NEW YORK CITY — Never let it be said that the liberal politicians and their appointees don’t serve the needs of the ruling capitalist class as well as or better than the conservatives. William Bratton, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s choice for police commissioner, is a perfect example of this.
 Under capitalism, we are taught that the job of the police is to protect “society” from serious crime. But because capitalism is based on the exploitation of a large group of workers by a tiny minority of bankers and bosses, the rulers need a group of armed cops to help them enforce their aims. The real role of the police is to protect private property and serve the capitalists. This includes using terror to intimidate sections of society which are dissatisfied with the status quo of a few billionaires dictating to the rest of us.
Mass Protests Hit Cops’ Racist Murders
In the wake of an epidemic of police killings, a mass upsurge of protests engulfed NYC, the whole U.S. and the world. Mass hatred of racist murders by the cops, and class love for our brothers and sisters who were struck down, provided the spark for this movement. In response, Bratton recently announced a two-pronged program to “fight terrorism and improve community relations” (NY Times 1/30/15). Under this program, the NYPD “will spend more time visiting with community members to learn their concerns.” The idea here is to win workers to side with the cops in the sharpening debate over racist police terror.
At the same time, the NYPD will create a “heavily armed unit to patrol the city and to respond to large-scale events, such as protests or terrorist attacks” called the Strategic Response Group (SRG). Cops assigned to the unit “would be equipped with heavy protective gear and machine guns and receive advanced training in counterterrorism tactics and “advanced disorder control” (NYT, 1/30). Workers must see this for what it is: a dangerous move by the NYC bosses.
Remember, it was Bratton who claimed that anti-police brutality demonstrators were partly responsible for the murder of two cops in Brooklyn by a mentally unstable man who later committed suicide back in December (NY Post, 12/22/14). It was Bratton and de Blasio who blasted demonstrators’ calls for the death penalty for Darren Wilson, the cop who murdered Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO., and for the Staten Island cops who killed Eric Garner.
The openly fascist SRG unit is not mainly designed to go after ISIS supporters in the U.S.
From the rulers’ point of view, in order to create a larger base of support for imperialist war, they need to paint workers from the Middle East and South Asia as the enemy. And if they can win workers to equate militant rebellion against racist conditions in the U.S. with “terrorism,” so much the better for them.
Bosses Equate Anti-Racist Rebellion with ‘Terrorism’
 But the reality is — under the cover of “the fight against terrorism” — the SRG is an attack on militant anti-racists and communists who give leadership to those fighters. By lumping “protests” with “disorder control” and then with “terrorism”, Bratton & Co. continue to implement the ruling-class strategy of using “homeland security” to justify fascist measures.
While the cops, the politicians, and the big bosses who stand behind them continue to use a “carrot-and-stick” approach, make no mistake that the last thing the U.S. ruling class needs as they prepare for war against their imperialist rivals is a vibrant, growing anti-racist movement that is challenging the whole nature of policing under a viciously racist capitalist system. However, the rulers are going all out to try to pacify or buy off as many workers as they can with reforms and politicians. But they are holding their rabid dogs for when they need them to crush any future uprisings against police terror, mass racist unemployment, poverty wages and lousy working conditions. SRG is a step towards that.
Although our numbers may be small now, the ideas of PLP have broad appeal to the masses. Workers who have fought back have earned the bosses’ wrath. But the bosses’ attempt to clamp down on dissent will backfire, exposing what their “democracy” really means for workers. Join the fight against racist police terror by joining the fight for communist revolution.