Understanding UK state violence and resistance in police pursuit killings

Résumé fourni par la source

Racially minoritised and working-class communities in the UK continue to be underprotected and overpoliced. One aspect of that overpolicing that has thus far been under-researched is the killings that take place involving pursuits by police cars. Drawing attention to the #EndPolicePursuits (EPP) campaign, this article focuses on the stories of three boys who died in 2021 following police pursuits by Greater Manchester Police as illustrative case studies. Through their stories, I argue that their lives were ‘blackened’, in effect rendered disposable, devalued and treated as ungrievable, by the police and the state. I explore the dehumanising processes at different stages of each case: in the pursuit and collision; through representation in official accounts and the media; and in the slow violence of the aftermath, specifically during the inquest. I argue for police pursuit killings to be understood in the wider context of domestic colonialism, which maximises the precarity of racially minoritised and working-class communities and show how resistance and solidarity can be built at the intersection of race and class.

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