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Abstract

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.

Keywords

blackening Brandon Geasley Devonte Scott #EndPolicePursuits campaign Greater Manchester Police police pursuit killings Ronaldo Johnson state violence ungrievable lives

Introduction

Racially minoritised and working-class communities continue to be underprotected and overpoliced in the UK.¹ For example, racially minoritised people are more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, more likely to be arrested and have excessive force used against them and ‘disproportionately targeted for road traffic stops’ by police.² At the sharpest end of police violence, there have been 2,309 deaths related to police contact³ in the last ten years alone in England and Wales.⁴ Police killings are racially disproportionate, with data showing that 23 per cent of those killed between 2015 and 2020 were from a Black or Minority Ethnic background.⁵ According to INQUEST − a charity that works with those affected by deaths in police and prison custody and other state settings – Black people are killed at twice the rate of white people.⁶ It has been argued that police killings are the fatal outcome of structures and practices that dehumanise racially minoritised (particularly Black) lives and permit the use of total power against those who have been constructed as criminal Others.⁷

Deaths in the context of police pursuits, or ‘police pursuit killings’ – the term I use to capture that these are not simply ‘deaths’ but are, as the #EndPolicePursuits (EPP) campaign would argue, caused by high-risk, unnecessary police pursuits that dehumanise those affected and put them at a closer proximity to unnatural and premature death – are an under-researched and under-considered form of state violence. This is despite the fact that in the last ten years there have been 299 police-related road traffic fatalities in England and Wales.⁸ In the UK, there is limited information about police pursuits and their outcomes,⁹ with the research that does exist predominantly focusing on policy, practice and reformist¹⁰ recommendations for change.¹¹ This article begins to address this gap by shining a spotlight on police pursuit killings.

The purpose here is not to determine whether or not this form of police violence is racist and classist – data collected by INQUEST has shown that there is a racial disparity in terms of the number of Black people killed in pursuits¹² – but to consider how racialised and classed logics are at work in police pursuit killings and, importantly, how they can be resisted.

The article centres on the stories of Brandon Geasley, Devonte Scott and Ronaldo Johnson – three boys who were killed in pursuits by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) in 2021. Through an in-depth engagement with the particulars of these cases, I examine state violence and the dynamics of racism and classism more broadly as well as their families’ resistance. In the light of their dehumanisation by state agencies, it is important to introduce the three young people at the centre of this article as remembered by their friends and families. Ronaldo, known to friends and family as Ron, was a 17-year-old Black teenager. In a statement his family said, ‘he was a boy of few words, but when he spoke he was honest, extremely wise or very funny’ and that as a selfless and caring person, he was proud to be the official carer for his younger nephew. ¹³ After he died, his family heard from members of the community that he had been donating packed lunches to those in need.¹⁴ Ron was a young person who thought of others and worked hard, and he is deeply missed by his family, friends and wider community.¹⁵ Devonte was a Black mixed-race young man aged 18. He had a smile that for mum Donna ‘lit up the room’.¹⁶ In the words of his family, Devonte was ‘bright, considerate and had a way about him that as soon as people met him, they’d instantly like him’.¹⁷ Described as ‘truly beautiful inside and out’, he is missed by his family and friends. Brandon, aged 18, was a white young man of Irish heritage. He was described as a loving son and brother who had big aspirations for himself and his family. I learnt from his family that he was a total ‘mummy’s boy’ whose soft and sensitive nature was most clear in the company of his mum and his dog. Brandon had ADHD and struggled with panic in stressful situations.¹⁸ His family say they feel broken without him.

In this article, I spotlight the experiences of these three young people whose lives were prematurely ended during police pursuits. Through these accounts, I consider how the lives of racially minoritised and working-class people are rendered precarious through dehumanising logics that deny their ‘right to life’ – both in moments of state violence and in the surrounding processes following a death. I draw on publicly available information (such as statements from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), news reports, social media, campaign documents and so on), as well as my distinct knowledge gained from involvement in anti-racist organising on this subject. The desk-based research, coupled with my experience as an organiser, allows me to explore how we can make sense of the boys’ experiences and, crucially, how resistance is built in response.

The main body of the article attempts to make sense of police pursuits and police pursuit killings, looking at: (1) the making of ‘precarious life’ in police pursuits; (2) representation, criminalisation and grievability; (3) coroners’ inquests and the denial of ‘right to life’; and (4) building solidarity and resistance at the intersection of race and class. Through this discussion, I discuss how policing and state violence produce the condition of coloniality and ‘non-life’ for racially minoritised and working-class communities. I then turn to anti-racist resistance and the ways in which those bereaved by police pursuit killings organise from a shared position of being marginalised and dehumanised by the state in order to build effective solidarity across difference.

This article is informed by my involvement in community organising with the #EndPolicePursuits (EPP) campaign and the Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP).¹⁹ As a member of these groups, I have experience of ‘on the ground’ campaigning around police racism and violence. With EPP in particular, I am in community with and have worked closely alongside bereaved members of Brandon, Devonte and Ronaldo’s families. I have attended the inquests of each of these boys alongside their families and friends, which has given me an insight both into the state’s processes and a close understanding of the details of each of their cases. Though I have only included publicly available information in this article, and do not draw on private conversations or material that would compromise confidentiality or trust, my experiential knowledge provides an important lens through which I can contextualise, understand and pull together the limited publicly available data.

Contextualising pursuit killings

To appreciate the significance of police pursuit killings, it is useful to view them through the contextual lenses provided by recent critical and radical scholarship about policing and state violence towards minoritised and marginalised communities.

