Metropolitics

Confronting Police Violence and an Unjust Justice System

Michele Graham — 2020-05-19T05:00:00Z

We publish Michele Graham's review of the 2018 book The War on Neighborhoods: Policing, Prison, and Punishment in a Divided City as Black people in the US again endure the trauma of a murder in their community at the hands of police officers. Graham's reflections on the authors' findings (drawn from a neighborhood study in Chicago) emphasize the continuing legacies of historically racist policing, racist prosecution practices and racist incarceration patterns in the United States. The review

- Reviews / police violence, United States, Chicago, incarceration, prison, Black neighborhoods, neighborhood, justice, discriminatory policing, brutality

When Does Police Violence Cause Urban Unrest?

Cathy Lisa Schneider — 2017-11-14T06:00:00Z

In the summer of 2014, police killed Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York. Both men were black and unarmed. Both their deaths sparked national outrage. And both cases were turned over to a grand jury whose members failed to indict. But while the first case provoked weeks of violent police–community confrontation, the second initiated constructive political action. Drawing on interviews with people close to both men, Cathy Schneider argues that the difference amounts to the

- Debates / racism, United States, police, New York, violence, brutality, police violence, urban unrest, riots, police accountability, St. Louis, Ferguson, Missouri

Impossible Compliance: Policing as Violent Struggle over Bodies and Urban Space

Michelle Billies — 2016-03-01T06:00:00Z

The absence of charges brought in the case of a police murder of a Black lesbian in front of the homeless shelter where she lived reveals the impossibility of compliance with police authority for those already made criminal by race, disability, class, gender, and sexuality.
Yvonne McNeil, a 57-year-old Black lesbian who used a cane for walking, was shot to death by police in front of the New York City homeless shelter where she was living in 2011. Short news reports of the incident offer

- Debates / public space, gender, police, race, homelessness, brutality, Blackness, queer

Disarm the Police

Gregory Smithsimon — 2015-09-29T05:00:00Z

In the current political debates about discriminatory policing, there has been a lack of serious discussion of disarmament. Gregory Smithsimon argues that disarming the police is not only an obvious way to avoid more deaths at the hands of officers, but also a means towards cultivating more respectful relationships between the police and communities of color.
Responding to protests against repeated, blatant police abuse, politicians have met demands for meaningful change with an array of

- Debates / inequalities, police, discrimination, violence, brutality, disarmament, civil rights, police violence, Ferguson, Missouri, New York, Oakland, Baltimore, Featured

Hardening Racial Lines in Public Space

Naomi Adiv — 2015-07-07T05:00:00Z

On Friday, June 5, Black teenagers in McKinney, Texas, were violently subdued by a police officer following a conflict that broke out at a community swimming pool—a place at which their presence provoked anxiety and then panic. Many interpretations of the officer's behavior have turned on the question of who broke what rules, but geographer Naomi Adiv argues that the debate has deeper spatial—and racial—implications.
In the last few weeks, there has been much noise followed by much quiet

- Debates / public space, racism, United States, police, race, Texas, swimming pool, brutality, police violence