Police Killings Research Articles

Policing Gangs: Facebook, Extra-judicial Killings and Popular Imaginaries of Super-cop Hessy in Eastlands, Nairobi

Police and gangs have rarely featured as important loci of popular cultural forms, especially in Africa. As an institution, the police in Kenya are abstruse, opaque and often seen as against, and not for society. Popular culture is not only a window and a peek into how a society mainstreams ways of “looking” but also a way through which society articulates potentially controversial subjects. Nothing comes close to the controversy surrounding the subject of police killings of suspected gang members in Eastlands, Nairobi, Kenya. News reports on crime in Nairobi, drawing from news-gathering routines and news values that privilege specific experiences while excluding others, have framed gang violence in specific “singular narratives.” However, Facebook use in Eastlands Nairobi provides a unique canvas through which the imaginary of a “super-cop” is given multiple, if not conflicting meanings. “Super-cops” describe an unorthodox form of policing where specific policemen (mostly male), through a mix of public consent and state sanction, particularly in Eastlands, Nairobi, use extrajudicial means to confront suspected violent gangs. This paper reveals how Facebook groups’ discourse in Eastlands provides lenses that circulate alternative, if not equally controversial readings of so-called “super-cops” in ways that draw from Kenya’s conflicted urban histories to managing violent gangs in the city.

Intersectoral violence prevention: the potential of public health-criminal justice partnerships.

Building successful intersectoral partnerships to address health is critical to reaching health promotion goals. With the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the increase in violence during the pandemic and the heightened demand for racial justice resulting from police killings of people of color, particularly young, black males, intersectoral public health–criminal justice partnerships must be more thoroughly examined. Violence prevention is both a public health and criminal justice issue, with public health systems emphasizing primary prevention and criminal justice systems addressing violence prevention at secondary and tertiary levels. Public health–criminal justice collaborations can provide an opportunity to seize upon unrealized violence reduction goals across the spectrum of prevention. At the same time, issues remain that are at odds across field boundaries as exemplified through community violence prevention. While there have been successful examples of such collaborations, past public health–criminal justice partnerships also demonstrate the challenges of working together. These challenges have yet to be systematically described and rooted in the larger literature on partnerships. In this paper, collaborative challenges are enumerated and evidence-informed strategies to overcome those barriers to achieve violence reduction goals are identified as a way to ground further intersectoral partnership work between public health and criminal justice.

Artist Portfolio: Posters About Policing

Artist Portfolio: Posters About Policing

Framing the Black Lives Matter Movement: An Analysis of Shifting News Coverage in 2014 and 2020

The police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd sparked a resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests throughout the summer of 2020, reminiscent of the wave of Black Lives Matter protests that occurred after several police killings in 2014 including the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Based on qualitative analysis of mainstream media coverage of the protests, this paper examines key themes in the discourse surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014 and 2020. Our findings highlight the ways in which mainstream news sources situate the Black Lives Matter protests within a broader history of Black uprisings. We also emphasize the erasure of violence against Black women in mainstream media depictions of the BLM movement, as well as the erasure of Black women’s leadership in the movement.

Richard L. Trumka: A Labor Leader in Troubled Times

Richard L. Trumka: A Labor Leader in Troubled Times

Law Enforcement Officers’ Bills of Rights and Police Violence

There is widespread concern among activists and legal scholars that Law Enforcement Officers' Bills of Rights (LEOBRs) limit police accountability and potentially impact the use of force. We exploit variation in the timing of the adoption of LEOBRs across states to examine their impact on police-related fatalities using a stacked event study approach. We find no evidence that the introduction of LEOBRs impacted police-related fatalities for either White or non-White civilians. It is important to note that police killings result from the most extreme use of force and our results do not rule out changes in the use of nonlethal force.