Firstly, one can see the legacies of the colonial in contemporary police killings and ‘deaths in custody’. According to criminologists, death as punishment was instrumental to the colonial project, as a form of state violence that imposed order and subdued ‘uncivilised’ colonised populations.²⁰ Such violence was justified by the construction of colonial subjects as ‘disposable’ and the denial of humanity. And policing was one of the technologies of power through which the British empire ‘created, perpetuated, and defended racialized rule’.²¹ We can see the echoes of this in today’s policing. For example, stop and search police powers have continuities with the disproportionate use of ‘Sus’ laws (using the 1832 Vagrancy Act) by British police against former colonial subjects in the 1960s and 1970s,²² and as Liz Fekete has noted, colonial continuities exist in European policing and the use of so-called ‘less lethal weaponry’.²³ The disproportionate harassment, discrimination and violence by police against racially minoritised and working-class communities are described by Nadine El-Enany as a ‘condition of coloniality’ within the British nation-state.²⁴

Social geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls such racism against disposable groups ‘the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death’.²⁵ Robbie Shilliam explains how the ‘undeserving poor’ have also, over time, become racialised i.e., they are being blackened (not just Black).²⁶ The fire at Grenfell Tower, in west London, where at least seventy-two residents died in 2017,²⁷ is an example of racialised, classed and place-based state violence that blackens. Whilst the majority of the tower’s residents were racially minoritised, some were white.²⁸ The majority of residents were ‘either semi-skilled or unskilled workers’ (i.e. working-class) and the area was in the UK’s top quintile of deprivation.²⁹ Grenfell was a council estate in a ‘multicultural inner-city’ – a racialised space in which the residents were constructed as ‘undeserving’.³⁰ Despite the heterogeneity of Grenfell’s residents, the state-sanctioned neglect and inaction in the lead up and during the fire (which included being instructed to ‘stay put’), blackened all of the residents.³¹ The same process of blackening - the same place-based, classed and racialised logics - can be seen at work in police pursuit killings.

With this in mind, throughout this article, the term blackening is used to refer to the ways in which racially minoritised and working-class communities are placed under conditions of coloniality and non-life through state violence. It is clear in the stories of Brandon (who was white) and Devonte and Ronaldo (who were Black mixed-race and Black respectively) that proximity to state violence does not always correlate with a particular identity, heritage or skin colour. In my use, ‘blackened’ refers to a political position and the denial of humanity.³² There is, of course, a tension in applying a term that seemingly foregrounds race over class (in that it refers to colour) to understand the intersection of race and class. However, it is a suitable concept to capture this political process that enables us to keep in mind that, disproportionately, those who are Black are located in this position.

Understanding police pursuits

In the spring of 2021, although Covid-19 restrictions were easing to some degree in the UK, policing continued to be a central response to the pandemic with police powers being expanded and pre-existing patterns of racial disproportionality intensifying.³³ At this time in Greater Manchester – which is one of the largest policing areas within England and Wales covering nearly 500 square miles and home to almost 5 per cent of the UK population³⁴ – Greater Manchester Police (GMP) was put under a condition of ‘special measures’ following a 2020 report which raised serious concerns around the effectiveness and efficiency of this territorial police force and its service to victims of crime.³⁵ In 2021, there was an unprecedented number of deaths in road traffic incidents involving GMP.³⁶ Figures for 2021/22 show that a total of eight people were killed in pursuits; the highest on record for GMP and the highest of any police force in England and Wales that year.³⁷ The majority were young working-class men and boys, disproportionally from racially minoritised backgrounds. Brandon Geasley, Devonte Scott and Ronaldo Johnson were three of the young people killed in pursuits by GMP in 2021.

On 31 March, Ron was the backseat passenger in a car which collided with a taxi after being pursued by GMP in the Fallowfield area of south Manchester.³⁸ He died from his injuries on 6 April. On 16 May, in the Stretford area of Manchester, Devonte was pursued by officers in an unmarked police car.³⁹ Scared and in a ‘flight’ response, Devonte was pursed at high speeds which resulted in a crash. He died from unsurvivable head injuries at the scene. On 27 May, Brandon was pursued by GMP reaching speeds of over 120 mph. During the pursuit, which resulted in him travelling down the wrong side of the motorway, Brandon collided with another vehicle. Brandon and the other driver, 77-year-old man Mr Faulkner, died at the scene.⁴⁰ As his family expressed it, Brandon was a sensitive young man who cared deeply about others and would have felt deep remorse for Mr Faulkner’s death. All three boys were subjected to high-risk and, ultimately, fatal pursuits by GMP.

The reason for pursuit in each of the cases was for minor traffic violations or alleged non-violent offences: going through a red light; overtaking an unmarked police car and subsequent failure to stop when signalled and driving a suspected stolen vehicle (the inquest found that Brandon did not steal the vehicle). In other countries, the use of high-speed police pursuit has been heavily restricted and/or prohibited in cases such as these.⁴¹ Whilst the police and related state agencies like the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), previously the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPPC), argue that pursuits were justified and appropriate,⁴² these were high-risk pursuits which were not proportionate to the alleged offences.

The making of precarious life in the pursuit

Brandon, Devonte and Ron were politically positioned as ‘non-life’ through police pursuits. Despite the particularities of each of their stories (whether they were a passenger or driver, or whether other people were affected), there is a shared experience of being blackened in these encounters. Pursuing officers, in conjunction with other state agents, determined that they: (1) would initiate a pursuit to apprehend a perceived ‘criminal’ and (2) deemed the pursuit necessary and proportionate despite the increasing risk to life. These decisions in each case ultimately caused a fatal crash, which prematurely ended the life of a young person.

