“Better Training” for State Violence?
When the family of 22-year-old Jabez Chakraborty called for medical help, the NYPD shot him. His shooting, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s response, prove that police are the irreformable armed wing of the capitalist state, and that justice demands a revolutionary party for the working class.
22-year-old Jabez Chakraborty’s family had called for medical help for their son in Queens, New York City. Instead of medical responders, the state sent armed police, who shot him multiple times, leaving him in critical condition.
After shooting a family’s son in front of them, do you think the New York Police Department (NYPD) cops were apologetic, helping the family and their son as much as possible? Of course not.
In a statement released by the family, they report the cops interrogated them, demanding their cell phones (presumably to make sure there was no video evidence of their actions) and demanding the family come with them to the precinct with them instead of the hospital. Per the family, the cops acted like ICE, asking the family about their immigration status, detaining them, and refusing to tell them if their son was even alive. Even the next day, the cops were still giving the family trouble seeing their son, now in critical condition, in the hospital.
Today, as the country sees federal immigration agents brutalize, terrorize, and murder folks on video, there is a growing demand for “better training.” ICE just needs to be better trained like the cops, the logic goes, and all will be well. But this is what “better training” gets you: Cops that are better trained not to protect you, but to protect property and social order. They are trained to see our crises as threats and to meet them with violence, causing more crises and trauma for everyone. This is why we say “La migra, la policía, la misma porquería!” or “ICE, the cops, same shit” — they’re all part of the same violent state apparatus that needs to go.
Unfortunately even a democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, described the cops nearly murdering a young man in cold blood in front of his family as an “officer-involved shooting.” He went on to even thank the “first responders.”
I’ve been briefed on an officer-involved shooting in Queens that occurred earlier today. The NYPD was responding to a 911 call, where they encountered an individual wielding a knife. The NYPD is assessing the situation, and we are committed to keeping New Yorkers informed as we…
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) January 26, 2026
This is what happens when even a progressive candidate runs inside a murderous capitalist party like the Democratic Party, and it shows the bankruptcy of working within the capitalist parties altogether. Progressive politicians become administrative mouthpieces of a murderous system unable to even clearly condemn an attempted murder by the cops.
But the issue extends far beyond it just being a weak response from Mamdani’s to the NYPD’s attempted murder. Mamdani’s attempts to present the NYPD and cops in general as reformable forces we can “work with” is a smokescreen. You cannot reform the armed wing of the capitalist state. And in Mamdani’s executive position, he is the boss of the same police he is suggesting we can or should reform, the same cops whose exact role is to terrorize the public and protect private property of the rich.
The police cannot be reformed or reigned in, period. The entire institution — like ICE and all of DHS — needs to be abolished.
In reality, the issue is no one can reform the role of violent capitalist state. This is even more certainly not possible through an imperialist, pro-cop party. This is why we need our own party — a party of the poor and working class that fights for us, not for the cops and the capitalists they protect. Our survival depends on building independent working-class power.
