George Floyd’s violent death was a breaking point — an all too familiar reminder that, for Black people, law enforcement doesn’t protect or save our lives. They often threaten and take them.
This quote is taken directly from the Black Lives Matter website, specifically under the call to defund the police. The attempt to redistribute wealth from a corrupt institution to black neighbourhoods, education, youth programming, and so many more valuable and necessary facets of our cities, is being heavily rejected by white people and non-black individuals. There is a cultural notion believed by privileged people that the police were developed to bring peace and safety. Quite clearly, that “safety” has its limits, and its limits it black people. Modern policing has a deeply racist history, and it is one gear in larger network of white supremacy and black violence. The police system, the prison system, the education system, the economic system, and every facet of our society is not failing. It is instead, functioning perfectly. These systems have grown from slave roots into deadly forces of oppression, often utilizing economics and power dynamics to disenfranchise people of colour, but specifically indigenous and black people. From the beginning, these institutions were built for exclusivity, and it’s time for abolishment.
The roots of policing in America begin with slave patrols. White volunteers created squadrons of slave law enforcers whose primary job was to return escaped slaves, dismantle uprisings, and punish anyone suspected of violating plantation laws. In the early 1700s, the first slave patrol arose in South Carolina, which was then adopted by every state that had not abolished slavery by the time the U.S. had their second president. Members of these slave patrols could forcefully enter anyone’s home based on suspicion alone. Physical and psychological damage included food and water deprivation, whipping, and intentional family breakups. Their purpose was to brutalize, as seen in the Slave Patroller’s Oath from North Carolina in 1828,
I [patroller’s name], do swear, that I will as searcher for guns, swords, and other weapons among the slaves in my district, faithfully, and as privately as I can, discharge the trust reposed in me as the law directs, to the best of my power. So help me, God.
Even as law enforcement developed, centralized municipal police departments, beginning early in the 19th century, were overwhelmingly white and male. Their goal was to not solve or prevent crime, but to respond to disorder and control the underclass of black people, immigrants, and the poor. Although slave patrols ended with the abolition of slavery, their influence remained with a distinct parallel to the extralegal tactics and organizing of racist vigilante groups after the war, notably the Ku Klux Klan. After the Civil War, Southern police departments in particular carried over aspects of the patrols, including systematic surveillance, the enforcement of curfews, and systematic racism in the police hiring and training process. Simply, formerly enslaved people saw little change. Policing prevailed and Black Codes restricted voting rights and working rights. Although the ratification of the 14th Amendment made the Black Codes illegal in 1868, the Jim Crow laws followed, denying civil rights and replacing the Black Codes. On top of the separation of people by races, black people continued to experience more severe and frequent police brutality, extrajudicial killings, and common police failure to intervene when black people were being murdered by racist mobs.
This short and frankly, incomplete summary of black American history reveals an obvious failure. The ownership and brutalization of black bodies never ended. It continues to grow and change. When slave patrols and bondage ended, police brutality and Jim Crow laws flourished. When the Jim Crow laws ended, economic redlining, insufficient education in black neighbourhoods, and mass incarceration grew with the continuation of police brutality. In 2018, black people, who make up 12% of America’s population, accounted from 23% of those who died at the hands of the police. There is a continued disparity in policing. While death and injury are the extreme results, the evidence of racial profiling and over-policing is just as painful. Stanford University found that out of nearly 100 million traffic stops, black drivers were most likely to be pulled over and searched. Biases like this is what leads to higher deaths, higher injuries, and higher arrests, not because every person pulled over was guilty, but because the mix of frequency and incorrect assumption has proven to be a violent combination when it is in the hands of law enforcement.
Clearly, the origination of policing was racist, and it continues that bias today. Even if we pretend that the police force have outgrown their biased past, there is still a fundamental problem with the institution. Police officers across the cities of North America are advertised as servants and protectors, when in reality they are tools in controlling property. Slave patrol’s responsibility was not to every person, it was to property owners. The same is true today. Billions of dollars are given to the police through taxpayer money, and they have no legal obligation to actually protect and serve. This was seen in the DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services cases. In 1984, Joshua DeShaney, a four-year-old, became comatose and then severely mentally disabled due to physical abuse at the hands of his father. After receiving numerous complaints, the Winnebago County Department of Social Services attempted to protect the child. However, the Department did not remove Joshua from his father’s custody. Joshua DeShaney’ mother argued that the state’s failure to protect an individual against violence is a violation of “liberty interest in bodily integrity, in violation of his rights under the substantive component of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause…” The result of the case was a six to three majority that concluded that the state is not required to provide any special services to mitigate harm if the state itself did not create those harms. This ruling extends into policing. Just as the police during Jim Crow weren’t required to protect black people from racist mobs, the same technically applies today.