In each case it was clear that the occupants of the vehicles were constructed as ‘criminals’ and therefore put at heightened risk through a high-speed pursuit. The concept of non-life, or Giorgio Agamben’s ‘bare life’, is applicable here, as the category of ‘criminal’ places people in a ‘state of exception’ outside of the bounds of being human and excluded from the protection of human rights.⁴³ This category has long been racialised and classed in the UK. In the 1800s, concerns about ‘crime’ were focused on colonial subjects, namely unemployed migrants and the Irish.⁴⁴ This colonial construction has changed over time but, at its root, the attachment of criminality to colonial subjects has remained. In each case there is an assumption of suspicion and criminality of the occupants of the car. In Ronaldo’s case, the police’s justification for initiating a fatal pursuit was because the driver of the vehicle allegedly contravened a red light. In Devonte’s case, this was because officers in an unmarked police car were concerned that Devonte was purportedly ‘looking for an overtake’ and ‘suspected he had a phone in his lap’. After signalling for Devonte to pull over, Devonte slowed down, but didn’t stop, and then turned around. The officer then decided to initiate a pursuit due to so-called ‘offences already committed’. In Brandon’s case, a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) saw the car earlier in the day and had taken note because ‘there were four young males on board’ and ‘it was a nice car’ being driven in Wythenshawe, an urban working-class area of Manchester.⁴⁵ The implication here was that a nice car, occupied by young men in a poor area, was ‘suspicious’. The inquest found that though the car was stolen, it had not been stolen by Brandon and there was no evidence to suggest that he knew the car was stolen. Later on, officers who had been alerted to the car, went looking for it and initiated a pursuit.

In each case, despite the minor and non-violent nature of traffic violations and/or alleged offences which ‘justified’ the pursuit, the young people occupying the vehicles were constructed as ‘criminal’ Others – a racialised and classed category. A combination of factors contributed to this construction including, but not limited to, place, age and logics of class and/or race. It is important to note here that whilst their age was a consideration in terms of constructing them as criminals – note the PCSO’s suspicion of a group of young males – it was not a consideration in terms of the police’s risk assessment.⁴⁶ Teenagers are at a stage in life where their brains are still developing and are therefore ‘more likely to take risks and less likely to understand what those risks entail’.⁴⁷ There is no evidence to suggest that officers gave consideration to this. By constructing these young people as ‘criminal’ Others, their lives become less valuable and, therefore, less grievable.

As Judith Butler argues, when lives are perceived as grievable, the state will work to ensure that their lives are ‘granted the social conditions’ required to persist and flourish.⁴⁸ In contrast, for those whose lives are considered less grievable, or not grievable at all, conditions of precariousness are maximised, including failing social and economic networks and a lack of access to resources, which in turn puts them at a heightened proximity to premature death. Whilst those who are politically positioned in this way often rely on and/or appeal to the state for protection and support, it is in fact the state that has created the conditions of vulnerability in the first place.⁴⁹ The increased precarity of these groups is not an inherent given, it is politically produced.

Blackening is evident, too, in the discourses of ‘proportionality’ and ‘necessity’ used by police, both in the course of the incident itself and by their legal representatives when justifying the pursuit in the aftermath. Anyone who has attended an inquest of someone who has been killed in a police pursuit will soon realise how often these terms come up. It reflects the Authorised Professional Practice (APP) guidelines that shape police practice in England and Wales. Officers in pursuit are required to ask themselves ‘Is a pursuit a proportionate action?’ and ‘Do my actions, purpose and objective to stop or prevent further or continuing criminal actions justify the potential risks to life or property?’ (emphases added).⁵⁰ Officers are instructed that they should take into account factors including ‘the seriousness of any known offence committed or suspected’ and ‘whether the driver is, or appears to be a juvenile or whether it appears that other vulnerable persons are in the vehicle’.⁵¹ Legal representatives of Brandon, Devonte and Ron’s families questioned the risk assessment processes in each of the pursuits referring to these guidelines. They challenged how the pursuits were deemed proportionate and/or necessary throughout, despite the minor traffic violation and/or non-violent nature of alleged offences and the increasingly dangerous nature of the pursuit (often in relation to changing conditions such as increasing speeds or entering the motorway). In Brandon’s case in particular, the legal team noted that the PCSO who originally flagged the car knew Brandon from the neighbourhood and had suspected it was him in the vehicle. It had been noted that there were ‘four young people’ in the car and yet it was clear that this was either not taken into account, or was accounted for but ignored as a reason to stop the pursuit and minimise the risk for the young people involved. Thus, Brandon was placed outside of the category of a young person deserving of consideration and care.

We also see this stark lack of consideration and a failure to extend care in Ron’s experience. Ron was the back-seat passenger in a car that was also occupied by another passenger and the driver. The APP guidelines require officers to ‘first and foremost prioritise the preservation of life’ (over the apprehension of potential ‘suspects’) and fulfil their duty of care to citizens.⁵² Irrespective of the guidelines, and despite knowing that there was at least one victim in the car and in the taxi involved in the collision, the pursuing officer ran after the driver of the vehicle on foot for almost three minutes before attending to the victims of the crash and calling an ambulance.⁵³ The officer prioritised apprehending a suspect over the preservation of life. As Ron’s family publicly stated, the officer ‘breached and totally disregarded’ his obligation of care.⁵⁴ This decision maximised Ron’s precariousness and blackened him in these moments, placing him in what Achille Mbembe terms the colonial condition of the ‘living dead’.⁵⁵

Representation, criminalisation and grievability in the aftermath

The construction of racially minoritised and/or working-class young people as ‘living dead’ or non-life through police pursuits is experienced not only during the incident itself, but in the processes that follow. The representation of these young people by the state and its conduit, the mainstream media, also works to politically position them as less grievable Others.

