Picture Show: A Minneapolis Murderpig Revue

Editor’s note: the Picture Show is a semi-regular, informal blog where I share and discuss left wing video essays I’ve found useful, typically from YouTube.

 

Criminneapolis Police Department

Due to both the prevalence and effectiveness of “copaganda” in Amerikkkan media, most ongoing public discussions about police abolition must be accompanied by two background talks. First, the abolitionist must point out what, despite the pro-cop mythology, the police do not do; namely, they don’t solve or stop crimes, and they certainly don’t keep our communities safe. Furthermore, the abolitionist must also demonstrate what it is the police actually do in our society; protect private property, maintain hierarchal power structures, and oppress the marginalized on behalf of our capitalist ruling classes.

In today’s Picture Show then, we’re going to focus on what the police actually *do* by checking out this thirty-two minute, Youtuber and microphone-style video called “The Minneapolis Police: A Criminal Organization,” by creator Big Joel:

For the most part, this video is built around the U.S. Department of Justice’s eighty-nine page report about its two year-long investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department; in the wake of the racialized public murder of George Floyd by MPD officer Derek Chauvin in May, 2020. What I think makes Joel worth watching over Merrick Garland’s press conference however, is the context he puts the MPD’s staggering array of crimes into as we follow along; specifically, that of a violent criminal organization that considers itself accountable to no one at all, let alone the public.

Starting with the note that Minneapolis is a small city, of roughly four hundred thousand people, whose police force is precisely five hundred and seventy-one people, Joel runs through a litany of DoJ-investigated malfeasance by the MPD that the creator describes as “one of the most galling, horrifying things I have ever seen” before noting that he put the video together just to make sure more people hear about how the Minneapolis police operate.

Although I encourage you to watch the video, I will also simply summarize Joel’s coverage as an extensive, comprehensive record of a police force willfully and violently abusing its authority to terrorize, harm, and engage in acts of overt cruelty against primarily marginalized people in the city of Minneapolis. While the presenter himself never actually says it, I’m very comfortable describing the police force covered in this video as a racist street gang actively terrorizing whole populations within their jurisdiction; and please let me remind you that Minneapolis is a long way away from the American deep South. As in the case of L.A. County Sheriff’s-deputy gangs, these murderpigs are openly operating in a part of the country that tells itself “that doesn’t happen here.”

Time and time again, we’re told that violent, racist, criminal policing is a question of poor training, bad departments, and the individual failings of American police officers. The truth however is that the Minneapolis police force Joel is describing, is functionally and factually indistinguishable from virtually any other police force in a major metropolitan area. I know from lived experience–if the Department of Justice wanted to investigate the Detroit Police Department, they would find pretty much the same thing. Indeed, the truth is that police in America generally operate in obscurity, and with almost complete immunity. That is until the precise point some muppet murderpig violently executes a marginalized person with a camera running, and finally forces someone to take a look, thereby uncovering years of injustices nobody ever bothered to investigate or punish in any meaningful way. It’s the same story from Ferguson, Missouri, to Louisville, Kentucky, and I guarantee you that the DoJ will find the same thing in its latest target, the police force in Memphis, Tennessee.

The simple truth is that violent, fascist police forces function in the same way, all over America, because these are not aberrations; this is the system functioning as designed. You can’t reform behavior like this, because behavior like this is how the oppressors keep oppressing those they ruthlessly profit from. The police, particularly in America, are the biggest gang around, and at the end of the day the only thing they really answer to is capital. Public outrage may force the system to burn a few extraordinarily fascist murderpigs from time to time, but the system itself continues unabated for a reason. And that reason isn’t complicated; the ruling class, in both the public and private sectors, depend on it functioning that way.

And that my friends, should make you extremely angry.

 

– Nina Illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.

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