In June 2016, all cops responsible for Freddie Gray’s murder were let off the hook. This monstrous miscarriage of justice is just one of many; Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Kyam Livingston, and too many others have failed to get justice. Why does this racist injustice happen nonstop? Non-indictments and exonerations of kkkops result from deliberate decisions made by the courts even before the trial. The courts and cops work together to ensure that the racist terrorization of Black, Latin, and immigrant workers continues and to thus protect capitalism. It is not a failed or corrupt system—this is just capitalist government at work.
In April 2015 Freddie Gray, a Black man in Baltimore, was killed in transport to the police station. His hands and legs were shackled while in transport. He arrived at the station in a coma with a broken neck and injured spinal cord, and died soon after.
Six cops, both Black and white, were responsible for this murder. A rebellion in Baltimore and mass protests around the United States forced the government to indict all these cops. However, not a single one was found guilty.
The decision to find them all not guilty was made in September 2015 when the judge, a Black man, ordered the cops be tried separately rather than as a group. The trial against cop Porter ended in a mistrial. Cops Nero, Goodson, and Rice were found not guilty. The remaining charges against cops Miller and White were dropped. So why were there separate trials? As separate defendants there is no way that any of them could have been convicted. Unlike workers, each kkkop is considered innocent until proven guilty, and there were no witnesses to testify to the murder. The only live witnesses would be each other, and there is a code of silence among cops. The only witness who was not a cop, Freddie himself, was dead.
Freddie’s death alone acts as irrefutable testimony that, as a group, the six murdered him beyond the shadow of doubt. Knowing that only, as a group, could the six murderers possibly be found guilty, the decision to try them separately made it a foregone conclusion that either, a) each would be found not guilty, b) there would be a mistrial, or c) the charges would be dropped—all of which happened. These non-guilty verdicts were intentional!
Whether tried individually or as a group, the bosses own the government. It’s their courts, cops, and congress. Even if they were tried as a group, the racist court is set up to punish workers to the max and let police off the hook, and this case is a perfect example.
The same set-up was present in the sham trial of George Zimmerman in 2012, the wanna-be cop who shot and killed Black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida simply because Trayvon was walking home while Black in Zimmerman’s neighborhood. When Zimmerman called 911 they told him to back off, but he refused to do so, instead confronting and killing Trayvon. There were no (live) witnesses so self-defense could not be disproven. Self-defense grants immunity to many killers. Instead of trying to keep the level of self-defense suitable to the intensity of the threat, which could be as little as a misinterpreted look, the law permits escalation to the maximum response: homicide.
Capitalist Justice: Cops Innocent, Workers Guilty
The U.S. injustice system is as fair as a loaded die. Workers are always presumed guilty while police are always innocent, even after proven guilty. These exonerations say to Black and white workers that Black workers can expect to be killed with impunity, and it says to cops, go ahead and keep killing Black workers, and we will do our best to keep you from being found guilty. According to the Washington Post’s national database, police terrorize and kill twice as many white workers as Black workers in numbers, though Black workers are killed at a disproportionate rate because of racism. These murders are a necessary part of capitalism; they keep workers afraid to fight back against exploitation and oppression. This injustice must be shut down by mass action by an outraged working class, both Black and white, along with all other workers, and replaced by a communist system run by workers in which justice is possible.