Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota
The Metro Transit police made the news this weekend in the Twin Cities for their significant size increase over the past few years, almost the same day as a video surfaced showing a police officer slam a handcuffed passenger onto the ground for not paying the light rail fare. The outcry has focused on the unnecessary brutality administered on the black man who they say was not resisting, but the police have the honesty to admit that this was all within protocol and completely legal. Like many conversations around police brutality, it is too easy to get stuck in the quagmire of legality and morality, instead of the fundamentally oppressive nature of policing itself. Those who suggest that the officer’s force was excessive because he was not resisting arrest only serve to legitimize violence against those who do resist arrest.
The report on the Metro Transit Police Department’s growth described the 67% increase of officers on the force. The chief, John Harrington, who was previously the St. Paul police chief as well, also expressed his new philosophy for the department: a shift towards so-called “community policing,” which is the pleasant face of counter-insurgency. With more officers spending more time on trains, police can better project their presence and deter people from not paying the fare, which supposedly costs Metro Transit tens of thousands of dollars a week. A recent audit shows that 9% of Green Line riders don’t pay the fare—likely less now that body slams are on the table. But what is a fare other than a barrier to those who can’t afford to move around the city?
But of course, policing takes many forms beyond those in uniform, it manifests itself through the basic organization of the metropolis. For instance, let’s examine the trains themselves. Public transit aims to organize the movement of the population through the city, whether funneling them to work or to the Mall of America for shopping. It also allows for capital to expand beyond the immediate downtown areas into the surrounding neighborhoods. On the Green Line, just over a year old, billions of dollars of development has already been brought to St. Paul along the light rail. While those with money welcome the long line of developers buying up the neighborhood, the rest of us know what this really means: being pushed out of our homes, away from the cities that are colonized (again) for those wealthier and whiter than us.
Police and gentrification are two expressions of the same logic, but it is not inevitable. Resistance against this logic has sparked uprisings across the globe. A few examples might be Istanbul or Burgos, Ferguson or The Hague. The struggle against development and policing resonates beyond borders, and hopefully these revolts can inspire our struggle locally.