black americans’ experience of police violence

Infographic of notes from seminar with Dr. Darius Green via the Social Justice Counseling Network on 5/24/25. Infographic text below.

Today marks 5 years since George Floyd was brutally murdered as a result of police violence, by a system steeped in violence and control. Honoring his life and legacy, and the responsibility we have to continue pursuit for worldly justice, part of which abolishes state-sanctioned violence. One of the most impactful prompts during this webinar were questions around abolitionist dreaming. Imagine a world without policing, without the prison industrial complex. What does safety look like? What does transformative accountability without systems of policing and incarceration look like? What do survivors of violence and those most vulnerable to it need to experience healing and justice?

• Abbreviated Hx of Policing Black Americans

  • Chattel slavery⟶ jim crow era policing ⟶ War on drugs & mass incarceration

• Chattel slavery: Racial caste involving the kidnapping, enslavement, trafficking, exploitation, brutalization & confinement of enslaved Africans

  SLAVE CODES

  • Laws Governing enslaved and Black people

  • Created to maintain racial caste of chattel slavery

  SLAVE PATROLS

  • Adopted from community policing in england to enforce slave codes

  • all white individuals deputized: duty & power to enforce slave codes

  INSTITUTIONALIZED VIOLENCE

  • Surveillance, punishment, arrests, seizure of contraband, whippings, lynching, extrajudicial murder, return to plantations, sexual violence w/o legal recourse

• Nat Turner-- legacy of resistance; led major rebellion to chattel slavery in 1831

• Jim Crow Era: Black codes created to maintain hierarchy and caste in the absence of chattel slavery

• 13th Amendment: Form of legalized discrimination

  • Allows slavery to be used as criminal punishment (i.e. an exception that allows slavery to continue through the prison system)

• War on Drugs & Mass Incarceration

  • Reform of policing in response to advancements during civil rights era. colorblind idealogy. use of digital technology (“E-Carceration). Anti Drug Policing- Funneling individuals into incarceration. increasing rates of overt targeting of black women. critical consciousness building re: Intersecting identities as it relates to policing black Americans.

• Increase in police funding does not correlate with decrease in harm

• Abolitionist Dreaming

  • Imagining of a world without carceral systems, policing/the prison industrial complex

• RACIAL TRAUMA: The emotional & Psychological injury from direct & vicarious experiences with racism

  • Real or perceived danger

  • cumulative

  • intergenerational

  • Intersects with other identities and forms of marginalization

• Racial Trauma of Policing:

  • Sexual contact/ violence

  • Physical touch & force

  • Use of a weapon

  • Negligence & withdrawn service

  • Intimidation

  • Use of a canine

  • Verbal violence & Aggression

• Abolitionist Dreaming:

  • imagining of a world without carceral systems, policing/the prison industrial complex

• Abolition in Practice:

  • Assess for experiences of police violence alongside other traumatic experiences

  • Resistance over Resilience; Healing over Coping