The purpose of police today seems to be mainly unchanged since the abolishment of slavery. Their continued role in cities is to respond to disorder. However, that response is notably violent. The median average taken in 2006 from the Department of Justice found that 60 hours, or the most time, is spent on fire-arm training. 51 hours is spent on self-defence. Yet, only 8 hours each is spent on conflict management and community policing. The culture of the police force is one rooted in survival. The shockingly short amount of time spent on training and preparation is focused on what should be the smallest percentage of a police officers job. Excluding field training, which is significantly less than classroom training, an average of 21 weeks is spent becoming a police officer. This system of training is not only impractical, but also not a commonality around the world. When the Minneapolis City Council made the decision to dismantle their entire police force, the decision was seen as extraordinary. In the Republic of Georgia however, it has already been done. As the world entered the 21st century, Georgia was one of the most corrupt places on the planet. Bribery was rampant, the police force was distrusted, and it was decided that the police force was too corrupt to be fixed. 30 000 officers were fired, and a three-year process began of hiring a smaller and better trained force. The force instituted a zero-tolerance policy for bribery and public perception dramatically changed.
27% of the adult prison population has been in care and almost 40% of prisoners under 21 were in care as children. 72% of male and 70% of female sentenced prisoners suffer from two or more mental health disorders. In the last decade the women’s prison population has gone up by 33%, with two thirds being in prison for non-violent offences. Over half have suffered domestic violence and one in three has experienced sexual abuse. 66% of women in prison have dependent children under 18 and it is estimated that 17,700 children are separated from their mother by imprisonment. Over a quarter of the UK prison population is also from a minority ethnic group.
Racial bias, mental health issues, and abuse lead to a large population of marginalized prisoners. In 2012 for example, the Safer Custody Reports from January to March saw over 211 deaths in custody, 5 611 self-harm incidents, and 3 725 assault incidents. The harm against prisoners doesn’t just exist inside the grey walls of a cell either. Privatization for example, which is extremely persistent in the United States and the United Kingdom, leads to not only profiting off of prisoners, but also an encouragement of arrests, longer sentences, and repeat offenders. As well, since the 1990s, immigration and privatization has seen a major increase in detention centres. The privatization of prisons had led to targeted attacks on specific communities. While their white counterparts are profiting off of cannabis business and sales, black Americans are four times more likely to be arrested for cannabis charges than their white peers. In fact, one fifth of the prison population is in jail for drug charges, with black Americans six times more likely to be arrested. Imprisonment is also an ineffective way to reduce substance abuse, as it increases mortality and overdose rates, where in the first two weeks, prisoners are at a 129% greater risk at dying from an overdose. Incarcerating low-level drug users is however, a great way to make a profit.
The two essential needs of capitalism are growth and expansion, and over the past twenty years, prisons have created an entirely new industry. The privatization of prisons has also led to greater profits through prison labour. So when black people are severely disproportionally killed by police, but also stopped, arrested, charged, and imprisoned, the current policing system in North America has effectively replaced physical slavery with an economic adaptation that includes forced labour for minimal pay, racial bias, and little or no attempts at rehabilitation or other effective crime reducing tactics. This vicious cycle is best explained by Angela Davis, who said,
The prison has become a black hole in which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited. Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison.
That is the power of white supremacy. The call to dismantle the police isn’t just because of higher rates of abuse against black people, it’s also because of the dire conditions primarily felt in black communities, the wealth inequality created by capitalism, the higher rates of incarceration, and the repetition of these factors that creates mass profit for some at the hands of the mentally ill, queer people, women, people of colour, but specifically black people. Further, there is no “pulling up from their bootstraps” that black people can do to change this situation. On average, black people are poorer, more frequently mistreated in hospitals, hired less, arrested more, and even restricted from voting. This is a systematic change that needs to happen by white people and those in positions of power.
