PHOTO/JIM FITE
BALTIMORE, MD — Six Baltimore police officers were indicted on charges connected to the death of Freddie Gray. Freddie’s treatment before he was put in the police van was recorded and played back for all to see. Baltimore police could and would hurt or kill you with no concern about being held accountable. With social media, this was now in the public view.
The public said no! Almost everyone wanted the police terror to stop. Thousands demonstrated, many times a week. Traffic was disrupted, the Oriole baseball team had to play home games in Florida, and businesses throughout the town were deserted. After Freddie’s funeral, over one hundred buildings were burned.
The ruling class quickly reshuffled the deck, reinforced the state and used the corporate media to convince people that the system was working. Justice would be served by a brilliant young woman lawyer, the newly elected Marilyn Mosby, Chief Prosecutor. Her office indicted the six police who arrested Freddie. Since then, the Mayor announced she would not run for reelection, the police commissioner was replaced, the trial of the indicted police were kept in Baltimore.
Meanwhile, Federal agents from many agencies came to Baltimore to review thousands of video surveillance tapes to identify those people who broke into and set fire to stores. Once identified, the pictures were spread throughout the community with police requests to identify those people in the pictures. Late in the summer it was announced that the City would pay Freddie’s family $6.5 million to drop their lawsuit.
The struggle against injustice continues. One hundred women demonstrated against immigration arrests. Rev. Westly West was arrested for stopping traffic. He was trying to draw attention to the number of homicides in the city. In October, a few students opposed the City Council contract for the new police chief. Sixteen of the students were arrested. The charges were dropped.
Also in October, Sargent Robert Meaner was videoed spitting on a handcuffed man he had just arrested. When Kwame Rose tweeted the video you could feel the masses of people begin to sniff the air for justice. Kwame Rose has over 7,000 followers on Twitter. Sargent Meaner was charged with second-degree assault.
The public view of police brutality is challenging the way police do their business. Video from phones and Twitter continue to expose police brutality. The rulers still have the power. The public is trapped between capitalism, drug gangsters whose gunfights kill every day, and police brutality. The murder rate, mainly of Black men, has risen to the highest in 40 years.
If police brutality could solve the crime problem it would have been solved by now. Our community has vast sections that are a wasteland: no jobs and no legal way to make a living. We need to reorganize society to use the wealth that a small section of people hold to create an environment where youth are not given crime as the only way to make a living. And, in fact, isn’t it a crime that billionaires not only run the country, but wallow in wealth while millions go hungry, become homeless and are subject to police brutality?
