'Yes Kings!' Say the Cops

The police chose a side. It's not yours.

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Photo by Eric Thayer

According to protest organizers, five million Americans attended the nationwide ‘No Kings’ rallies last weekend.¹ According to the independent outlet Strength In Numbers, between 1.2% and 1.8 % of the American population participated, making it the largest protest in American history.² The protests attracted a range of ideologies and issues, all of which laddered into the overarching message of ‘I don’t like Donald Trump and his policies.’ Though it is not the only evidence, No Kings confirmed there’s a serious social division amongst ordinary Americans. On one side is the anti-Trump crowd: leftists, centrists, and the rarer-than-unicorns anti-Trump Republicans. Opposite them are those who like Trump and share his fascist desires: conservatives, right-wingers, and, most troubling, the police. Some may contest that the cops are active participants in the intra-American dispute, instead claiming they’re merely doing their job and enforcing the law. But as their recent (and historic) actions show, the police class is firmly invested in promoting the reactionary agenda and silencing its critics.

A particularly artful protest in San Diego.

In Los Angeles, which is teeming with anti-government sentiment, the police attacked the No Kings protest with rubber bullets, flash-bangs, and tear gas, a chemical weapon banned from war by the 1925 Geneva Convention.³ The L.A. Sheriff’s Department, infamous for its gang activity,⁴ claimed they acted in self-defense, only firing impact munitions after the protest threw Molotov cocktails. Despite the present state of protests being endlessly filmed, the Sheriff caveated that the alleged fire bombings weren’t caught on video.⁵ (We’ll just have to take his word for it!) However, the video evidence that does exist proves the Sheriff lied. Embedded in a group of Los Angeles protestors, MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff confirmed the event was peaceful. Seconds later, they were attacked by the Sheriff’s Department, who fired chemical weapons and charged on horseback. In the video below, you can see the cops plan the cavalry attack just over Soboroff’s right shoulder. The mounted officer talks with one on foot, who orders the front line to move so the horses can charge through. Once the horses drove the crowd into panic (as they intended to), the cops had their pretext and opened up with chemical weapons.

It is also not a coincidence that the cops chose to display their aggression on live television. Soboroff and his camera crew were clearly visible. It wasn’t happenstance that the liberal news network had to flee the police — it was a deliberate message.

Further proof that the cops are not acting in ‘self-defense’ comes from Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who captured a police-fired impact round missing his head by inches. These weapons are often described as ‘less than lethal,’ but as you can tell from the video below, and as many protestors have learned firsthand, being hit by such a round has a good chance of killing, if not inflicting permanent damage. The willingness of police to fire them into the crowd at head-level speaks to their true intentions.

Given the indisputable evidence that the Los Angeles police attacked the protesters unprovoked, one must ask not only why the L.A. Sheriff blatantly lied, but also why the cops feel a need to punish peaceful Americans for harmless civic engagement. The reason is chilling.