Over the past year the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) has added 100 new officers to its ranks. Boasting more than 1,500 applicants, the police show no sign of slowing their expansion despite a “hiring freeze” and a supposed “mass exodus” in 2020. The hiring freeze, which has apparently not frozen anything at all, was a result of budget constraints imposed by the COVID pandemic. The impetus behind the “mass exodus” is unclear, but various news outlets attribute it to around 50 cops suddenly retiring following the 2020 June Uprisings. The police have done nothing for the people of Portland other than intimidate and terrorize. Enough is enough!
Every summer, Portland becomes a hotbed for fascists. Those looking to earn their stripes by jumping unsuspecting queer people or harassing the unhoused enjoy an “open season” in the city. The people who claim to “protect and serve” the city are, of course, also inviting, perpetuating, and participating in the violence. Portland police Chief Chuck Lovell said in an interview that he is “optimistic that the bureau can fully restaff” and that “he’s happy with the kind of people applying.” Are these the same kind of people who collaborate with fascist organizations like Patriot Prayer, the Proud Boys, and the Ku Klux Klan? Portland police have always had strong connections with the most vile and reactionary terrorist groups, dating back to the city’s founding. How can the people trust that these new cops will be any different? Nothing has fundamentally changed! The police only continue to maintain their reign of terror.
After over a hundred consecutive days of protesting during the George Floyd uprisings and an attempt to establish an Autonomous Zone in the city, the politically advanced elements in Portland have made it clear: the police are not wanted. Occupations were destroyed; houseless encampments were, and continue to be, ravaged; and chemical warfare was waged on the people, including the unsuspecting liberals trying to peacefully protest police brutality as well as those who had the misfortune of living near the “cool zone” (locations where police escalated violence). The many aid groups and community survival programs throughout the city are working tirelessly to serve and support our neighbors who are most in need. It’s the people who actually live here, unlike the majority of the PPB stormtroopers, that care what happens in Portland.
As Mayor and Police Commissioner, Ted Wheeler’s valiant attempts at curtailing police brutality and their more-than-occasional collaboration with other fascist organizations has, effectively, amounted to politely asking his cops to not do that. Clearly having everything under control, Wheeler was even tear gassed and maced by his own stormtroopers during his first and only attempt to align himself with protestors during the 2020 uprising.
The primary function of the police is to protect private property. Given Wheeler’s family history as an heir to a timber logging magnate — one of the biggest capitalists to settle in Oregon, even having a town named after his ancestor — his decisions as Mayor and Police Commissioner begin to make more sense when we understand that he is first and foremost a capitalist; the class the police truly protect. Knowing this, we can be assured that, when it at last becomes a question of defending his own property, his own “prosperity,” he will side with the dogs of the empire and sic his stormtroopers on anyone who dares to hold him accountable.
Let us say it without equivocation, so we cannot be mistaken, so no one can say we meant something else: the cops, these rabid dogs, have no place in our city. They have given us nothing but grief and hardship. From destroying the unhoused’s encampments to gassing us in the streets and in our homes, the police have shown their contempt for and their betrayal of the working class. Portland yearns for peace, but without justice, there can be no peace. We will not be free until we abolish the police, and, in its place, build a system that serves the masses and their will rather than the interests of the wealthiest few.
Only through the abolition of the current state of things can we move forward to build a better world. Only socialism is capable of this task. As long as private property exists, it will need police to protect it. As long as wage labor exists, it will need the dogs of the empire to break strikes and send us back to work. As long as the empire seeks to colonize stolen land and put the ghosts of those who occupied it before us — in stewardship, not in ownership — into the ground, it will need the police. But we, the workers, do not need them. The police are the first line of defense for the settler empire. To allow their ranks to grow is to give succor and aid to our enemies. For each cop hired, that’s food from a hungry worker’s child. For each baton-twirling trigger-happy goon given a badge, that’s another soldier in the enemy’s uniform.
We say no more.
