Police Violence in the US

We'd like to start this article off with a content warning: We will be discussing topics of egregious violence against innocent people by government forces.

Police violence in the United States often gets treated like a flaw in the system. Bad actors taking advantage of an innocent organization who give it a bad name. Or, contrastingly, it is frequently depicted in media like Law and Order and Blue Bloods as a necessary evil to achieve justice for victims. As many are aware, and as many millions more are finally learning, is that it is not a flaw but a designed component of the police. The recent killings by an immunized federal police force under the name ICE have awoken many Americans to the truths of the policing system. Yet, many still see it as an issue with ICE, and not with their local law enforcement that enjoys similar levels of power. People of marginalized communities, namely Native Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans, know all too well the truths about the police system. Over the entire history of the police system, they have been the active and open targets of the police state. While analyzing the entire police system as a whole including its history and legal loopholes it enjoys is certainly worth discussing, we must address the most heinous of their actions first. Be assured, no police institution is innocent, and no police man is separable from the actions of his colleagues.

The recent extrajudicial killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good are the tip of the ice berg. The world witnessed video footage of both killings from multiple angles. An innocent man protecting a woman from police violence who was forcefully disarmed and then executed in the street. A woman who was cornered by ICE officers before being instructed to leave, then being threatened by those officers, and then shot multiple times without any semblance of a self defense claim. Two families deprived of loved ones needlessly and senselessly. Children who will never feel the love of a parent, parents who will never hear their children's voices again. Americans are up in arms about these two killings, including combating the lies spread by the federal government and far right organizations and party members across the country. Us communists will instead see these two names as the most recent additions to the novel-length register of victims of deadly police violence. Not egregious examples of above and beyond violence by a rogue fascist police state, but rather just a continuation of existing police violence.

African Americans remember the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, the killing of George Floyd. The Philadelphia MOVE Bombing of a black liberation movement. Lynchings of untold numbers of African Americans at the hands of police. So much violence has been perpetrated by the police against the African American community, including it's origins in the South as a slave hunting force. Two white victims gunned down in the streets is absolutely a tragedy that requires the full revolutionary might of the American people, but so do the thousands upon thousands of murdered African Americans. No killing should go unnoticed, or unremembered, or uncontested. What is the difference between Alex Pretti being executed in the street and an African American's car being littered with bullets because a trigger happy police man "thought" he saw a gun? The correct answer is there is no difference. Every year, we see hundreds of deaths at the hands of police through negligence and police action not involving guns as well. Police chases endanger hundreds of innocent lives, not even including the drivers in the situation. We see police violence target uninvolved parties via home invasions, like those that killed Breonna Taylor. People having non-violent mental episodes who require help from qualified mental professionals being assaulted and killed by police because of their explicit lack of training and dispatch to those sort of scenes.

Last year, over 1,200 innocent civilians were killed in police violence. We have that number thanks to organizations like Mapping Police Violence, a main source of information for this article. The unfortunate reality is that the number is likely higher. Despite the hard word by this organization and others, police go to great lengths to hide police deaths. The aforementioned deaths due to police chases often are reported as citizen-citizen vehicle collisions. Deaths due to police negligence in rendering first aid often are reported as deaths due to unavoidable causes such as a heart attack, instead of the direct result of a police taser. This makes discovering them, and holding police accountable, incredibly difficult. Organizations do their best to correlate death certificates and obituaries to police action, but ultimately some will be missed. Still, over 1,200 people killed by police in a single year is an inexcusable amount. In the United States, per the now often ignored Constitution and legal framework, people are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers. Assessing the legitimacy of that statement is another article in itself, but, it does mean that no person killed by police is guilty. Every single one of those 1,200+ deaths is innocent, and their killing extrajudicial. In a very select few cases, self defense may be an applicable defense for the police officer. Say, in a situation where the police officer is demonstrably about to be killed by the other individual. However, we never even see appropriate use of this defense because so few are even charged in these situations. Less than 1% in 2025 were charged for their killings. We never see balanced and impartial courts assess the circumstances and actions of well-armed and armored police officers against innocent civilians. Prosecutors regularly fail to uphold their duty to charge police, police departments frequently take advantage of qualified immunity to excuse their murders, and courts regularly are biased by pro-police shows like Law and Order. That black teen who fled in a vehicle from police who was killed by a police cruiser using a PIT maneuver? They must have been hiding something, that's why they ran, the police is innocent. Don't mind that their dad was shot by police a few years back and that police exacerbated the chase by continuing the pursuit despite having more than enough evidence to find and non-violently charge the teen with traffic violations later on. One of many people in police custody who died in their cell under mysterious circumstances? They must have been deranged or suicidal. Don't mind that police had total control over the situation and every ability to prevent their death. That one gay or trans person who was killed by a police officer in a one-on-one encounter? Panic defense, they came onto them and they panicked. Don't look at the police officer's previous record included more than one previous killing.