We see this in state narratives – or ‘state talk’ – which simultaneously normalise police power within these encounters, whilst invisibilising that same power and the practices that resulted in death.⁵⁶ For example, GMP’s statements, regarding the police pursuit that killed Ron and caused serious injury to others, frame sole responsibility on the driver of the vehicle. As Police Constable Oliver Batty of GMP’s Serious Collision Investigation Unit said, regarding the driver, ‘ultimately his actions led to the death of Ronaldo’.⁵⁷ The IOPC can also be considered as an agent of the state that contributes to ‘state-talk’ via its reporting.⁵⁸ In reporting on Brandon’s inquest the IOPC stated that ‘we found that officers acted appropriately and in line with procedures’.⁵⁹ This is in spite of the fact that the coroner raised concerns around the lack of ‘effective Command and Control at any point during the pursuit’ – part of the pursuit process – as raised in the prevention of future deaths report.⁶⁰ State-talk by GMP and the IOPC present framings of the events with a ‘partial and sanitised’ version of police power and state violence.⁶¹ The implication within these narratives is that the overpolicing and underprotection of racially minoritised and working-class communities is normal and, hence, experiences of harm and death are rewritten through state-talk.

Such narratives are also reproduced by the media, as Ryan Erfani-Ghettani has argued in relation to the killing of Joy Gardner in 1993 during a police immigration raid and the defamation that followed. When a police killing takes place, media outlets ‘close ranks with authorities’ and go on the ‘ideological offensive’ to construct those killed by the state as ‘criminals’ who are blamed for their own deaths.⁶²

We see this reflected in the reporting of Devonte’s death too. Despite the fact that the inquest found no evidence to suggest that Devonte had stolen the car he was driving and that the pursuit was not initiated on this basis, the Manchester Evening News reported on his death with the headline, ‘Teenager killed in horror crash during police chase was driving “stolen” car on false plates’ and foregrounded his ‘failure to stop’.⁶³ Whilst the quote marks around ‘stolen’ in the headline indicates that the newspaper is likely quoting the police, the emphasis on the car being stolen and Devonte’s ‘failure to stop’ bolsters the idea of criminality that implies that he was up to no good – when the reality is that he was simply a young man nipping out of the house before returning to his girlfriend.⁶⁴ Devonte is constructed in ways that eradicate the possibility of him being seen as a ‘victim’.

Brandon was similarly criminalised and demonised for the death of Mr Faulkner. News articles attributed sole responsibility to Brandon, stating that he ‘swerved the cops and drove towards oncoming traffic on the M60, killing himself and 66-year-old [sic] driver David Faulkner’.⁶⁵ There is no consideration for the context of his and Mr Faulkner’s deaths and the role of the police. Nor is there any account of the fact that Brandon’s family had publicly expressed their condolences to Mr Faulkner’s family⁶⁶ and noted that Brandon was a caring person who would have felt deep remorse for Mr Faulkner’s death. As they did with Devonte, the media foregrounded that the car was stolen, despite Brandon not stealing it, with the Manchester Evening News running articles with headlines like, ‘The 18-year-old Wythenshawe man killed in M60 horror smash in a “stolen BMW”⁶⁷ that left a 77-year-old man dead’.⁶⁸ Even though neither of these boys were found to have stolen the cars they were driving, the media constructs them as ‘criminal’. This blackening depicts their lives as less grievable, which has a ripple effect on families and friends whose grief is disenfranchised.⁶⁹

Ron’s case was framed differently in the media. As a passenger, there was less direct criminalisation of Ron but public online comments reproduced similar ideas about his ‘criminality’. On one Manchester Evening News article, comments include:

‘their heartbreak should be directed at the driver of the car not the police. There’s a lot of children in the family hopefully this terrible accident will encourage them to keep a closer eye on where their children are and who they are with so no one else ends up an innocent victim like this boy’;

‘I assume as a back seat passenger he was obeying the law and wearing a seatbelt’;

‘ok so this intelligent, well mannered young man was in a car being driven by someone else, who ran a red light at 3.45am so there are the clues, up to no good, no that’s not very intelligent’; and

‘Should of [sic] been in bed at that time’.⁷⁰

These are stark examples both of victim-blaming and the criminalisation of Ron and his family. As his family and friends have attested, Ron was a gentle and caring young person from a loving, close-knit family. Yet these comments construct both Ron and his family as at fault, suggesting that his family should have ‘kept a closer eye on him’ and that he ‘should have been in bed’ at that time. They also criminalise him by insinuating that he had not been wearing a seatbelt and therefore could be blamed, and that his association with someone being pursued by the police means that he was ‘up to no good’. This echoes the criminalising state-talk about other victims of police killing for example, the News of the World (24 July 2005) ran a two-page headline ‘Why did he run?’ after the police shot dead at point-blank range Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, mistaking him for a terrorist bomber.⁷¹

