NAARPR
WASHINGTON––Community control of the police (CCOP) a concept once brought to fruition by the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense by the likes of Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Fred Hampton in the 1960s as a result of continued police terror in predominantly Black communities is back. And in the nation’s capital, it’s a chapter of the recently re-launched National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression that is raising the call for communities to, once again, keep watch on the cops.
Decades ago, the Panthers established a prototype that activists are looking to today. Under the conditions of their time, the BPP set up community cop watch groups and took up arms as forms of physical security and self-defense to protect their communities from white supremacists.