Strangling Justice: Killer Cops in Haverhill Walk Free

On Tuesday evening the Essex County District Attorney, Paul Tucker, announced that seven Haverhill Police Department officers will face no charges for the public execution of Francis Gigliotti in July, 2025, after the District Attorney’s office reviewed the findings of an independent investigation that had concluded Gigliotti's death was a homicide. This comes after one of the officers involved in Gigliotti's murder died from "stress related issues,” and Police Chief Robert Pistone and his successor, Stephen Doherty, were both placed on leave in the aftermath of the murder.

Last July, Gigliotti was viciously forced to the ground by HPD pigs outside of a local restaurant after showing signs of emotional distress. Despite the fact that the US Department of Justice has warned police officers since the mid-1990s to avoid asphyxiating restraints, the officers kept him pinned face down for 2 minutes and 25 seconds, leading to his needless death.

Despite this, the Haverhill Police Department has consistently blamed Gigliotti's substance use for his death, rather than the seven HPD goons relentlessly crushing him into the dirt while he cried out for help. In light of this, the DA announced that the investigation “found that officers “acted in a reasonable manner," and that homicide "is a neutral term." What is reasonable about seven pigs smothering a man to death? What is neutral about homicide?

In the aftermath of the DA's announcement, Gigliotti's family and community have rallied to demand justice. The family attorney, Courtney Healy, said in a statement: “We have just served our statutory notice of civil claims, and it is a particularly bitter pill to swallow that the Essex District Attorney’s Office has given these officers a complete pass despite the medical examiner’s finding that this was, in fact, a homicide.”

Indeed, it is yet another normalization of this system that treats the working-class as expendable. The same system that killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in cold blood is the one that killed Francis Gigliotti! All this is nothing but social-murder for profit.

“The findings announced today confirm what we have believed all along, that our officers involved acted within the scope of their duties in accordance with procedures,” remarked Mayor Barrett, showing the killer-instinct of this system.

By presenting Francis's murder as "procedural" the Mayor exposes that she and all the feckless bureaucrats in power work for the bosses, landlords, and monopolists, that is to say, against the people; the people who daily break backs to produce capitalists’ profits while they threaten us with murder if we are an inconvenience. We can do better than that!

The people of Haverhill have persisted in their struggle for justice despite facing harassment from the HPD and empty reformist gestures from Mayor Melinda Barrett, including instituting body cameras for police officers. The only cameras that matter are the ones in the hands of the people exposing this rotten system!

What is clear to us is that in every instance where justice is made impossible, revolution is made all the more inevitable. The police will never be reformed by sham elections, body-cams, or sharply worded press-briefings from collaborating politicians. The only solution to police violence is to pull out the root of the capitalist dictatorship by building working class organizations and rising in our might to smash the system that is strangling us all to death. Only then can we build the world where such injustice is a memory of darker times.

The only sane response to an insane system is to rebel against it!

Justice for Francis!

No Killer Cops on Our Streets!