Connecticut launched its “Mobile Crisis Intervention Services” with the 211 network in March 2020. 211 operates under a national NGO called United Way, managed by a small group of millionaires who earn six-figure salaries and spend their days fundraising for more donations. Contrary to popular belief, 211 itself does not provide any services; it is designed to connect people to services through its call centers. These have come under strain in recent years due to a 300% increase in call volume since 2019, even excluding Covid-19 cases. At the same time, social services in the state have been cut across the board. To increase 211’s funding at this stage of austerity would only exacerbate the growing frustrations with the network. People often spend hours waiting on the phone only to discover they do not qualify for any services, or the service has been discontinued, or under-funded to the point it is practically useless for them. The purpose of a system is what it does; NGOs like United Way are businesses for the executive board, and they exist to profit off of people’s misery.

When Everard Walker’s family dialed 211 in the morning of February 19, Everard was experiencing a mental health crisis after running out of the medication he needed to eat and sleep. The family specifically requested a social worker be sent to their home for an evaluation, stating that Everard did not pose a risk to himself or others. They deliberately tried to avoid a police response to their home. HPD responded anyway after social workers themselves asked police to arrive at the residence for lethal backup. Originally, two social workers arrived with two police; these responders spoke with the family through the door and at one point entered the home. But they would soon exit the apartment out of an apparent concern that Everard would throw a pot of boiling water at them (this part of the body cam footage has not been released). The “fact” pattern is similar to the murder of Sonya Massey, a Black woman gunned down in her home by police in 2024 for having boiling water on her stove.

The number of pigs arriving at Walker’s home quickly grew to 11 after this “threat” was reported: a Black man in crisis at his home surrounded by family. With this number of police in the hallway, the situation began to deteriorate. After an hour of attempting to get social workers and police into the apartment, Walker’s family began to ask the responders to leave. Perceiving the true quality of the 211 “Crisis Intervention Service” as an escalatory police response in disguise, they wished to deal with the situation on their own to prevent tragedy. HPD did not leave; instead, they rushed Walker’s apartment, shoving aside his screaming daughter who tried to stop them. At least three police officers broke into the apartment and moved to pile on Everard. Everard pushed them back and took out a knife. And this is when Hartford police officer Alexander Clifford shot him in the chest three times. The Attorney General’s Office released a 20 second body cam of the murder, but you do not even need to watch it to know the cops were the aggressors in this wellness check turned murder. The presence of cops in a settler-colony at all is aggression. For social workers to invite cops to a “wellness check” is aggression. Their entry into the family’s home was aggression. That they approached Everard and assaulted his family members was aggression. The family would have been entirely justified in defending themselves by any means necessary when the police approached their household after they were clearly told they weren’t welcome. The bodycam footage shows state sanctioned executioners of nationally oppressed people performing their role to a tee: control, coercion, and murder. There is simply no way for cops to be present in the vicinity of a nationally oppressed individual and for the power dynamic between them to be entirely non-antagonistic.

To label Connecticut’s “Mobile Crisis Intervention Services” as a “policing alternative” would be misinformation. 211 and the services it provides are not law enforcement alternatives; they are law enforcement partnerships. The social workers who receive mental health calls are instructed to work in collaboration with local police. Law enforcement are their partners, as stated by their CEO, and the two groups respond to mental health calls together. This means that if you call 211 and specifically request social workers – like Everard Walker’s family did – several pigs will still respond to the call, ready to arrest or shoot us at their will. The collaboration of social workers, healthcare workers, and the police reveals their character as weapons of the state. This is not to say that social workers and healthcare workers are individually social murderers; rather, the white supremacist system compels them to collaborate with the most violent aspects of that system on all levels. Police lack this nuance. They are taught that there are three types of people in the world: Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs. Sheep are those who want to go about their lives with as few problems as possible. They are weak and needing of protection. Wolves are the Bad people, those who would do harm to Sheep. And police themselves are the Sheepdogs, who corral Sheep and look out for Wolves. This is the lens through which police view us. You are either a Sheep needing direction and authority or a Wolf that needs to be put down. We know how they view Black and Brown people. These national oppressors cannot be reformed.

