Murder by Baltimore County Cops–
"Judge, Jury and Executioners"
June 29, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader
It was a horrific scene all-too-familiar in America.
1 a.m.—June 25, Owings Mills, Maryland. A 10-year-old child calls her grandmother amidst the screams of her mother, being beaten again by her father, Spencer Lee McCain. It has been reported that this was at least the 17th time her mother had been beaten.
This is scene that goes on all across the country as men trained to view women as no more than punching bags or their own personal property carry out brutality against wives or girl friends. This is totally unacceptable. And a sharp example of why a thorough, all-the-way revolution is urgently needed. (I urge everyone to check out and regularly keep up with the End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women section of revcom.us)
But things got even worse after her grandmother compounded the problem by calling the police. Baltimore County cops busted down the door and fired at least 19 shots, murdering McCain. The cops claim that they believed that McCain was armed because he was in a "defensive position." Yet they now admit that no weapon was found on the scene.
At a gathering the next evening, Tawanda Jones, whose brother Tyrone West was brutally killed by Baltimore City police in 2013, called it out. She said she didn’t care how many times the police say they had gone to that apartment before—who/what gives them the right to be "judge, jury and executioners"?
Spencer Lee McCain was Black. As a newly created Washington Post database of the over 400 people already killed by police in 2015 documents, when it came to those murdered by police who were unarmed, two-thirds were Black or Latino. And further, "About half of the time, police were responding to people seeking help with domestic disturbances and other complex social situations." (See "Police ARE Killing Black People at An Alarming Rate.")
What kind of system is it that responds to calls for help in family situations with guns blazing? The pattern just described points to one conclusion: The role of the police is NOT to serve and protect the people, but to enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression that the system has cast people in.
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