Voting, which is viewed as the prized possession of democracy that gives everybody and equal chance to solve their problems, is restricted from black people by making it less accessible in poorer neighbourhoods, creating complex identification laws that target immigrant and black neighbourhoods, and also through the prison industrial complex. As of 2016, an estimated 6.1 million people are legally unable to vote due to felony disenfranchisement, which has increased dramatically in recent decades. Voter disenfranchisement varies across state lines, with some states applying it to all felons and others only to violent crimes, with violent also given a varied definition, even within single states. As well, the possibility of returned voter rights also varies; some states return voter rights after the prisoner’s sentence is complete, some after probation, other states only return voter rights after a plea is made, and some never do. Again, the problem with the lack of federal oversight for this policy is that black prisoners are more likely to receive harsher punishments for comparable crimes, whether that be having their crime defined as violent as opposed to their white counterparts, or being denied a plea for a similar crime. One in thirteen black people of voting age are disenfranchised, which is a rate four time grater than non-black people. In Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, more than one in five black people are disenfranchised. This entire societal system, which has been successfully functioning for hundred of years, is built against black people.
Now, what about Canada? In comparison the U.S., Canada could potentially be seen as a lot better in terms of policing and racial bias. The truth is however, that Canada is just better at hiding and giving in to issues just enough to avoid uprising. Where the Jim Crow laws and redlining in America severely defunded black schools, Canada created schools for Aboriginal children that led to assimilation and abuse. Where American schooling at the very least teaches about slavery and Martin Luther King, Canada’s curriculum avoids slavery in Canada and shares repetitive and shallow information on Aboriginal abuse. Where American President Donal Trump calls the black protesters and rioters “thugs,” Jason Kenney, the Premier of Alberta, supports the Black Lives Matter movement, while simultaneously passing Bill 1, allowing the province to define anything as “critical infrastructure,” making it immune to protesting, which was created directly after a series of Indigenous protests against the pipeline. White supremacy wasn’t created by Americans, it was created by white people. Where there is white people, there is white supremacy, because we are all connected by colonialism, looting, and a history and continuation of violence.
In 1873, the North-West Mounted Police, now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, where established in Canada to advance the newly established dominion. The NWMP and then the RCMP helped “control” the local Aboriginal population by forcing them onto reserves and ensuring their continued stay, similarly to the slave patrols of America. The Pass System from 1885 to the 1940s gave power to an “Indian agent” to decide whether an Aboriginal person could leave the reserve, which began to “resemble prison,” according to the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Rande C. said of the RCMP during this period,
I think about the early stories from that time when my gran said chiefs (were) dragged out of their homes and thrown on the ground and forced to shovel, like, pig shit and stuff like that, and beat, and RCMPs … just like, standing around everyday waiting for them to even just say one word in our language so they could beat them and throw them and haul them to jail or whatever. You know, never allowed to leave the reserve, never allowed to shop in the same stores, never allowed to do anything. And my gran said that was her reality of her whole life growing up.
“Once you’re in the system, you never get out,” says Dwight Monkman. Three of his four brothers have been incarcerated. The 26-year-old Winnipegger, a member of the Lake Manitoba First Nation, spoke to Maclean’s late last summer from the Headingley Correctional Institution, where he was incarcerated for a weapons charge and breaching a condition of his release. Since turning 18, the longest stretch Monkman says he’s spent on the outside was 15 months. “I’m actually scared to get out,” he says, clutching the battered, black phone under his chin. “Because I know I’ll end up right back here.”
On average, Aboriginal people are stopped on the street more, denied bail more, sentenced more, segregated in prisons more, and return to their cell more. Only 5% of Canada’s population is made up by First Nations individuals, but they make up over 30% of the prisoner population. There is no racial difference that leads to higher crime rates… there is only a history of violence and racial bias, which leads to over-policing, that makes it seem that way. The statistics that seem to show a racial difference in violence exist out of context and report a very small sample size. In the same way that racism in America developed and changed, becoming less obvious and direct, to achieve the same goal and more, the same happened in Canada.
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