In each of the boys’ stories, the media and police narratives falsely construct these boys – two of Black heritage – as criminals, which not only places them in the political position of non-life, but also legitimises police power and even constructs it as heroic. Moreover, these ‘folk devil-style’ narratives, which echo colonial constructions of ‘the savage native’, justify the premature deaths of these young men and also work to normalise police killings more generally.⁷²

Coroners’ courts and slow violence

The harm of police killings continues through the ‘slow violence’ of the aftermath,⁷³ particularly for families dealing with state agencies like the IOPC and the coronial inquest process. As Keshia Johnson, Ronaldo’s sister, has publicly stated,

You’d think that’s the worst thing that could happen to you, having a loved one taken from you. But actually the aftermath is the worst thing, because the [things] that happen afterwards is something you could never imagine.⁷⁴

Keshia’s statement is powerful. The loss of her younger brother was deeply traumatic, but it is the subsequent experiences of engaging with the same state that killed her brother that seems to cut most deeply. Keshia’s words suggest that the harm inflicted is not reducible to the moment of his death, but is reproduced in the haunting of everyday encounters with the state.⁷⁵

Though such slow violence can be ‘more difficult to identify than the sudden violent spectacle’,⁷⁶ as Keshia points out, it can feel more insidious because it compounds the harm of the initial loss. Here the slow violence is that of the law, specifically within the coroners’ inquest system, where, I argue, the construction of certain lives as less grievable continues.

It is important to note that slow violence, particularly through the wider legal and coronial system, is a common experience across cases of police killings. For example, after Azelle Rodney was shot by police in 2005, his mother was subjected to a protracted legal process with numerous barriers, including restrictions on evidence that prevented an inquest into his death.⁷⁷ Janet Alder, the sister of Christopher Alder, who died in a police station in Hull in 1998 after being dragged unconscious by officers and left face-down on the floor, describes the inquest process as ‘life-shattering’.⁷⁸ Speaking clearly to the slow violence of a coroner’s inquest system and the ways that it is experienced as an arm of the state and a vehicle for state-talk, rather than an independent system of accountability, she said,

I recognised the hierarchies within the inquest court . . . The barristers representing the state formed a gang . . . Those in powerful positions, whether the hospital, the police, or the ambulance service, seemed to be working together, each with their interests to protect, while I was treated as a nuisance and a nothing . . . It was as if we didn’t exist, and certainly not as victims of trauma.⁷⁹

In the UK, according to the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, a coroner’s inquest must be held if the coroner has reason to suspect that a deceased person within the coroner’s designated area ‘died a violent or unnatural death’ or ‘died while in custody or otherwise in state detention’.⁸⁰ In theory, its function is to ‘protect the public from avoidable deaths and hold state organisations to account’.⁸¹ Coroners’ inquests are technically open to the public and their findings (such as ‘prevention of future deaths’ reports, narrative conclusions and so on) are notionally public documents. However, in practice, inquests are closed processes which are largely shaped by the discretion of the coroner and the gatekeeping of documents,⁸² which means that the findings are only ‘publicly available’ to those who are present and/or members of the family.⁸³ Inquests are public fact-finding processes; they are inquisitorial rather than adversarial and do not set out to ‘ascribe guilt or liability’ but rather to establish ‘who died, when and where they died, and how they died’.⁸⁴

In the UK, the coroner’s inquest is the site through which Article 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on Human Rights is upheld. Article 2 requires the state to protect the right to life, to refrain from intentional deprivation of life and to carry out an effective investigation into alleged breaches of substantive obligations – i.e., when the state is potentially involved in the person’s death or fails to prevent a preventable death.⁸⁵ Section 5(2) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 gives effect to these obligations. Article 2 inquests require legal aid to be granted to the family of the deceased, whereas standard inquests do not. Article 2 inquests are also supposed to be more thorough than a standard inquest, with a wider scope and a view to ‘lesson learning’ through narrative conclusions and ‘prevention of future deaths’ reports.⁸⁶ However, as illustrated through Brandon and Devonte’s stories – who were granted Article 2 inquests – and in Ron’s case – who was denied an Article 2 inquest – the reality of the coroner’s inquest is that it can be a site of continued state violence through which lives are rendered as less grievable.

Brandon and Devonte’s Article 2 inquests took place in July and August of 2022 respectively. Because they were ‘police-related deaths’ they required a jury (which is directed by the coroner as to which conclusions are available);⁸⁷ however, Brandon’s family elected not to have one for the inquest. Both inquests took place over the course of one week and both ended with narrative conclusions which stated that they had died in road traffic collisions (RTCs) in the context of police pursuits.⁸⁸ Brandon’s inquest resulted in a prevention of future deaths report, which focused on concerns around the authorisation and lack of ‘command and control’ over the pursuit.⁸⁹ Devonte’s did not. Despite being granted Article 2 inquests, which are intended to uphold the right to life, the coronial process was a form of slow violence for both families. Not only were they repeatedly made to watch videos of the moments that their loved ones were killed, they were also required to attend in-person, whilst officers appeared via video link without having to leave their offices or face the families directly. Furthermore, they were subjected to state-talk from both GMP’s legal representatives and police officer witnesses, all of whom repeatedly reproduced constructions of criminality by referring implicitly or explicitly to the boys as ‘criminals’ to be apprehended. Over a number of days, this state-talk continuously labelled the pursuits that killed their loved ones as ‘proportionate’ and ‘necessary’, which, in turn, justified the ways their lives were made precarious and further legitimised police power.

