THE KLAN IN BLUE KILLS Saheed Vassell

Brooklyn, ny—Saheed Vassell was a 34 year old Black man widely known on the block where he was gunned down on April 4th by a New York Police Department (NYPD) hitsquad with no questions asked. This racist killing shows “community policing” as a liberal farce meant to cover up the true nature of the cops. Community policing is portrayed as helpful, friendly and in tune with the needs of the residents. In reality the cops shot and killed Saheed within seconds of arriving on the scene.
The bosses’ racist media presented Saheed to the world as “crazy” and “homeless” in the days since this racist murder.  But neighborhood residents described him as “a friendly man who was mentally ill.” He was helpful and did odd jobs for neighborhood businesses.
A man who knew him for years said, “He’s harmless. A very willing guy, a very nice guy, a good guy.” (New York Times, 4/4).
The local cops knew him. That’s how community policing is supposed to work. But witnesses at the scene said that the kkkops fired immediately with no warning. Just that quickly community policing is exposed as a liberal cover to hide the true role of the police. Their job is to terrorize the working class to protect the profits and property of the capitalists. “These officers are trained to kill Black and brown people” explained a speaker at the rally the next day.
Close to 50 people gathered at the scene of the killing just hours after it happened. The next day a multiracial crowd of several thousand rallied and marched to the 71st precinct. Speakers at the rally suggested “Stop calling 911.” The Progressive Labor Party maintained a vigorous zone of chanting in this integrated march.  We interspersed familiar chants to “Shut it Down!” and tagging the NYPD as the KKK. We also called for  “the only solution is communist revolution” and “liberal misleaders you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”  
Meanwhile Mayor Bill de Blasio apologized for and defended his kkkops by repeating the excuse that they were responding to 911 calls of a man with a gun.  This was a setback for the model of community policing that he promotes. The bosses want to direct the multi-racial anger this case has sparked into a renewed push for community policing.
Our connections with other families in the fight for justice against police murder position us to take the politics of this latest outrage beyond the fake ’solutions’ of elections and ‘better’ community policing.  “Stop calling 911” is a slogan pregnant with revolutionary implications. It means workers have to rely on ourselves to solve our problems. We can’t be calling on the cops to help.
Relying on ourselves means building a mass, multiracial movement against racism and sexism, and also for communism. We don’t need the bosses murderous system or the cops who prop it up.  May Day is the opportunity for us to redouble our efforts to win anti-racist fighters to this understanding that only communist revolution can bring and end to racist police murder.