City Lights Makes Mumia Abu-Jamal's Essay on the History of Institutional Policing Free to Download

In the essay, "To Protect and Serve Whom," by activist, journalist, and COINTELPRO target Mumia Abu-Jamal, he "examines the history of an institutionalized police force in the United States, and points to the growing networks for justice against police violence and calls on young people to channel their energy and indignation to organize and rise up through movement building."

The essay was published in the collection, Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? published by City Lights in 2017. City Lights has made the essay, written from a prison cell, free to download as a PDF today. "Taking the time to study and understand America’s deep history is essential in order to see, anticipate, and plan for what is before us." This will take more than body cams, he wrote in 2015:

Decades ago, at the tail end of the fiery 1960s and chilling 1970s, Dr. Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party, wrote several articles proposing how we might totally transform American policing.

His articles followed years of on-the-ground organizing, demanding not “community policing,” but “community control of police.” The core of this concept is for police to live in the community that they are employed to police, and subject to the will of the people that they allegedly “serve.”

Dr. Newton gave that idea much thought, and in a series of articles published in The Black Panther during February and March of 1980, he presents an alternative view of how police should be structured. We here summarize his ideas:

• Existing police departments would be abolished;

• A Citizen’s Peace Force (CPF) would be established to serve local community needs;

• The persons serving on the Citizen’s Peace Force would be selected per council districts, starting (part-time) at age 15, for two-year terms; To Protect and Serve Whom?

• Those chosen would be trained, but also educated in areas of urban problem solving.

Dr. Huey P. Newton’s service-oriented perspective departs markedly from the increasing militaristic and authoritarian project that now animates much of police theory and law enforcement practice.

Dr. Newton also writes about the spectrum of personality profiles considered best suited for serving the community.…

Find a full illumination of the history of police in this country here, and thanks to City Lights.