Statement by Carl Dix:
Mistrial in Case of First Cop Tried for Murder of Freddie Gray Is NOT Justice!
Indict, Convict and Send Killer Cops to Jail!

December 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

A Baltimore judge has declared a mistrial in the case of William Porter, the first cop brought to trial for the murder of Freddie Gray. Another cop involved in the death of a Black man at the hands of the police has walked free. This happens all the damned time. It is unacceptable and illegitimate. It is not justice, and it has to STOP!

We should live in a society where those entrusted with public security would sooner lose their own lives than kill or injure an innocent person. It'll take revolution, nothing less, to bring that kind of society into being. This kind of revolution is possible. Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), has spent decades developing a new synthesis of communism that points to how we could get rid of the system responsible for the savage oppression of Black people, and all the other horrors enforced on humanity—the attacks on immigrants, the subjugation of women, the wars for empire, and the destruction of the planet we live on—once and for all. And points to how we could bring into being the kind of world people would want to live in. If you want to see that better world, you need to dig into the work of Bob Avakian.

And if you have an ounce of justice in your heart, you need to join the fight to STOP police getting away with murder. This starts with insisting that Porter be retried. And for all the killer cops—the six who murdered Freddie Gray, the Chicago cops who murdered Laquan McDonald, the Seattle cops who murdered Chris Harris, the San Francisco cops who murdered Mario Woods, the Virginia jail guards who murdered Natasha McKenna, and ALL the rest—to be indicted, convicted and sent to jail.

Look at what the six cops did to Freddie Gray that night. Several chased him down like a runaway slave because he ran when he saw them. They beat him down so bad that one witness said he was “bent up like a pretzel” when the cops put him in the van. The van was a few minutes from the police station, yet these cops, joined by several other cops, drove Gray around for 45 minutes, stopping six times. Pigs in Baltimore call this giving them the “rough ride,” making fast starts and stops. This form of summary punishment has been documented to have killed—murdered—people in police custody. By the time the van had stopped the sixth time, Gray's spine was severed, and he was paralyzed. A week later he died. The Baltimore Sun described Porter’s so-called defense: "Prosecutors argued that Baltimore Police Department rules clearly require officers to seat-belt arrestees. Porter's lawyers argued that police rarely seat-belted prisoners..." And this was enough to get him a mistrial.

This is another example of the whole system going into motion to exonerate cops in the rare cases when their murderous deeds are so outrageous—and the people find it intolerable and go out into the streets, as they did in Baltimore—that the system is compelled to indict one of its front-line enforcers. Imagine what would happen if a group of Black youth had been involved in the death of a cop, and some of them tried to blame it on the others. The system would throw all of them in jail.

Killer cops belong in cell blocks, and we can't rely on the system to get them put there. It'll take mass determined resistance to the ways police get away with murder to get justice for Freddie Gray, and all the victims of murder by police. Get with the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and become part of that resistance. And get with the movement for revolution that the RCP is building if you want to end the horrors this system inflicts on humanity.

Indict, Convict and Send Killer Cops to Jail—The Whole Damned System Is Guilty as Hell!
It'll Take Revolution, Nothing Less, to End Police Getting Away with Murder!

 

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