Reacting to Black Lives Matter: The discursive construction of racism in UK newspapers

In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020, and the international uprisings which followed, racism moved to the forefront of public discourse. Yet, racism has no fixed interpretation and is a term used by different individuals and organisations for various functional and ideological purposes. This study provides an analysis of the ways that racism is discussed in four UK newspapers using a mixed-methods framework incorporating critical race theory, corpus linguistics, and the discourse-historical approach. It is argued that, as the protests were taking place, systemic racism began to be foregrounded over individualised forms of racism in newspaper discourse. However, journalists continued to use strategies of positive self-presentation to place racism outside of themselves and within racist ‘others’, leading them to stand against racism in the abstract, while potentially diminishing possibilities for structural change.

The Criminal Justice Activism of Naomi Osaka: A Case Study in the Criminology of Celebrity Culture.

This paper examines the criminal justice activism of tennis star Naomi Osaka as it evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic regarding matters of police violence and racial justice. Calls to reform and defund the police received much attention in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020. The Floyd killing also motivated Naomi Osaka to begin her criminal justice activism, which has generally been very well received. Adopting a constructionist perspective, I investigate how Osaka’s criminal justice activism has, in the broader context of the development of celebrity culture, been subjectively motivated and inter-subjectively received by the public and in the news media. Theoretically this paper has the two-fold objective of developing a model of the conditions favorable to the successful reception of celebrity activism and, additionally, of suggesting how such criminologically relevant activism can be understood in terms of a process of celebritization of criminal justice and police reform as causes worthy of attention. This case study of Osaka’s criminal justice activism reveals the important role a celebrity can play in influencing public sentiments about key aspects of policing and crime control as an important element of criminal justice culture.

An fsQCA Analysis of Qualified Immunity and Police Use of Force: An Applied Sociology Approach

Police officers are expected to serve and protect civilians. Yet cases of police officers harming, sometimes killing, people they are expected to serve and protect have received renewed attention in the United States. Notable cases have led to protests, calls for reforms, and disputes about roles of police officers. This study employs Applied Sociology approaches to questions around reforms of policing in the United States. This study examines reforms to legal protections police enjoy through use of force and qualified immunity laws. Analyzing data for the 50 U.S. states and Washington, DC, this study examines whether legal protections police officers possess are associated with excessive use of force against civilians. This study finds that civilian killings by police tend to be higher in states whose governments are characterized as beyond civilian control. Where Republicans control state government and police officers enjoy broad protections, police killings of civilians tend to be higher. This study finds that racial conflict may be a powerful factor related to police killings of civilians. Applied Sociology demonstrates that reforms should concentrate on not only legal protections police enjoy but also societal structures shaping their efforts to serve and protect civilians.

Can we just talk? Exploring discourses on race and racism among U.S. undergraduates during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Across the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken an extraordinary toll on racially minoritised and economically disadvantaged communities. The United States has been no exception. In the U.S., serious illness and death are two- to three-times more common among Black, Latinx, and Native American populations than among white people. In the summer of 2020, growing outrage over the racialised impact of the pandemic coincided with weeks-long protests of police killings of Black Americans—George Floyd in Minnesota, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, and Tony McDade in Florida, among others. The convergence of two racialised phenomena, a public health crisis and police violence, intensified public scrutiny of the practices that sustain racial inequalities, including within higher education. Even as U.S. colleges and universities issue statements decrying the burden of the pandemic and the concomitant racialised violence on communities of colour, racial inequalities persist in higher education and pedagogical practices centring racial justice remain largely uncommon. In this paper, we argue that U.S. institutions of higher education are complicit in the perpetuation of fallacies surrounding race and racism when their curricula fail to prepare students to understand and address these issues. Using survey data from two undergraduate courses taught at an elite, predominantly white institution in Fall 2020, this paper examines how specific pedagogical approaches led to increases in students’ self-reported confidence and capacity to discuss race and racism. Based on our findings, we demonstrate that undergraduates benefit from teaching that specifically develops their capacity to understand, discuss, and address racism.