This situation plays over and over again. An innocent person is killed by police, the justice system fails to investigate and charge the police officers involved, and the media and government allow the police, the aggressors, to rewrite the entire narrative. Painting George Floyd as a drug runner or serial-counterfeiter. Painting Renee Good as a violent protester. Painting the most recent ICE detention center murder victim as an unstable and suicidal illegal immigrant. In most cases, the police are believed. If not by the general public at large, at least a large portion of them. We see it again, and again, and again, and again. The cycle does not stop, because it is not single bad apples in the police force committing these crimes. It is the system itself that creates these situations by default. We must resist police, we must challenge their power structure, and we must fight until their actions are held to scrutiny and their crimes are charged with the full might of the law. All cops are bastards. All police departments have killed someone. All victims were innocent. Falling for pro-police propaganda, whether it be a new recruit trying to protect their community or a general citizen watching police procedurals on TV, is inexcusable in this current environment where any piece of police propaganda can be decimated by the sheer overwhelming force of evidence. Revolution is, and has always been, the only answer. From the first police killing, to the most recent, every victim is equally as deserving of justice.

While we've martyred victims in recent memory, such as those named in this article, thousands more go unknown. Names appear and disappear in that week's obituary. Their deaths ignored by mainstream media and social media. The videos of their killings go unspread or get used by pro-police channels on YouTube to support the police's crimes. We have not named a single police officer in this article. That is by design. We know the names of the ICE officers that committed the executions in Minnesota, and we implore you to take whatever action you see fit to find those names. We know the names of the officers that killed Michael Brown and George Floyd. Thanks to organizations like Mapping Police Violence, and pro-police YouTube channels happily sharing names of officers involved in police killings, we have the names of hundreds more of officers. Knowing these names is crucial. Please, learn them. But sharing them supports the "bad apple" narrative shared by police. It was that one officer who killed Michael Brown, not the whole department. It was that one ICE officer who shot Renee Good, not the institution as a whole. It provides the police with evidence and scapegoat for built-in aspects of their organizations. It's important to treat the police as the monolith they are. Defund the police, not defund that one officer. Abolish ICE, not fire that one employee. Ban the PIT maneuver, not reprimand that one officer who used it.

Police violence in the US is as old as the institution itself. It is a license to kill created by and encouraged by the government. We recommend you educate yourself in various ways on the topic, and prepare yourself for defense of and revolt against the police state. Resources like Skip Intro on YouTube's series on Copaganda and related videos, the Mapping Police Violence website and related organizations, and books discussing killings prior to the advent of modern media. Keep yourself vocal online. You need not share details of deaths, or immerse yourself in the deprived world of police violence, but share posts you see about defunding or abolishing police organizations. Speak with family about evidence and actions of police. Keep yourself aware of your surroundings, in case you witness police malpractice. Share things anonymously if you can, don't open yourself to police retribution as we've seen time and time again. Police seem like an overwhelming force, and that's how they want you to think of them. They want you to think they're invincible if they murder you in the street. But, you can fight back. There is action to be taken, even if it's just educating yourself. We will build a better world. An oppressive and abusive system can only exist as long as people are willing to allow it to exist. Once people are willing to do whatever it takes to end the violence, it is only a matter of time. We at FurInform think we have passed that tipping point. Keep up the momentum.

In Solidarity,

FurInform

Sources:
- https://policeviolencereport.org/
- https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/shooting-michael-brown
- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html
- http://www.youtube.com/@SkipIntroYT
- https://justiceforbreonna.org/