Photo Courtesy: YiouTube/Melina Abdullah
Today’s police officers “evolved” from “slave catchers,” according to a Black Lives Matter organizer who spoke at a California State University, Fullerton, event last week.
Melina Abdullah — also a professor and chair of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles — described Black Lives Matter as “police abolitionists” because of the history of American law enforcement, the Daily Titan reported.
“Police that we now have were the slave catchers,” Abdullah continued, the paper reported. “So that is where it comes from. You literally have a target on your back. That is what policing was founded on, and that is what it evolved out of. So the former slave catchers or paddy rollers, they were called slave patrols.”
When Abdullah asked the audience what slave patrols are called today, the Daily Titan said the response was “patrolmen.”
LA Weekly characterized Abdullah as a “key figure” in the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter and noted she called the city’s police department “the most murderous police force in the country.”
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