Police killings and suicide among Black Americans

Black Americans are killed at higher rates by police than whites. Previous studies have shown that discrimination can lead to suicidal ideation, and that mental health of Black Americans deteriorates after police killings. The objective of this study is to examine whether police killings are associated with an increase in suicide rates amongst Black Americans. Controlling for a number of factors, we found that on months with at least one killing of a Black person by police, there were, on average, 0.0472 additional suicides per 100,000 Black Americans in the U.S. Census Division where the killing occurred. We did not find any spillover effects on other divisions. This association persisted when controlling for gun ownership, and did not seem to be a result of variance in deaths by assault. There was no association between killings of Black Americans and white suicides; white killings and Black suicides; or white killings and white suicides. This study highlights another reason for urgent action on reducing police killings.

Queers against Corrective Development

Abstract Corrections in the United States most often describes the institution that holds custody of criminalized people, purportedly to reform or reorient them from nonnormative behaviors through isolation, constraint, and force. This article puts forward a more expansive understanding of corrections, so that its applicability extends outside the prison or the jail and into the society imprisoned by similar logics: ones that “correct” deviance through coercive and violent practices. The author joins a queer critique of corrections with one of gentrification, the practice of displacing low-income and racialized people through deregulation of housing policy and unimpeded capitalist “development” of neighborhoods. Through the prism of corrective development, we can witness disposability politics as the convergence of hyper-carceralism, police killings, and social exclusion of those imagined as undesirable. Simultaneously, the state makes an invitation to the gentrifying bodies—the idealized body and being for development—which are white, abled, corporate, and hetero- or homonormative. The analysis centers the work of Safe OUTside the System (SOS), a lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, trans, and gender-nonconforming people of color collective in Central Brooklyn using abolitionist, anti-violence community organizing to combat the oppressive matrix utilized by gentrifying bodies.

A Queerly Joyful Noise: Choral Musicking for Social JusticeFocus: Choral Music in Global Perspective

A Queerly Joyful Noise: Choral Musicking for Social JusticeFocus: Choral Music in Global Perspective

The Whiteness pandemic behind the racism pandemic: Familial Whiteness socialization in Minneapolis following #GeorgeFloyd's murder.

Family socialization into the centuries-old culture of Whiteness-involving colorblindness, passivity, and fragility-perpetrates and perpetuates U.S. racism, reflecting an insidious Whiteness pandemic. As a poignant case study, this mixed methods study examined Whiteness socialization among White mothers (N = 392, M = 37.99 years, SD = 4.34) in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the month following the May 2020 police killing of unarmed Black resident, George Floyd. Using Helms' (1984, 2017) White racial identity development theory (WRID), content analyses of qualitative responses classified participants into lower versus higher levels of WRID, after which thematic analyses compared their Whiteness socialization beliefs/values, attitudes, practices, and emotions, and analyses of variance compared their demographics, multiculturalism, and psychological distress. There was strong convergence across qualitative and quantitative findings and results aligned with the WRID model. Racially silent participants (i.e., no mention of Floyd's murder or subsequent events on open-ended questions: 53%) had lower multiculturalism scores and lower psychological distress. Among mothers who were racially responsive (i.e., mentioned Floyd's murder or subsequent events: 47%), those with more advanced WRID (17%) had higher multiculturalism scores; lower ethnic group protectiveness scores; a more effective coping style featuring empathy, moral outrage, and hope; more color- and power-conscious socialization beliefs/values; and more purposeful racial socialization practices than their less advanced peers (30%). Collectively, color-evasion and power-evasion-pathogens of the Whiteness pandemic-are inexorably transmitted within families, with White parents serving as carriers to their children unless they take active preventive measures rooted in antiracism and equity-promotion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Police Violence and Black Women’s Health

