After the George Floyd protests, politicians around the country promised to address problems of police violence, but the stats show that this was nothing but lip service. The reality is that 2022 was the deadliest year on record for police violence since 2013, the first year that nationwide data was recorded. In 2022, across the country, police killed an average of three people each day. Police violence has not stopped, regardless of popular recognition of the racism and brutality of law enforcement.
This statistic is deeply upsetting, and we cannot put up with a system that allows it, but we should not be surprised. Police violence is a regular part of the functioning of capitalism, a system that enforces the mass exploitation of the majority for the benefit of a few. If we want a system without police brutality, we’ll have to demand a lot more than limited promises from local or federal politicians; we’ll need to fight for an entirely new world. Police are here to enforce the regular functioning of inequality under capitalism, and we need to fight for a society that puts the needs of the majority before the profits of a minority if we want to see anything change.
