorganisation of society as a whole."
www.abolitionistfutures.com/intro-to-abolition-2022
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2024/03/06/no-justice-no-peace-abolish-the-police/
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