Unlike Brandon and Devonte, Ron was not granted an Article 2 inquest. In line with the police’s submissions that their operational policing would be affected if all pursuit cases were treated under Article 2, the coroner refused to engage the ‘right to life’ argument and also refused the family’s request for a jury. These refusals communicated to the family that the state was not ‘on their side’, that it denied Ron’s right to life and, subsequently, relinquished any duty to protect that right. Moreover, the denial of an Article 2 inquest meant that the family were not eligible for legal aid, resulting in unexpected legal fees to cover their representation as well as restrictions in terms of the questions their legal representatives could ask. In a further illustration of the slow violence of the legal processes in the lead up to the inquest, Ron’s family were made to wait three years for his inquest and were only granted a half day for the proceedings when the date finally came. The drawing out of this process demonstrated both a lack of institutional urgency to investigate the circumstances of Ron’s death and a lack of empathy and care in terms of acknowledging the family’s pain and desire for closure. As the EPP campaign notes, this effectively put their lives and the grieving process on hold.⁹⁰

The discretionary nature of the coronial system caused harm on a more interpersonal level, too. For Ron’s family, it was significant that the coroner initially allocated was later replaced. In evidence submitted to the UK Parliamentary Justice Committee, Keshia wrote of the first coroner, ‘we felt our voice was being heard. We felt supported and that we found someone we could trust’.⁹¹ Her response to the second coroner who conducted the inquest was quite different:

From the minute the new Coroner Nick Stanage took over things changed for the worse. The tone of his communications and his obvious desire for the inquest to be over with was clear to us. We felt like we were on trial and that our brother’s inquest was insignificant to him . . . We felt that from his tone he’s already made his mind up and that our requests are beneath him.⁹²

Her words suggest that the coroner expressed disdain towards the family, seeing Ron’s death, and the coronial investigation into it, as just another everyday occurrence rather than something of significance. This resonates with Janet Alder’s experience of the inquest into her brother’s death, twenty-four years before: ‘to most people in the courtroom it was no more than daily routine’.⁹³ This lack of consideration and care is another example of blackening. As Keshia expresses, the family felt criminalised through the coronial process – ‘we felt like we were on trial’ – and Ron’s death seemed to not matter to the coroner. The same violence that constructed Ron as non-life in the moments of the pursuit is extended through the coronial process onto his family.

Though not prescribed, it is customary that inquests begin with a pen portrait of the victim which allows families to read a statement that tells the coroner, jury and courtroom who their loved one was. However, on the day, the coroner intended to start the proceedings with the pursuing officer’s account rather than a pen portrait. Ron’s legal team challenged this and asked to open with their pen portrait. This was allowed, although the coroner ruled some of their statement inadmissible and had them redact sentences that he deemed outside the scope of the inquest. This is yet another example of the violence of the process. In both the lead up to the inquest and the coroner’s conduct within it, Ron’s life was constructed as disposable. And the legal system prevented his family from being enfranchised as fully legitimate grievers − deserving of a thorough investigation conducted with care.

Building solidarity and anti-racist resistance

But the families are not passively accepting a hopeless situation. At the intersection of race and class, it is their shared marginality that forms the basis of collective struggle and solidarity across difference (whether that be identities, geographic locations, the specific circumstances of their encounters with state violence and so on).

There are many forms of resistance to state violence and police killings. In relation to police killings, public displays of grief and commemorative practices ‘reassert the humanity’ of those who the state has constructed as non-life.⁹⁴ They make their lives grievable. Brandon, Devonte and Ron’s families enact this by publicly marking the anniversary of their deaths every year, visiting and decorating their graves and holding memorials, all of which are shared on social media. They also celebrate birthdays, for example Ron’s family hosted a heavenly twenty-first birthday party in a clear refusal of the state’s view of him as non-life. Families also counter state narratives through collective and public demonstrations and protests. For example, in 2022, a silent demonstration was held on the anniversary of Ron’s death outside a police station to symbolise the wall of silence the family has faced from the police and IOPC. In 2024, the EPP campaign held a candlelight vigil for all of those killed by police pursuits since 2020 by GMP. Large posters of each of the boys were displayed with pictures chosen by their families and the names of those who have been killed were read out in public, with the crowd affirming ‘we will remember them’. This was followed by a community meeting and the formal release of the campaign’s demands. In 2025, alongside allied organisations NPMP and Kids of Colour,⁹⁵ the EPP campaign hosted a public storytelling event for families bereaved by state and police violence in a range of contexts. The families also travel together to attend the United Families and Friends Campaign’s (UFFC) annual march in London.⁹⁶ All of these actions of collective grief and public commemoration allow families to reassert that their loved ones are grievable.

The EPP campaign initially emerged out of Brandon, Devonte and Ronaldo’s families coming together, facilitated and supported by NPMP, and understanding themselves as being in a shared struggle despite the specificities of each of the boys’ experiences and racial differences. As a collective, they come together to care for each other and to act in solidarity. The campaign has formed a collective identity and a shared understanding of how the state marginalises and Others young people, including those killed in police pursuit that are white, whilst recognising that police violence disproportionately impacts on the racially minoritised, particularly Black people. This is clear in the campaign’s first demand: ‘We call for an end to the systematic over-policing of racially minoritised and working-class young people by road traffic officers’.⁹⁷ Moreover, in the third demand, the campaign notes that traffic stops and police pursuits are a racist practice by citing a pilot initiative in the Metropolitan Police on ethnicity in traffic stops which found that, ‘Black people were 56% more likely to be stopped than their white counterparts’.⁹⁸ The naming of police violence as racist co-exists with a recognition that shared marginality and precarity impacts people across racial difference. The ability of campaign members to move between these two registers – foregrounding race whilst never losing sight of solidarity across difference – captures what organising looks like at the intersection of race and class. This is further evidenced by family members attending each other’s inquests; inviting and welcoming members into the campaign regardless of the racial identity of the victim and/or their family members; and recognising the connections and shared experience of this form of state violence, rather than building solidarity based on identity per se.

