You see a certain phrase all across police departments everywhere.
Protect and Serve.
You can’t go far without seeing or hearing it.
Protect and Serve.
Banners. Badges. Mugs. Shirts.
Protect and Serve.
The phrase is simple, and it cuts straight to the point. That’s the point of any given police department.
Protect and Serve.
…Right?
That is the point, is it not? If it wasn’t, why would they say it everywhere?
Protect and Serve.
But look at how vague that phrase is. You’d think it’s self-explanatory, but who ultimately is the beneficiary of it?
Protect and Serve.
Yeah, but who? Or what?
Let me take you back for a moment. If we are to answer this question, we should go back to when that question was pushed to the limit.
Let’s start with an answer, one that most would probably default to, and work our way through the story and see if we’re right.
Protect and Serve.
Their community?
Take a step back. The story begins near the Tug Fork River, with one of the most famous feuds in United States history: the Hatfields vs McCoys.
Stolen pigs, affairs, taking turns shedding blood, New Years 1888, the Battle of the Grapevine Creek. You’ve heard all the stories of your father’s cousins; the feuding and the killing.
Step in: your name is Jessie Maynard, and your grandmother was “Ole Randall” McCoy’s cousin and sister-in-law (gross!). It was before your time (the feud had died down before you were born), but the stories would linger forever in the folklore of the United States, let alone in the immediate aftermath of the families directly impacted.
You, naively, may believe the violence your family experienced is behind you.
In 1911, days after your 17th birthday, you marry Cabell Testerman, the twice-divorced 29-year-old jeweler and optician by trade.
While the interfamilial violence may have subsided, there was a whole new dimension to life in Appalachia that was beginning to reveal itself.
The coal industry was about to explode, and so was the movement for labor rights, protections and representation.
The first sign you noticed things will start to get out of hand was perhaps the 15-month-long Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike, beginning less than a year after your wedding in April 1912.
Happening just a few counties over in Southern West Virginia, you hear about these “Baldwin-Felts” agents who were called in to be strike breakers, and an Irish-born woman named Mother Jones coming in to assist.
Some papers are calling Jones the “most dangerous woman in America,” but she’s assisting laborers fighting to unionize and having their demands met. How could she be the “most dangerous” when she’s only helping laborers?
After all, she’s not the one putting up snipers or organizing beatings.
These, of course, were happening in company towns across Southern West Virginia. Luckily for you, Matewan is an independent municipality.
You, naively, may believe that type of violence would never come to Matewan.
That Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike would last until July 1913, ending with the recognition of the union they tried to form.
Good for them!
A year later, you read about the heir to Austria-Hungry getting assassinated in Sarajevo. Some far off European lands. Eventually a whole mess of European Powers are at war with each other.
Typical Europeans, always fighting each other in some war.
This so-called “Great War” in Europe seems to be all the news is talking about. Come 1916, the same year you and Cabell adopt your son Jack, President Wilson is even running on “He kept us out of the war!”
He won! But the Germans were sinking our ships and telling Mexico they should invade us. So, he got us into the war in April 1917, 150 days after the election and only 32 days after his second inauguration.
So much for that promise.
Many men from West Virginia, in your and surrounding counties, were conscripted into the Army to fight that war. They weren’t just miners anymore; they were trained combat veterans.
You hear about that dreaded Russian Empire falling to what the government calls “Bolshevism,” and how we’re sending troops into the Russian Civil War to defeat the “Bolshevik menace.”
Then, something strange happens.
After this Great War ends on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, and our boys began coming home, they still had their pro-unionization aspirations in mind.
But now, the government is calling them “Bolsheviks,” wanting a union “Bolshevism,” and since we’re still fighting Bolshevism in Russia, then it’s somehow patriotic to do that here.
But wait. That can’t possibly be right.
These boys were striking back before the war even started. They were calling Mother Jones “the most dangerous woman in America.” They were always fighting our boys to keep them from unionizing, but now they’re using scare tactics to turn the public against the miners.
