South Carolina cop rams Black man with car

Officer Steve C. Garren was indicted by a federal grand jury on June 10 in Greenville, S.C., after being caught on video ramming a suspect with his patrol car. Garren is charged with willfully depriving the man of his constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a police officer.

Video shows Officer Steve C. Garren ram a frightened man with his car.

Garren is white; his victim is Black.

The incident is not the only racist police crime caught on tape in South Carolina. Videos showing troopers using racist epithets and ramming their cruisers into fleeing suspects motivated an investigation in March. The head of the police force and the head of the agency that oversees it both resigned in February amid charges of racism.

As is the case in New York and Los Angeles, most victims of police violence receive little, if any, media attention.The numerous crimes committed by those infamous police departments are not localized problems. The harassment of working people and youth by “law enforcement” officers is commonplace throughout the country. People of color, in particular, often have their basic constitutional rights violated: searched without warrants, questioned without reason and brutalized. Only when one or another police crime makes its way to the surface do save-face investigations disturb the daily routine of sweeping racist abuses under the rug.

Garren was charged with a civil rights violation for what amounts to, at the very least, assault with a deadly weapon. If convicted, the trooper faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Because of the institutionalized racism of the justice system, conviction may be unlikely. There is no effective legal recourse for the victims of police violence seeking justice. Sean Bell, a 23-year-old African American, was shot 50 times by NYPD cops after leaving his bachelor party. The officers who murdered the unarmed Sean Bell were acquitted on April 25.

Working people face institutionalized racism everyday. Only a people’s movement can change this—a movement where the people themselves are the judges and the jurors. Until working people come together and tear down racist divisions, justice will not be served.