On Saturday July 27, 2013, eighteen year old Sammy Yatim, a resident of Toronto, died at
the hands of the Toronto police. A video of the incident posted to youtube reveals Sammy,
armed with a small knife and seemingly intoxicated, occupying an empty street car near
Trinity Bellwoods park surrounded by a group of roughly ten officers. With barely a
warning, a particularly overzealous cop fired nine shots into Sammy's body; shortly
thereafter, a second officer tasered him as he lay fatally wounded. A single police
officer, Constable James Forcillo, has been suspended with pay. According to the Sunshine
List (a list of public sector employees making over $100,000 per year), James Forcillo's
annual salary is just under $107,000. Clearly, commitment to one's role as a vendor of
human misery and suffering doesn't come cheap.
Although in many cases it is perfectly reasonable and indeed necessary for workers to
fight for and expect to be paid during any work-related suspension, as anarchists we must
draw a hard line when it comes to agents of state repression, such as police officers and
prison guards. We also must note the obvious reality that it is extremely unlikely that
other workers, unionized or not, would enjoy such a privilege were they to be caught on
camera committing a brazen act of murder. While some online commentators have made the
argument that the police were just ?doing their job?, the passionate community response
that has followed quickly on the heels of Sammy's death clearly demonstrates that this
type of reasoning is at odds with public conceptions of justice and due process.
In an attempt to perpetuate the myth of police accountability, the Special Investigations
Unit (SIU) has assigned six investigators and two forensic investigators to Sammy's case.
This is hardly reassuring. Formed largely as a concession to the growing anger and
mobilization of Toronto's black community during the 1980s?particularly following the 1988
murder of Lester Donaldson and further influenced by the 1992 ?Yonge Street Riots? that
erupted following the murder of Raymond Lawrence?the SIU was created as a supposedly
impartial oversight body as part of a broader shift towards ?community policing?
initiatives taking place at the time. Largely composed of former law enforcement agents,
the SIU as an ?impartial body? is beyond woefully inadequate. It is an almost comical
farce of justice primarily interested in closing ranks and protecting its own. Since its
inception in 1990, the Toronto Police Services have killed 62 people; the SIU has cleared
the vast majority of these officers of any wrongdoing?only three have actually served any
time for their crimes, and none have been convicted of manslaughter, let alone murder.
Perhaps one of the more egregious recent demonstrations of Toronto police impunity took
place in August 2011. Charles McGillivary?a mentally disabled man who didn't speak?was out
for a walk with his mother in the Bloor-Christie area of downtown Toronto when cops
mistook him for a man who ?roughly fit his description?. The ensuing struggle resulted in
the death of McGillivary, when one of the officers suffocated him by putting too much
pressure on his back after tackling him to the ground. His panic-stricken mother pleaded
with the police to stop, only to be told to ?shut up? and back off. When she asked to
accompany her son in the ambulance to the hospital after he had gone into cardiac arrest,
the police officers callously suggested that she take a cab. The two cops involved in the
altercation were cleared by the SIU of any wrongdoing.
It is clear these incidents do not occur in a vacuum, but rather as part of a broader
context of white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, and the capitalist system that these
institutions serve to benefit and reinforce. The ruling class may be persistent in its
strained attempts to legitimize it's boneheaded defenders of property and capital, which
are placed, hypocritically, above even the unsubstantial liberal democratic conceptions of
law and order. But increasingly these armed thugs expose themselves as the charlatans they
are to a public armed with wifi, camera phones, and in many cases their own lived
experiences of police oppression and brutality.
The modern police force was not created in response to an endemic of crime, but is instead
a unique product of capitalist urbanization in North America. In an essay based on his
book, Our Enemies in Blue, Kristian Williams states that ?[t]he police organization
allowed the state to establish a constant presence in a wide geographic area and exercise
routinized control by the use of patrols and other surveillance. Through the same
organization, the state retained the ability to concentrate its power in the event of a
riot or other emergency, without having to resort to the use of troops or the maintenance
of a military presence. [...] With the birth of modern policing, the state acquired a new
means of controlling the citizenry?one based on its experiences, not only with crime and
domestic disorder, but with colonialism and slavery as well. If policing was not in its
inception a totalitarian pursuit, the modern development of the institution has at least
been a major step in that direction.?
Equipped with a sober understanding of the role that police play in enforcing social
control, we need to use tragic examples of police brutality such as Sammy's death as a
fulcrum that re-orients our communities' capacity to resist state repression. Organizing
against police brutality means understanding the ways in which this violence intersects
with capitalist endeavours such as gentrification, immigration enforcement and the
prison-industrial-complex. As anarchists, we see organizing against the police as part of
a holistic process of building community power outside of the hollow channels of
representative politics. We must work with those communities most affected by police
brutality and attempt to educate those who are blinded by the privilege afforded them
under capitalist society. Sammy Yatim is dead. and nothing we can do will bring him back.
But together, we can help to ensure that he did not die in vain.
Upcoming events:
August 13
Sammy's Fightback for Justice: Killer Cops off our Streets!
Facebook Event
August 17
Black August: Organize Against Police Violence
Facebook Event
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Maintaining Momentum: Continuing Pressure on Hamilton Police
Permalink Submitted by grok on Fri, 11/01/2013 - 14:13.
The Friday June 14th 2013 protest march in Hamilton against the police murder of Steve
Mesic -- which 'unexpectedly' intruded-upon the essentially apolitical downtown Hamilton
'Art Crawl' evening 'scene' -- was quite the success: getting a WHOLE lot more attention
than such a protest would usually get from the bourgeois mass-media, for that reason. And
I was assuming that local anarchists would build on the momentum of that action (I expect
VERY little of the local communists...)
However I see almost NO effort being made to maintain pressure on the Hamilton police
apparatus subsequently, by anyone other than a few determined and dedicated individuals;
and I am talking about the building pressure which the pigs now feel, coming from a
growing number of issues (besides the Mesic murder) being raised at the now-contentious
'Hamilton Police Services Board' meetings. And that pressure is most immediately being
felt by the armed bureaucrats and their friends, coming from that same bourgeois corporate
mass-media (CHCH and The Spec, obviously) -- which these forces usually assume to be mere
conduits for their propaganda and disinformation. Thus these 'Powers-That-Be' have felt
the need to move the venue of their usually cozy (and mostly closed-door) monthly meetings
at Downtown police HQ, to Hamilton City Hall in some attempt to 'handle' and spin further
developments.
At the last HPSB meeting (the first, subsequently, at City Hall) on Tuesday 2013.10.15
16:00, there was essentially only ONE lone protester outside the building, demonstrating
their refusal to even take part in the general sham going on inside the council chambers.
Needless to say, the effect of pressure felt by anyone inside -- or the bicycle pigs
outside -- was somewhat minimal.
So perhaps the local Hamilton anarchists -- who so effectively organized the one-off
protest of police murder in Hamilton last June -- might want to consider leveraging what
they got out of that undertaking, by showing up outside City Hall on a regular basis,
starting with the next regularly-scheduled HPSB meeting on Monday 2013.11.18 16:00.
See you there.
--
Build the North America-wide General Strike.
TODO el poder a los consejos y las comunas.
TOUT le pouvoir aux conseils et communes.
ALL power to the councils and communes.
Beware the 'bait & switch' fraud:
"Social Justice" is NOT Socialism
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