The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Prince George’s County, Maryland:
Mall Cop Assaulted a Teenager

Jun 25, 2018

A security guard at a Maryland mall grabbed a handcuffed 15-year-old girl by the neck and slammed her face down on a chair. Briana Commodore laid unconscious for several minutes on the food court floor. She suffered neck injuries and a concussion.

The situation was so violent that several people captured the ordeal on their cell phones. When Commodore’s older sister arrived on the scene, she too was placed in handcuffs.

Commodore does not deny that she was in an altercation with other teens at the mall. But when the mall cop attacked her, she was already restrained in handcuffs.

The mall shop owners no doubt put pressure on the guards to keep groups of young people in check. They are young, they don’t have much money, if any, to spend in the stores. And there is the fear that groups of teens hanging out at malls frighten away potential paying customers.

So where exactly are young people supposed to go? It’s not like there are any neighborhood community centers for them to go and be with each other and do constructive activities together. What are they supposed to do? Go to the hospital after being brutalized by mall cop thugs?

Capitalism has no answers to this problem.