If police reform can be effective, why does the number of police killings follow a historic upward trend? Why have police become more violent, not less, since the widespread introduction of bodycams? And why do policing alternatives like 211 route directly to the same pigs they are thought to circumvent? In truth, police reforms are only effective for specific classes of people; those who oppress Black and Brown people directly and those who are materially invested in the local political machine. Within the latter we include every single politician and petty-bourgeois leader who pleads for these serial killers to act more demure. Reform is a losing battle for the nationally oppressed as a whole because every reform is enacted alongside the continuous deprivation of material conditions for the nationally oppressed as a class.

For every revolutionary moment that passes with a few reforms, revolution only becomes more remote. Fascism entrenches itself, becomes more disguised, more efficient in its oppression. Seeing reform for what it is doesn’t just provide clarity; it allows us to course-correct and implement some real revolutionary changes to the status quo of our movement. This is how the Black Panther Party responded when Black people were being killed with impunity by police and deputized white supremacists. They created CopWatch Organizations with real weapons and struck fear into their oppressors. They started by forming patrols; following the police, observing arrests from a legal distance, and carrying law books to assert people’s rights. A more modern version of the BPP CopWatch would make use of our cell phones, to film police activity and give us video evidence that the police can’t cover up for months, like they do with body cams. We can look to ICE Rapid Response networks as one current example coupling digital tactics with older models of community defense. Local phone trees direct observers to document ICE calls and interact with their neighbors. Rapid response networks could easily transition or multiply into CopWatch groups as contradictions sharpen. Police murders and surveillance overwhelmingly occur in the segregated Black and Brown neighborhoods. These are the best neighborhoods for residents to form CopWatch organizations.

A CopWatch organization involves a group of people (we have identified 10 as an appropriate benchmark) who respond to police presence in their community by showing up in person to achieve some level of confrontation; in the early stages, this will involve filming police activity with phones and ideally providing helpful information to whoever the police may be harassing. As the organization develops and becomes more trusted in the community, they may find it beneficial to explore more advanced means of intimidation than filming alone. White individuals in organizations need to be prepared to put their bodies between nationally oppressed people and the cops if the situation calls for it. White cadre need to be specially trained in best practices for interceding and deescalating cop aggression. The question of what exactly this should look like can only be determined by practice; interacting with the nationally oppressed to determine the best avenues for white socialists to antagonize the local government.

The police are often one of the sharpest contradictions in a community, but this can only be confirmed through investigation. Some neighborhoods either do not experience a significant police presence yet, or the community members feel that there are other, more pressing issues that deserve initiative from Scientific Socialists. One example of a formation that can still respond to these contradictions is a SafetyWatch. This group can respond to and address a multitude of reported issues in a community, from food scarcity, to housing costs, to unhoused people in need of material support. These groups can carry necessary resources on their person, like narcan, water, or first aid equipment. The purpose of a SafetyWatch is to replace the state-led social services which have proven to be ineffective and/or violent. Instead of state social workers who respond with police, a SafetyWatch responds with the real support that is requested, minus the pigs. The message to the community becomes, “Don’t call the city, call your neighbors.”

For each formation put forward here, CopWatch or SafetyWatch, the question to be asked is, “How does this work advance the cause of Revolution?” This is a question we should be asking ourselves in all the work we choose to do, and we should be able to answer it with confidence. To fail to plan for the decisive path forward with every step we take is to forfeit the future to the reformists, who will cry trained tears for every victim following Everard, while slipping his killers a raise.

The most violent thing you can do is nothing.

On February 27, 2026, eight days after killing Everard Walker, Hartford Police murdered 55 year-old Steven Jones during another mental health call in which an ambulance, not police, was requested. Joseph Magnano shot “Stevie” nine times in the street as residents tried to deescalate the officers. Magnano has since been fired (so he can be moved to another department). The Hartford Police Union is defending the murderer and seeking his reinstatement. A complete piece on the murder of Steven Jones is forthcoming.

The most violent thing you can do is nothing...