Moreover, since its inception in 2021, the EPP campaign has expanded beyond Greater Manchester by connecting with families in the West Midlands and southeast of England. Furthermore, the campaign recognises both the importance of focusing on police pursuit killings and connecting to the wider struggle against police killings and state violence more broadly. This is clear in its involvement with campaigns such as UFFC and the People’s Tribunal on Police Killings.⁹⁹ Everyday acts of solidarity within the EPP campaign include holding space for each other’s grief and sharing practical resources and knowledge, such as contact details for legal teams and advice on how to prepare for the inquest process.

Conclusion

By looking at the experiences of Brandon, Devonte and Ron and their families, this article has drawn attention to police pursuit killing as a specific case of state violence − a thus far overlooked issue. The EPP campaign, as an example of solidarity that crosses difference (in terms of positionalities, identities and circumstances), shows how anti-racist resistance and solidarity can be effectively mobilised beyond identity politics in order to directly challenge the state’s dehumanisation.

What is distinctive in police pursuit killings is that they take place not in ‘custody’ behind closed doors, but in the very public context of roads. Not only does this mean that other members of the public are injured and/or killed in police pursuits, it also means that police pursuits and police pursuit killings are public spectacles. They are also different in that they take place in vehicles, rather than in a direct face-to-face encounter. This creates a distance between the police and the victims being pursued, which raises significant questions around how this contributes to the dehumanising process and how cars become lethal weapons, particularly in a context of increasingly hypermilitarised policing.

Footnotes

I would like to express my deep gratitude to friend and co-organiser Remi Joseph-Salisbury,for his thoughtful engagement with this article and the wider work. I would also like to thank Véronique Pin-Fat and Claire Alexander for their considered feedback on an early draft of the article.

Siobhan O’Neill is a sociology lecturer at the University of Manchester whose interdisciplinary research focuses on race,racism and resistance,particularly in the context of education and policing. She is a member of the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE),the #EndPolicePursuits campaign and a steering group member of the Northern Police Monitoring Project.

References

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See GOV.UK., “Stop and search,” GOV.UK. Ethnicity Facts and Figures, July 3, 2024, https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/crime-justice-and-the-law/policing/stop-and-search/latest/#by-ethnicity; Institute of Race Relations, “Criminal justice system statistics: Statistics in context,” Institute of Race Relations, last updated August 18, 2025, https://irr.org.uk/research/statistics/criminal-justice/; Liberty and StopWatch, “Driving while Black: Liberty and StopWatch’s briefing on the discriminatory effect of stop and search powers on our roads,” StopWatch, December 13, 2017, https://www.stop-watch.org/news-opinion/driving-while-black/.

The terms “deaths following police contact” or “police related death” reflect official terminology. Going forward, I use more direct language so as to not sanitise or neutralise these deaths. Language like “killing” or “premature death” is used to capture the injustice, violence and power involved. See People’s Tribunal on Police Killings, “The People’s Tribunal on Police Killings: Tribunal document,” London, April 5–6, 2025, https://docs.google.com/document/d/18TLbmBiL1eeaFJanl4eA6sm14NSqkbhy/edit?tab=t. However, the term killing does not reflect a legal verdict or the conclusion from a coronial inquest. Killing is used not to imply an individual intention to kill but to speak to a wider set of politics and the recklessness which puts lives at risk and results in death.

IOPC, “Annual deaths during or following police contact report – 2023/24,” Independent Office for Police Conduct, October 17, 2024, https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/publications/annual-deaths-during-or-following-police-contact-report-202324, 8.

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10.

Reformist contrasts with abolitionist, i.e., advocating for change within existing systems rather than their dismantling. See R. Joseph-Salisbury, “Critical race theory and abolition as a framework for radical analysis: Lessons from the no police in schools campaign,” Ethnic and Racial Studies (2025): 7–8, https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2025.2552383.

11.

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12.

INQUEST, “Deaths of Black people in and following police contact,” INQUEST, last updated September 12, 2025, https://www.inquest.org.uk/deaths-black-people-police.

13.

Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP), “Ronaldo Johnson: Family statement following Coroner’s inquest,” The Northern Police Monitoring Project, March 26, 2024, https://npolicemonitor.co.uk/uncategorized/ronaldo-johnson-family-statement-following-coroners-inquest/.

14.

INQUEST, “Ronaldo Johnson: Inquest concludes on death of teenager following police pursuit,” INQUEST, March 26, 2024, https://www.inquest.org.uk/ronaldo-johnson-inquest-concludes.

15.

16.

N. Keeling, “Police involved in chase which ended in death of young footballer cleared of blame by watchdog,” Manchester Evening News, August 15, 2022, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/police-involved-chase-ended-death-24763492.

17.

Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP), “Statement from the family and loved ones of Devonte Scott following inquest,” The Northern Police Monitoring Project, August 2022, https://npolicemonitor.co.uk/uncategorized/statement-from-the-family-and-loved-ones-of-devonte-scott-following-inquest/.

18.

