Perhaps cops in this country don't kill as many people as they do in America and some other countries, but they are still the authoritarian minders of an unfair, unequal, exploitative system. The powers that be try hard to present the police as your friendly neighbourhood protectors, and encourage you to call them to every neighbourhood/family crisis, incident and/or dispute. The end result quite often is violence, and someone being unnecessarily "criminalised". Perhaps we should work more at trying to resolve most of these matters in a reasonable supportive neighbourhood manner, not easy, but better than playing into the hands of those that attempt to control your every action by mass surveillance and threat.
This from Montreal Counter Information:
In the early morning of Monday June 10th, the Montreal police shot a man. A neighbour was having a crisis. Instead of doing anything helpful, they harassed him for hours. They had guns pointed at his head. They finally shot him in the leg through hs own apartment door early monday morning. On Sunday June 17th anarchists in the St-Henri neighbourhood of Montreal put up posters reminding our neighbours to think twice before calling the cops.
St-Henri is famously undergoing a rapid and brutal gentrification process. Gentrification is fueled by social cleansing. This means arresting and relocating people with mental health issues, the poor, drug users, sex workers, and all of us trying to get by in a cruel world. One way to resist the over-policing and gentrification of our neighbourhoods is to stop calling the goddamn cops. We made posters that name all the unarmed people who have been killed by the SPVM in the last few years, because this is fucking serious. Cops will always escalate the situation, we can’t trust them. Instead let’s build relationships of trust between neighbours — Let’s make police obsolete! Please download and share these posters — let your neighbours know that COPS KILL, and share some alternatives to calling the police, so no one else has to have their neighbours blood on their hands.
COPS KILL (to print, 11 x 17″)
12 Things You Can Do Instead of Calling the Cops (11 x 17″)
There are certain types of people I try to avoid as much as possible, like doctors, and cops. Both are a last resort source.
ReplyDeleteI also steer clear of anyone trying to sell me anything, like realtors and politicians.
Regular human beings are welcome.
I am positive that with co-operation, compassion and a bit of humanity, communities could police themselves, with a much more satisfactory outcome than calling the cops.
ReplyDelete