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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 15, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Cop siege

Police repression grows as social programs are cut

By Andy McInerney

As the Clinton administration uses more federal funds to hire more cops, the list of the cops' victims grows.

Clarence Michael Thurman III and Demetrick Moore, two young African American men from Milwaukee. Jose Antonio Gutierrez, a 14-year old Chicano from Los Angeles. Jermaine Vayton and Mark Virginia from Buffalo, N.Y. Preston Barnes from Baltimore. Jerry Jackson of Atlanta. Nathaniel Gaines, Keshawn Watson, and Maria Rivas from New York City.

Those are just a few of the people across the country whom cops have gunned down the past few months. Most are young, most Black or Latino, none rich.

While Clinton presides over the Draconian cuts in welfare and Democrats and Republicans vie for who can cut more social services, some budget items are constantly increased--the Pentagon, cops and prisons.

It's no coincidence, either. As exploitation increases and poverty deepens, the handful of billionaires who run the country want to be sure the gun and the club stand between them and the growing number of people with less to eat and maybe nowhere to sleep.

When the world witnessed Los Angeles cops beat Rodney King, the media had to work overtime to push the story that it was an "isolated case" of a "few bad cops." Then came the carload of immigrants beaten by the nearby Riverside cops, and stories from around the country that showed police brutality was not restricted to Southern California.

So much attention was drawn to police abuse that Amnesty International-a liberal organization well-known for pointing the finger at Washington's enemies elsewhere in the world-issued a report documenting the rise of police brutality and killings in New York City.

The report showed, for example, that complaints of police brutality rose 34.8 percent there the first six months of 1995 alone. Those months saw the most drastic cuts in the city budget in decades-in aid to homeless, in student aid, and in support to city hospitals.

Will the communities' anger, determination, and demands for justice be stronger than the cops' bullets and batons? Around the country, from Los Angeles to Milwaukee to New York, activists are organizing to be sure the people prevail.

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