07.09.1995

Racist criminal cops

THE REVELATIONS at the OJ Simpson trial that one of the main prosecution witnesses, former police detective Mark Fuhrman, is a corrupt, self-confessed racist rocked America. But they were among many other examples that have surfaced recently.

In New Orleans 220 police have been suspended and four accused of murder, while in Philadelphia six white officers have pleaded guilty to dozens of offences, including the beating and framing of (mainly black) innocent people in order to get overtime for attending trials.

Over 1,000 convictions are under review, and the scandal adds weight to calls for the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, still facing execution in Philadelphia, after his framed conviction for murder in 1981.

On the taped interview Fuhrman refers to 17 ways of framing innocent people. He described a police station as having “the smell of niggers who had been beaten and died there”.

Although, as in Britain, state ideology is officially anti-racist, individual racists abound among police and are often cynically used by state institutions to repress black radicals.

The USA is the world’s most advanced capitalist country and its citizens are among the most alienated from basic human values, particularly in the densely populated inner cities. The state has to rely on these very elements to control discontent. It is not surprising that US police forces attract those who see the need to hit back, not at the oppressive society, but at its victims, and contains thousands of corrupt racists and sadists.

Alan Fox