These boys just fought a war in Europe the President ran on having kept us out of, and you repay those efforts by calling those men Bolsheviks and unpatriotic?
Those awful Baldwin-Felts strike breakers were always trying to keep these miners from unionizing, and now it just seems like they’re using the convenient excuse of “patriotically fighting Bolsheviks at home” to continue what they’ve been doing this whole time.
Your husband, Cabell, tells you how Albert Felts had the audacity to offer him $500 to allow machine guns to be placed on rooftops in Matewan, as they were carrying out evictions in company housing on the outskirts of Matewan. Hundreds of miners and their families had been evicted from their homes already going into the Spring on 1920.
He tells you what he told Felts: “There wasn’t enough money in the county for him to do something like that.”
His friend and appointed police chief, Sid Hatfield, was offered bribes as well, but stood firmly by his side. Hard living and rough and rumble, Sid might have been a surprising choice to appoint police chief some in town, but he was strong pro-miner and pro-union, as was Cabell himself.
Of course, the irony is not lost on you that a Hatfield is one of your, a McCoy, strongest allies.
Cabell sensing tensions rising, asks you and Sid that, if something were to happen to him, Sid would take care of you and your son.
But surely it couldn’t come to that, right?
Well, come Wednesday, May 19th, 1920, this whole things catches up and collapses right in your lap.
Some Baldwin thugs, including Albert Felts, come through town looking to evict miners in the next town over, and hand Sid Hatfield a warrant for his arrest, allegedly signed by a judge in Mingo county.
Cabell, Sid and Sid’s deputy Fred Burgraff met with the thugs on the porch of the Chambers Hardware Store, with both Sid and the agents claiming they had the right to arrest the other.
Eventually, the warrant for Sid’s arrest landed in your husband’s hands. He declares it to be bogus.
And is promptly shot by Albert Felts, firing the gun from and through his pocket.
Then the shooting began in earnest.
When it was all said and done, a total of ten people would be killed from that day. Albert Felts, his brother Lee, and five other detectives from Baldwin-Felts ended up dead. Two miners from Matewan would also be killed in the gunfire.
But the next day, Cabell becomes the tenth death from the Matewan Massacre, the so-called “Battle of Matewan.”
Only 26 years old and you’ve already been widowed. After your husband’s murder in cold blood, you and your child are left alone. Sid, who was in the middle of the whole affair, swears he will keep his promise to your late husband and take care of you and your son.
And he does.
Sid, less than two weeks after Cabell’s untimely death, goes with you via train to Huntington, WV to get your marriage license. You both decided it was best to get some rest in town before marrying the next day. You two check into the Florentine Hotel to rest up for tomorrow’s wedding.
Then, some unexpected visitors.
Huntington Police Officers Messenger and Vernatt arrest and jail you and Sid overnight for “cohabiting while unmarried” and “committing adultery.” Apparently, you both had folks watching your movements.
Specifically, it was Baldwin-Felts spy (and traitor) Charles Lively and Tom Felts, the brother of the two fallen Felts brothers from the Battle of Matewan, who allegedly left the tip to the Huntington PD.
You have a quick trial in the morning, no longer than five minutes, where the judge ultimately throws away the charges and hefty $10 fine after learning of your and Sid’s plans to wed that same day.
Since you’re already at the courthouse, you guys get to knock out what you aimed to do anyways.
Congratulations, Mrs. Hatfield!
Of course, it’s not all sunshine. The Baldwin-Felts thugs haven’t been making your or Sid’s lives any easier since the massacre at Matewan.
In fact, your quick wedding was plenty of ammunition for the smear campaign.
Suddenly, rumors pop up and swirl that Sid himself was the one who shot Cabell, and it was so he could marry you.
But you know that’s not true. That’s all a rumor being spread by the pro-Baldwin-Felts camp and the media rags that support them. No one wants to ever call the Baldwin-Felts guys the bad guys in the paper, but what else could they be?
