Police and the Struggle for a Democratic Constitution

Luke Pickrell wonders what can be said about the police that isn't already known

After Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán was killed in Atlanta In January of 2023, I sat down to write something about the police. I felt a personal connection to the topic. In 2009, I was living in Oakland when Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police killed Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale BART station. Watching the video 15 years ago (a grainy recording that’s dramatically interrupted seconds after the shooting by the closing train doors), I thought of Rodney King. In 2013, Michael B. Jordan portrayed Grant in the movie "Fruitvale Station," and the film's ending, showing home footage of Grant and his young daughter, still moves me to tears. One of my first “confrontations” with the police (or any authority figure for that matter) came a few years later when I took out my phone and recorded a man being arrested in a parking lot at the University of Oregon; this was in 2015, and by then, Eric Garner, Micheal Brown, and Tamir Rice were dead. Years later, I worked at San Lorenzo High School, where Grant had briefly attended. By then, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and many others were also dead. 

I spent a long time thinking about Tortuguita's death while trying to write. Two days after the killing, Joel Paez answered a knock at the door of his house in Chicago. The officer on his porch asked, "Do you have a relative in Atlanta?" Joel responded, "Yes, my son." The officer took a piece of paper, wrote down a phone number, and motioned to his body camera, saying, "This is being recorded." The officer then turned and left. Later, Paez noted the perverse irony that his interaction with the police had been recorded while his son's killing had not. I sat, thought about Tortuguita and his father, and wrote. But one thought always kept the work incomplete: what could I contribute to the discussion that hasn't already been said? 

Earlier this month, a Washington Post news alert arrived in my inbox: “Hundreds of police have sexually abused kids. How do they avoid prison time?” And the next day: “An officer sexually abused a teen in his police car. How will he be punished?” Okay, I thought, it’s time to try writing again. Still, what hasn’t been said? The Post’s exposés are far superior to anything I could put on paper. 

Lenin's article "Beat — But Not to Death!" from 1901 comes to mind when I think about the police. Lenin highlighted the case of an otherwise unknown peasant, Timofei Vasilyevich Vozdukhov, who died in police custody after being severely beaten by four Moscow officers and a supervisor. The post-mortem examination revealed "ten broken ribs, bruises all over his body, and brain hemorrhage." Despite this, the supervisor received only a minor punishment, leading Lenin to sarcastically remark, "You did right in ordering the blood to be wiped from the dying man's face, but you allowed him to die. That was careless, my friend. In the future, be more careful and never forget the first and last commandment of the Russian [policeman]: 'Beat — but not to death!'"

Besides detailing the killing and the court proceedings, Lenin compares the supervisor’s “punishment” with a different case in which a military private was given four years of penal servitude for stealing clothes. Lenin concludes that in the eyes of the legal system, Vozdukhov’s life was worth less than a bundle of clothes. “From the ordinary human point of view, the sentence Panov drew was a mockery of justice. It reveals a cringing, servile spirit, an attempt to throw the whole blame upon the minor police officers and to shield their immediate chief with whose knowledge, approval, and participation this brutal crime was committed.”

“Beat — But Not to Death!” is an exposé about the Tsarist legal system that only a skilled lawyer and political agitator could craft. The story was not new: Police abuse was common in Russia, and the perpetrators almost always escaped severe punishment. “Such is the simple tale of this case,” writes Lenin, “which throws a glaring light upon what usually and always goes on in our police-stations.” But journalism about the issue was new — and very illegal. 

The abuses detailed in Lenin’s article could come from The New York Times or another contemporary paper. This familiarity indicates an essential difference between discussions about the police in Tsarist Russia and our constitutional republic in the United States. Unlike their Russian counterparts at the turn of the century, for whom Lenin’s article was one of the only bits of dissident news available, Americans know all about police abuse. 

Socialists know the police are problematic, and so do many other people who don’t consider themselves socialists. We have to say something, but what? Talking about socialism while describing police violence — as if rage will boil over and the working class will snap into action and “do the socialist revolution” — isn’t the answer. Describing what’s wrong with the world and concluding with “that’s why we need socialism” isn’t a strategy for achieving political power. 

What did Lenin say about the police? “Beat — But Not to Death!” concludes not with a call for socialist revolution (something widely understood as impossible in Russia given the level of economic development) but with the demand for political liberty only found in a democratic constitution. The details of Vozdukhov’s trial “showed clearly how strong and all-entangling is the net, how persistent the canker, which can only be removed by abolishing the whole system of police tyranny and denial of the people’s rights.” So long as the people lack political power, police abuse cannot be reformed out of existence. The humble request that “police officers and their subordinates shall not beat the people cannot be fulfilled so long as the present political system lasts.” But look, Lenin concludes, the Russian people are struggling for liberty, and voice by voice, the demand for a constitution is growing. The movement for a constitution culminated in the march on the Winter Palace four years later when Father Gapon and thousands of workers attempted to ask the Tsar for a constituent assembly based on universal suffrage. 

In response to police abuse, Lenin and other Russian Social Democrats continued to demand political power for the masses. A few years later, the RSDLP presented a concise (and still relevant) definition of democracy in their 1903 program: “Sovereignty of the people—that is, the concentration of supreme state power wholly in the hands of a legislative assembly consisting of representatives of the people and forming a single chamber” and “Universal, equal and direct suffrage, in elections both to the legislative assembly and to all local organs of self-government, for all citizens and citizenesses who have attained the age of 20; secret ballot at elections; the right of every voter to be elected to any representative body; biennial parliaments; payment of the people’s representatives.”

Russian workers and peasants needed a new political system to solve the “whole of [its] police state system.” Universal and equal rights — including freedom from arbitrary arrest and cruel and unusual punishment — could only be achieved through a democratic revolution that would cement the rule of the majority. The tyranny of a minority and police violence went hand in hand. The United States also needs a new and democratic constitution based on a sovereign unicameral legislature elected by universal and equal suffrage. No democracy perfectly distills the will of the people, writes David Dayen, “But America is uniquely terrible at achieving democratic outcomes.” Our existing constitution stifles organized and independent political expression and ensures the continued tyranny of an economic and ideological minority. Pairing the issue of police abuse with our undemocratic Constitution in the same article isn’t a magical combination; there’s no single issue that, when paired with the Constitution, will invigorate the movement for democracy. Like the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party newspaper Iskra, our job is to gather all the drops and streamlets of widespread resentment — including police abuse — into a single and gigantic movement for democracy.