On March 3, 19-year-old University of Maryland student John James McKenna was arrested for assaulting a police officer, following an unprovoked beating by three Prince George’s County police officers.
Since a videotape of the beating was released, the charges against McKenna have been dropped. One of the officers has been suspended pending an investigation.
Lieutenant Stan Johnson defended the police officers saying, “Their main mission was crowd control … so as far as the beating, if you can call it a beating, I have no comment. I can’t speak on their behalf.” But Prince George’s County Police Chief Roberto Hylton held a news conference to condemn the officers’ actions as unacceptable.
The reality is that no official or member of the police force questioned the actions of the officers until the video of the beating surfaced. The police serve the capitalist state as a tool for the repression of working-class and oppressed people. They often use such unprovoked brutality to carry out their “mission.”