They’ve been breaking up your fellow West Virginian’s unionization attempts for years, before there was any implication of Bolshevism, and harder and more forcefully once there was that implication, even if the reality on the ground hadn’t changed.
They’ve done all they can to stop our boys from trying for a better life. They came at the behest and in service of the mining companies, and never to the aid of the poor worker doing the job.
Now, because Sid is becoming something of a workingman’s folk hero, they feel the need to discredit and smear his when and where they can.
You know Cabell asked Sid to take care of you and Jack. There was no plot between you and Sid to get rid of Cabell. The imminent danger, brought by the strike breakers, made it necessary to plan for the worst case scenario.
Now, that same camp of strike breakers aims to smear your new husband after making you a widow.
By January 1921, after six months of negative attention, Sid and 17 others are tried on murder charges, all stemming from the so-called “Battle of Matewan.”
All 18 were acquitted.
You are thrilled, and how could you not be? Sid was already a hero to miners across West Virginia (and maybe even nationwide), and now he’s a free man.
“Smilin’ Sid,” as some knew him as; that’s what the United Mine Workers film was called. He even got to be photographed with Mother Jones.
Truth be told, Mother Jones wasn’t nearly as dangerous as the media told you she was, but after seeing how the media talks about Sid, you already knew that.
Life goes on until Sid and his deputy, Edward Chambers, are accused of conspiracy.
In the town of Mohawk in McDowell County, a mining camp was shot up. The local mine guard said the perpetrators were being led by Sid and Edward to force the Mohawk miners to unionize.
Charles Lively, who is something of a double agent as you’d later come to find out, told the police he talked Sid, Edward and the miners into doing something drastic while at a restaurant. This testimony would lead to their arrest.
Union leaders said the story was bull, that the mine guards themselves were the shooters and that the accusations being levels were all to set up Hatfield and Chambers.
A distant cousin of Sid’s, Bill Hatfield, just so happens to be the McDowell county sheriff. He tells you guys that Sid and Edward would have the fullest protection.
Bill, however, would leave town for Virginia the day before he was so-desperately needed.
On August 1st, 1921, Sid Hatfield and Edward Chambers, unarmed with with their wives by the sides, were walking up the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse when several Baldwin-Felts thugs, including Charles Lively, began shooting the two men.
Your husband Sid dies instantly. Edward Chambers is finished off execution style with a bullet to the head from Lively.
You and Mrs. Chambers have both been widowed, and you have been widowed for the second time in 15 months.
None of the Baldwin-Felts thugs are even tried or held responsible for the killings.
All this would lead to the so-called “Battle of Blair Mountain,” the largest labor uprising in United States history, with 10,000 miners taking arms and rising up.
It would finally subside on September 2nd, when U.S. troops came to break it up, and the military veteran miners unwilling to fire on the troops, thus leading to the end of the uprising.
Take a step back, you’re no longer Jessie Maynard-Testerman-Hatfield: you’re you. You are reading about Jessie and the story surrounding her on the United States Pirate Party website, and you remember the point to this.
Protect and serve.
Looking at that story, who was being protected and served? And what?
The people are West Virginia, the miners, weren’t being protected and served. They were being frustrated at every turn when they sought out better working conditions, sometimes by force.
Sid? Sid Hatfield did what he could to protect and serve in his role as Police Chief of Matewan. In fact, Sid did just as much as any police officer could hope to do in protecting his community.
And he was shot for his troubles.
The people who killed police officer Sid Hatfield never were arrested or tried because they claimed “self-defense” against the unarmed Hatfield.
The Baldwin-Felts thugs protected and served, but they weren’t serving the community. They were tasked with protecting and serving the mining company from the community.
Was Jessie protected and served? She was twice widowed at the hands of Baldwin-Felts thugs, and no justice was ever served.
In fact, she herself was arrested in the middle of the story for “cohabiting while unmarried” and “committing adultery.”
