Boston police admitted to shooting Victoria Snelgrove on October 20th during a Red Sox victory celebration. She died hours later.

The parents justly said this: "'What happened to her should not happen to any American citizen.'"(1) They managed to see Victoria at the hospital just before she died.

A witness saw the police shooting in the area. There were too many witnesses and cameras around and Boston is too intelligent to put up with the usual police murk in a case where the whole world knows the context, so we're not surprised that Police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole confessed to the killing.

At the same time, O'Toole said this: "'I also condemn, in the harshest possible words, the actions of the punks last night who turned our city's victory into an opportunity for violence.'"(2)

On the one hand we have the academic "radicals" in Boston and elsewhere who think "violence" is politically incorrect language or a threat to break up by a man if his girlfriend does not have sex. On the other hand, we have police commissioners who literally mentioned the killing of Victoria Snelgrove and then proceeded to condemn "punks" who tried but failed to overturn a car.

Earth to Commissioner O'Toole: you are the "punk" leader. Your employees killed a student for nothing. That should have been your message of the day, period. You should have started a process of questioning: "if police shot someone in that context to death, what else did they do wrong?"

Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, had O'Toole said something like that to her comrades, she would have been asked for self-criticism. Had she managed to say something like that to the media, she would have been fired and found another job. That is the correct model of community-to-police relations. Nothing less will ever produce the optimum non-violent social order.

Red Sox ownership should see that this incident ruined the Red Sox celebrations and should pressure the police and city officials. In celebrations after a Los Angeles Lakers championship victories some fans turned over two police cars. Lakers star Shaquille O'Neal could see where his bread is buttered and he paid for the police cars. In that incident over-hyped by the media, a media van also suffered along with $750,000 worth of other business damages.(3) MIM says "so what?" The police deployment costs more than that and none of it compares with the death of Victoria Snelgrove.

The fear of cars being turned over or some wild grafitti or drunken scuffles did not justify Boston's police deployment. Anyone with an ethical sense of proportion can see that.

Even among more moderate writers in the press, Brian McGrory of the Boston Globe seems to have no grip on what causes what. The death of a man at the Super Bowl celebration in February was by a drunk driver. Unless the city is going to successfully ban alcohol or driving and deploy police for that, there are going to be drunk driving related deaths. Putting riot cops on the street is not a solution for that problem. Using the Super Bowl death of a man killed by a drunk driver to justify riot police deployment is oink-speak in two senses.

The reason that police never see that is that they earn money to abuse the public. Police Commissioner O'Toole's "punks" rhetoric is nothing but a justification for police pay. The tally for the Democratic National Convention held in July is still not done, but already it is clear that just Boston police alone (and there were other police agencies involved) have received at least $5 million in overtime pay from that.(4) Not surprisingly the police and their friends in the media are constantly hyping non-existent threats--not to mention the threats that do exist but police cannot solve.

Some of the same cold-hearted knee-jerk police supporters who will sweep Victoria Snelgrove under the rug will also complain about taxes even as their beloved police bilk the public with hyped fears about demonstrators or Red Sox crowds. These same sicko cheapskates will be lining up to send troops to Iraq with the hope of cheaper gas so they can afford the taxes to pay for more cops. Their attitude is not much different than that of the pirates of yore. They are for force to settle questions, not for improved production to make everyone better off. If all the people they favor having as police and prison guards had real jobs, they would not need to be sending youth to die for oil.

Under the dictatorship of the proletariat there won't be police unions or anything of that kind, no police cliques. Police and prison officials will be public servants or they will find other jobs, and other jobs will be guaranteed under socialism. The people of Boston should put MIM in power as our current politicians do not have a sense of proportion in life-and-death matters.

The difference between Pedro Martinez and city officials

After losing a game to the New York Yankees, star Boston Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez said that the writers could call the Yankees "my daddy." It was a way of showing a self-critical spirit in a sporting way--to admit defeat by an opponent. The statistics showed that Pedro fared relatively poorly against the Yankees all season and Pedro was man enough to admit it. People without a grip on reality and a self-critical attitude do not have achievements like Pedro's.

In contrast, ego-tripping government officials in Boston deployed police that killed Victoria Snelgrove and the next day could not focus themselves on the appropriate message of the day which was that they and their police were wrong and what they were going to do to prevent their being wrong again. If Pedro can say the Yankees are "his daddy," then Commissioner O'Toole can say that she was the leader of the "punks."

Meanwhile, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino was busy threatening to arrange expulsion of students for celebrating in too rowdy a fashion. "'The students have no sense of responsibility whatsoever,'"(5) he had the gall to say just after his police killed one. Earth to Menino: you should be expelling police rioters and maybe then you would earn students' respect.

We at MIM told-you-so. In our live coverage of the "crowd control" at the Republican National Convention in New York City we said: "One thing we did not see in the labor aristocracy media--a comparison of how much violence has been carried out by police as compared with demonstrators. The reason we do not hear that subject talked about is that police riots against the public are much more common than violent riots by demonstrators. Hiring fewer cops and providing existing ones something else to do is the surest road to reducing violence."

Commissioner O'Toole and Menino bear responsibility for provoking the crowds into minor mayhem and for lacking any sense of proportion regarding the major disorder that caused the death of Victoria Snelgrove.

The role of spectator sports

MIM opposes commercialized spectator sports. The couch potatoes should glorify their own competitive exploits with one tenth what they give to spectator sports now and we would have an amazing people.

It's also unavoidable to ask in a situation like this one--why there is such an outpouring regarding the Red Sox. The answer is the manipulation of sports corporations.

People bored with their own lives under capitalism find intense vicarious pleasure in the achievements of others. Not surprisingly, that basic kind of alienation leads to the sports bar and alcohol. People in charge of their own workplaces and leisure lives would not feel that kind of alienation that leads to spectator sports mania and alcohol and other drugs--problems that police under capitalism can never solve.

As we can see from the Victoria Snelgrove case, police cannot solve crowd control issues either. Someone died at the Super Bowl too and prohibition of alcohol does not work in the united $tates, because capitalism creates black markets. The only real answer to this whole knot of problems is socialism-- self-actualization at work, self-actualization in sports and other leisure-time activities. Puncturing the whole spectator sport myth is important for the same underlying resaon as puncturing the myth of the importance of the capitalist class in production.

Notes:
1. http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/10/22/fan.death/index.html
2. Metro Boston Edition 22Oct2004, p. 1.
3. http://www.usatoday.com/sports/nba/02playoffs/2002-06-13-lakers-fans.htm
4. http://www.boston.com/news/politics/conventions/articles/2004/10/11/convention_overtime_at_66m_may_top_9m/
5. Metro Boston Edition 22Oct2004, p. 6.