Police violence continues to be a critical public health issue. From 1980 to 2018, approximately 30,000 deaths were attributed to police violence in the United States. 1 GBD 2019 Police Violence US Subnational CollaboratorsFatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980-2019: a network meta-regression. Lancet. 2021; 398: 1239-1255 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (15) Google Scholar The highly publicized recent police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Philando Castille, and many others have raised questions regarding police conduct, namely, failure to render aid and the appropriate use of force. Although the United States makes up 4% of the world population, it accounts for almost 13% of fatal police-related deaths. 1 GBD 2019 Police Violence US Subnational CollaboratorsFatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980-2019: a network meta-regression. Lancet. 2021; 398: 1239-1255 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (15) Google Scholar In 2012, an estimated 52,000 people were treated in emergency departments for injuries due to police intervention. 2 Miller T.R. Lawrence B.A. Carlson N.N. et al. Perils of police action: a cautionary tale from US data sets. Inj Prev. 2017; 23: 27-32 Crossref PubMed Scopus (68) Google Scholar Both authors are at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Latesha K. Harris, BSN, RN, is a cardiac stepdown unit nurse, PhD nursing student and a Hillman Scholar in Nursing Innovation. She can be reached at [email protected] . Yamnia I. Cortés, PhD, MPH, FNP-BC, is an assistant professor and Fellow of the Betty Irene Moore Fellowship for Nurse Leaders and Innovators.

Meditations on Psychoanalysis, Race, and the Divided Self.

The author, an African American, reflects on what it means to be a psychoanalyst and the effectiveness of psychoanalytic thinking in response to the racial dilemma in the United States. The current climate is a result of longstanding inequality of the races and reflects the social unrest prompted by the Black Lives Matter movement and the police killings of unarmed Black people. Three poems are also presented expressing some of the ideas discussed in the meditation.

End the use of “excited delirium” as a cause of death in police custody

Black men in the USA are at least 2·5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police. 1 Edwards F Lee H Esposito M Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race-ethnicity, and sex. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2019; 116: 16793-16798 Google Scholar The killings of George Floyd, Daniel Prude, and Elijah McClain are among many that have stirred public outrage at systemic police violence against Black people. These men are also among the documented 166 people—43% of whom were Black—whose deaths in US police custody between 2010 and 2020 were attributed to “excited delirium” by death investigators, medical examiners, expert witnesses, lawyers, law enforcement, or first responders. 2 Obasogie OK Excited delirium and police use of force. Virginia Law Rev. 2021; 107: 1545-1620 Google Scholar This number is likely to be an underestimate because previous studies have highlighted under-reporting of police killings. 3 GBD 2019 Police Violence US Subnational CollaboratorsFatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980-2019: a network meta-regression. Lancet. 2021; 398: 1239-1255 Google Scholar

Experiences and viewpoints of PhD students completing their dissertations during crises

AbstractThis article narrates the experiences of four former PhD students who completed the transition from graduate student to graduates with PhDs during unprecedented external events: The COVID‐19 pandemic and a period of civil unrest in response to the 2020 police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The authors reflect on some commonalities in how they were able to adjust and persevere to completion.

Police Violence in Black and White

AbstractDrawing on articles fromThe New York Timesand theNew York Amsterdam News, this study analyzes reporting on the police killings of ten-year-old Clifford Glover in 1973, and twenty-three-year-old Sean Bell in 2006, in both instances by New York City Police Department (NYPD) 103rdPrecinct officers in Jamaica, Queens. Using critical discourse analysis to study the differences in newspaper representations of police killings, this analysis follows Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s classic 1892 studySouthern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases.Wells-Barnett’s framework of Black Press and White Press is applied to this contemporary comparison of news coverage, asking how Black Press and White Press challenge or accept official police accounts of encounters where police kill Black youth and adults, as well as how they engage community members in their account of events leading to fatal police contact. The study historically contextualizes the localized relationship between police violence, media, and protest by focusing on depictions of two separate, publicized police killings and subsequent officer acquittals in the same neighborhood and precinct, thirty-three years apart. Studying the history of policing and rebellion in one neighborhood provides critical insight into representations of localized police violence by Black Press and White Press over time. The findings of this study function together to explain racialized discourse on police, victims, and communities in the wake of historic police violence and officer acquittals.

Invisible Police Lethal Violence against Black Women in the United States: An Intersectional Approach

Over the past several years, police killings of Black men have received national and international attention. However, there is silence surrounding the deaths of Black women killed by the police. This paper examines the nature and extent of lethal police violence against Black women in the United States, Black women’s vulnerability to police violence, and responses to their deaths. It also uses an intersectional approach to discuss why Black women face racialized and gendered police violence and how their deaths have been rendered invisible in public discourse and justice movements.