At 12:50 AM on July 6th, Sonya Massey called the police in suspicion of a “prowler” in her neighborhood. Two police officers arrived, including Officer Sean Grayson who would later shoot Sonya three times in the face, killing her instantly.
Sonya invited the two cops into her home. She was boiling water previously. She approached the stove and turned it off at the officer’s request. The two cops backed away, and she asked why they were backing up. Officer Grayson said because you are near boiling water, to which she responded in a non-hostile way, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Grayson, agitated, threatened to shoot her in the face. Sean and the other officer raised and pointed their guns at her. Sonya muttered, “I’m sorry” before raising her hands to comply, as Grayson shot her three times in the face.
After being discharged from the Army for serious misconduct, being arrested twice for driving while intoxicated, Grayson was passed around six Illinois agencies. It doesn’t take an empath to understand when a cop like Grayson literally stops his partner from helping mortally-wounded Massey as to not “waste his supplies”, and proceeds to call her a “fucking crazy bitch”, that we have a dangerously toxic, racist culture of law enforcement in the United States.
This is not simply an issue of a deeply sick cop, but more importantly, of every authority that allowed him to be in an unchecked position of power. Reformist remedies such as body cams have no checks in a dehumanizing police culture, seen here, when Grayson turned off his body camera before the shooting.
The system is designed to look the other way, whether it be from a legal perspective, or a social one.
Police and other first responders fill the massive gaps in the underfunded social safety net, but their fundamental role is to protect the ruling elite and their profits. Their role exists to enforce the subjugation of the working class and marginalized in order for capitalists to exploit for profit. This is accomplished through the intimidation of vulnerable working-class populations – through harassment, brutal violence, and cold-blooded murder.
The police are ultimately tasked with maintaining “law and order” for the wealthy, which fundamentally means the suppression of working-class communities. Cops do not primarily exist to solve crimes, or respond to working people when they actually need assistance, though occasionally they also fulfill that role in order to maintain legitimacy in the eyes of most working people.
The capitalist ruling class creates all sorts of obfuscations to sell the lie of “law and order”. Hell, lawyers must go to school for years to learn the law, yet most police officers train for six months, and supposedly “enforce the law”.
And while the Democrats might cozy up with progressive NGOs, they do not act on a federal or local level to even do the bare minimum of reforms to the criminal system. The working class is fed lie after lie about the police’s true role in this country, which in reality is to enforce state violence to uphold the ruling class’s power structures.
Because the 2020 George Floyd protests failed to directly challenge the Democrats, it allowed them to step in and redirect the movement toward supporting Democratic administrations that continued business as usual. Police budgets have continued to increase under Joe Biden’s administration, and in Democrat-run cities like Atlanta, Chicago, and New York.
The ruling class cannot reduce their repression of the masses as the cost of living increases and cornerstones of community infrastructure crumble. This inevitable worsening of society under capitalism leads to increased crime but also to outrage among working people at ruling institutions. To hold on to their wealth, they must beat us back. Access to healthcare, and funding for libraries and social services are dropped by both parties in favor of pouring billions of dollars into police budgets, funding over-militarized police training centers, and committing violence against protesting students, workers, and minorities.
Don’t expect Kamala Harris nor Trump to do anything about the deaths of Black people like Massey, and countless others. Harris’s background as a “prosecutor” versus the felon Donald Trump stands in sharp contrast to the reality of militarized policing and ever-increasing mass incarceration in Black working-class communities.
The genuine fears of working people, especially Black communities, about gun violence and the near-daily mass shootings across the country are understandable. However, police departments don’t exist to protect us, and they don’t actually stop or decrease the amount of crime our communities face.
Law enforcement in the United States will never be just or effective at stopping crime under capitalism, especially because the poverty and alienation that capitalism causes is at the root of the majority of crimes. The function of law enforcement is to protect private property and the financial interests of the ruling class.
“Cop Cities” (or “urban warfare” training facilities) and militarized police must go. Ban police use of “crowd control” weapons and disarm police officers on patrol. Police training and background checks must be extensive, and ties to white supremacy or hate groups cannot be tolerated. Bloated police budgets need to be cut at least 50%, to re-allocate towards housing, education, and social services. These demands give weight to police reform.
Improving the conditions that lead to crime is the only way to prevent it. The ruling class will use non-local officers to police in Black communities specifically to create a basis for intimidation and cultural miscommunication. Law enforcement should be put under the control of democratically-elected civilian boards with power over hiring and firing, reviewing budget priorities, and the power to subpoena.