police violence Archives - Public Seminar

Migration

From Moral Panic to Government Policy and Research

The stated rationale for policing street gangs in Montreal has always been “prevention” rather than actual incidents

March 24, 2025 • by Benoit Décary-Secours and Anne-Marie Livingstone

The evolution of criminological research on gangs in Quebec mirrors events elsewhere. It began in the late 1980s with a media frenzy that attracted the attention of political elites and became the object of government policy and research....

From Moral Panic to Government Policy and Research

Europe & Central Asia

Violence and Policing Minorities

Why do the Polish public trust the police?

March 12, 2025 • by Agnieszka Kościańska

Before the 2020 pro-choice protests [in Poland], the police maintained a high level of social trust despite a series of cases of excessive violence reported by the media. For instance, in 1996 the police entered a Romanian Roma camp in Warsaw at 2 a.m., demolishing it and arresting everybody they ...

Activism

Future Anterior Witness

Women’s Voices Narrating Black Death

February 16, 2023 • by Julie Beth Napolin

Facebook's censorship of documented violence points to a boundary in public life: death is not meant to be livestreamed....

<strong>Future Anterior Witness</strong>

Activism

Interference Archive Traces the History of Racist Policing in America

Defend/Defund, a welcome new exhibit at Interference Archive, through January 29

January 4, 2023 • by Lindsey Scharold

The exhibition is in part a response to George Floyd’s murder, and of Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Philando Castile before him. But its scope is much broader. Hung on just about every wall are posters, newspapers, pamphlets, zines, and even buttons that catalog the long history of negative police ...

Interference Archive Traces the History of Racist Policing in America

Activism

Their Violence and Ours

Attacks on property do not always undermine a political cause

July 16, 2020 • by William E. Scheuerman

How should we make sense of the political violence that has sometimes accompanied Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests? What about the state’s violent response to peaceful protest, or the dangerous acts committed by right-wing counter-protestors? Speaking on Canadian radio in the wake of 160 riots that shook U.S. cities during the ...

Activism

Saying Goodbye to Aunt Jemima Is Not Enough

What we really need to do to address the economic impact of systemic racism in the United States

July 9, 2020 • by Elwood Watson

When Dinah Washington recorded “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” in 1959, the blues diva managed to imbue the Tin Pan Alley lyrics with a kind of haunted hopefulness, the same kind of soulful yearning that would reappear a few years later in Sam Cooke’s monumental ode to the civil ...

Saying Goodbye to Aunt Jemima Is Not Enough

Prisons and Police

Police Abolition — or Electronic Surveillance?

RoboCop returns

July 9, 2020 • by Micol Seigel

These moves may yield genuine improvements in public life in the United States, something other than the same old tired reforms -- civilian review boards, community policing, recruitment of Black and brown cadets, training and so on -- all of which have proven to be ineffective. But even as the nation ...

Police Abolition — or Electronic Surveillance?

Activism

What Will It Take for Black Lives to Matter?

Nonviolent, cross-racial coalitions are the way back to a decent America

July 9, 2020 • by Todd Gitlin

I wrote the article that follows three years ago. Since it first appeared in the American Prospect, Black Lives Matter (BLM) has generated the largest protest movement in American history. What has changed? And what hasn’t? It remains true that the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) is ill-defined. It has rough edges ...

What Will It Take for Black Lives to Matter?

Politics

Harnessing Federal Power for Police Reform in America

What we can learn from Reconstruction and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

July 8, 2020 • by Richard Johnson and Desmond King

History suggests that the response to the current crisis of policing in the United States must be a stronger role for the federal government. Yet few activists within the Movement for Black Lives are demanding that the federal government flex its coercive muscle. Given the racism of the current occupant ...

Harnessing Federal Power for Police Reform in America

Activism

A Tale of Three Protests — in Brooklyn

A photo-essay

June 29, 2020 • by Jo Freeman

On Saturday, May 30, I heard that a crowd was at Bedford and Tilden in Flatbush near the Sears parking lot where Covid-19 testing has been conducted for several weeks. When I got there at about 5:30 p.m, I saw two to three hundred people milling in the street. They had ...

Activism

Social Justice Is More Important Than Social Distance

Why a researcher who understands the health consequences of mass gatherings is in the streets fighting racism

June 19, 2020 • by Miranda Yaver

My first political memory was watching officers of the Los Angeles Police Department beating Rodney King on television. I did not fully comprehend what I was watching at 5 years old, though I sensed that it was unjust. Nearly three decades later, braving coronavirus and angry about police brutality against people ...

Social Justice Is More Important Than Social Distance

Activism

Why “Abolition of the Police” Is a Bad Idea

We need the police to enforce equal justice and protect ordinary citizens, not to go away

June 18, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Note: The author would like to thank Jim Miller for his editing, and Adam Kent-Isaac, Lisi Kent-Isaac, Debra Kent, Bob Orsi, Mala Htun, and Jeffrey Tulis for their comments. A much longer version of this piece can be read at the author’s blog. On June 15, 2020, citizens demonstrating against racism ...