So why are you, dear reader, being asked to go through all of this? Why would the United States Pirate Party want this story to be laid out and told the way that it has?
Lesser discussed in our platform is the plank “Police Reform.” In it, we call for things such as the demilitarization of the police, ending qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture, requiring warrants for all forms of surveillance and end no-knock warrants, and ensuring nobody is put in jail for actions of basic survival.
In the story of Jessie Hatfield, we see many examples of why we call for such measures.
First of all, Sid Hatfield is the lone officer in the story to take on a purely community-based approach to law enforcement. Sid legitimately worked to protect and serve his community from overreaching mining companies and strike-breaking thugs.
And he was killed for his troubles.
Sid and Jessie, two consenting adults about to be married, were arrested in a major invasion of privacy and charge with a crime the state should have no power to enforce. This is a privacy issue as much as it is a policing issue.
Finally, individuals before institutions. Sid was the only person putting the individuals of his community above the institution of the mining industry. The protections of the worker were not kept in mind for the companies or the strike breakers, but was always considered with Hatfield.
Sid Hatfield is, by no stretch of the imagination, what we should be striving for when it comes to policing.
Earlier this decade, you saw anti-police sentiment hit a peak not seen in decades. “ACAB” and “Defund the Police” were rallying cries shouted by those who recognized the injustices perpetrated by modern policing.
And yet, the approach proved to be more harmful than not.
The actual issues of policing were not addressed properly, and instead of getting “defunded,” police departments got massive boosts in funding.
As you can see, the issues observed in the way policing is carried out is nothing new, and complaints of “Police serve capital” is hard to argue when the police act more as law enforcement as opposed to community servicemen.
So I bring you to this: protect and serve.
Was it the community in the story? Only if you’re talking about Sid Hatfield.
Unfortunately, not every officer is Sid Hatfield, nor is every motivation of an officer the same as Hatfield’s.
But Sid Hatfield shows that policing can be done in service of the community. How it ended should not sour the fact that it is indeed possible to how our police protect and serve the community.
The trend in policing we have seen is the militarization of our police forces. We have seen police officers, who are otherwise members of their community, taken out and put into a position to where they are often up against the community, not in support of it.
We have a large number of citizens that don’t trust the police, or are even scared of the police. It is that which we must be tasked with changing as a society.
Instead of calling for their defunding, or even the more honest demilitarization, I’d like to suggest a different rallying call when it comes to policing:
“Bring our police home.”
Bring back the beat cop. Bring back the police officer that walks down the street that you and your neighbors know and see everyday. Bring back the community servant. Per our platform, “Properly train our police forces with regular training in all aspects of the job. This will include but not limited to mental health assessments, first responder medical certification, community policing, & public engagement.”
Are all individuals who become police officers bastards? Of course not. Not everyone who becomes a cop is malicious or an inherently bad person. Hell, I’m willing to say most people aiming to become cops genuinely do so with the hope to protect and serve their community. Some might even see themselves as a Sid Hatfield type figure.
But as long as the policing remains in the shape that it is in, which is a bastardized form of protecting and serving, then the view that “all cops are bastards” will be hard to shake. Until that bastardization is done away with, the stigma of doing a bastard profession will reign true in the eyes of many.
If you truly want our police to protect and serve their community. If you truly want an end to no-knock warrants and the infringement of our privacy. If you truly want to end civil asset forfeiture and qualified immunity (which puts our officers in a position above, not in, the community). If you truly want to demilitarize the police, ending the 1033 Program and discouraging technique sharing between the neighborhood police and the military or federal intelligence agencies.
Then look at the positive role models history provides us. Look not at how it ended but what it was when it was happening.
If you truly want our police to protect and serve the community like they claim to, then I invite you to say it with me:
Bring our police home.
uspirates.org/through-the-spyg…
_aid_85_
in reply to EDRi • • •_aid_85_
in reply to _aid_85_ • • •