Looking Outwards 8: Mapping Police Violence

Eyeo 2015 – Deray Mckesson and Samuel Sinyangwe from Eyeo Festival // INSTINT on Vimeo.

In light of the news regarding race relations and police violence, I was immediately interested by Deray Mckesson and Samuel Swey’s project, “Mapping Police Violence,” which was presented at the Eyeo Festival 2015. Mckesson is a civil rights protestor, educator, and is known as one of the most prominent figures in the Black Lives Matter movement. Swey is a policy analyst and data scientist focused on using policy to end systemic racism.

In their presentation, Mckesson and Swey highlight the power of storytelling and social media in bringing police violence experiences and race issues to light. For instance, Twitter has been instrumental in generating a dialogue about these topics. However, while these stories shared through social media platforms were hugely impactful, they saw a lack of (and thus a need) for backing them up with quantitative data. Thus, “Mapping Police Violence” was born out of a desire to conduct more research on police violence and create visualization of the data. From infographics based on the most highly concentrated locations of police violence, statistics on national trends in violence, and reports coded by race, the project’s website aims to present as much data and quantitative context as possible from the past 300 days of protests. These infographics help uncover patterns of severity and provide better solutions.

This project (and the presentation) really interests me for a very obvious reason — these men see a lack of information in a highly-salient topic and aim to deliver solutions. They present the information in a way that is easy to follow. Before listening to their lecture, I had never considered that there was such little data being collected by the government related to police violence. It also helped emphasize how truly powerful social media can be used as a tool for telling these unheard experiences. The infographics provided on their site (especially the police violence map on the home page) really provides a powerful image of the extent of this issue.

“Mapping Police Violence” isn’t the only project the two men have worked on together. You can also check out another project they’ve worked on called Campaign Zero, which aims at creating effective policy solutions to end police violence.