K. Vickery and L. Sharman, “Teen with tendency to ‘panic’ died in double crash while driving wrong way down M60,” The Mirror, July 5, 2022, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teen-tendency-panic-died-double-27401178.

19.

The #EndPolicePursuits (EPP) campaign is a family-led group that seeks justice for those affected and/or bereaved by police pursuit. Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP) is an independent grassroots organisation based in Greater Manchester that works to build community resistance against police violence, harassment and racism, see https://npolicemonitor.co.uk/.

20.

L. Seal, L. Black and F. Seemungal, “Punishment’s imperial legacies in death as punishment,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South, edited by R. P. Cavalcanti, D. S. Fonseca, V. V. Weis, K. Carrington, R. Hogg and J. Scott (Springer Nature Switzerland, 2025).

21.

J. Go, Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US (Oxford University Press, 2024), 14.

22.

N. El-Enany, “From love to justice: Families’ interrogation of racial state violence,” Social & Legal Studies 32, no. 1 (2023): 53.

23.

L. Fekete, Paramilitary Policing Against the People: Colonial Continuities and the Challenge from Below (Institute of Race Relations, 2025), 37–8.

24.

N. El-Enany, “Before Grenfell: British immigration law and the production of colonial spaces,” in After Grenfell: Violence, Resistance and Response, edited by D. Bulley, J. Edkins and N. El-Enany (Pluto Press, 2019), 55.

25.

R. W. Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (University of California Press, 2007).

26.

R. Shilliam, Race and the Undeserving Poor (Agenda Publishing, 2018), 31–2.

27.

Grenfell Tower was a 24-storey social housing block of flats in North Kensington, west London. In the early hours of 14 June 2017, following a refrigerator malfunction, a fire began. Fuelled by flammable cladding, the fire spread killing at least seventy-two known victims, seriously injuring at least seventy and displacing over 200; it has been called ‘one of the most deadly preventable disasters in recent British history’. See D. Bulley, J. Edkins and N. El-Enany, “Introduction,” in After Grenfell: Violence, Resistance and Response, edited by D. Bulley, J. Edkins and N. El-Enany (Pluto Press, 2019).

28.

El-Enany, “Before Grenfell: British immigration law and the production of colonial spaces,” 50; G. M. Bradley, “From Grenfell to Windrush,” in After Grenfell: Violence, Resistance and Response, edited by D. Bulley, J. Edkins and N. El-Enany (Pluto Press, 2019).

29.

Shilliam, Race and the Undeserving Poor, 171.

30.

Shilliam, Race and the Underserving Poor, 171.

31.

Y. Ibrahim, “The burning tower: Grenfell as the ‘optical machinery’,” Visual Studies 38, no. 2 (2023): 267–77.

32.

Resonances can be drawn between the term ‘blackening’ and, at a different conjuncture decades earlier, A. Sivanandan’s use of ‘black’ politically, which went beyond skin colour to note a shared experience of oppression and exploitation. See https://asivanandan.com/key_sayings/black-is-a-political-colour-not-the-colour-of-our-skins/#more-766.

33.

S. Harris, R. Joseph-Salisbury, P. Williams and L. White, A Threat to Public Safety: Policing, Racism and the Covid-19 Pandemic (Institute of Race Relations, 2021), 5–6, https://irr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/A-threat-to-public-safety-v3.pdf.

34.

Greater Manchester Police, “Transfer or return to GMP: About Greater Manchester,” Greater Manchester Police, no date, https://www.gmp.police.uk/police-forces/greater-manchester-police/areas/greater-manchester-force-content/careers/careers/police-officers/transfer/about-greater-manchester/.

35.

See His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), “Greater Manchester police’s service to victims of crime is ‘a serious cause of concern’,” HMICFRS, December 10, 2020, https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/news/news-feed/greater-manchester-polices-service-to-victims-of-crime-a-serious-cause-for-concern/.

36.

NPMP, “End police pursuits families campaign demands,” The Northern Police Monitoring Project, no date, https://npolicemonitor.co.uk/uncategorized/end-police-pursuits-families-campaign-demands/.

37.

Red Pepper, “Manchester families demand police accountability,” Red Pepper, March 26, 2024, https://www.redpepper.org.uk/law-police-justice/policing/manchester-families-demand-police-accountability/.

38.

Imran Khan & Partners, “Inquest touching upon the death of Ronaldo Johnson,” Imran Khan & Partners Solicitors, March 25, 2024, https://www.ikandp.co.uk/post/inquest-touching-upon-the-death-of-ronaldo-johnson.

39.

IOPC, “Investigation concludes following fatal police pursuit in Stretford,” Independent Office for Police Conduct, August 15, 2022, https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/news/investigation-concludes-following-fatal-police-pursuit-stretford.

40.

IOPC, “Investigation concludes following fatal police pursuit in South Manchester,” Independent Office for Police Conduct, July 14, 2022, https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/news/investigation-concludes-following-fatal-police-pursuit-south-manchester.

41.

For example, in New York, pursuits are prohibited in cases where drivers break traffic laws or “commit other low-level offences” (see M. Cramer and H. Meko, “N.Y.P.D. bans high-speed chases for low-level offenses,” The New York Times, January 15, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/nyregion/nypd-bans-high-speed-chases-for-low-level-offenses.html) and in Surrey, Canada, a pursuit cannot be initiated for suspected drugs and substances offences, property crimes, including stolen vehicles, and other “provincial offences” (see Surrey Police Service, “Policy manual: Operational – police pursuits,” Community Policing Bureau, 2022, 4, https://surreypolice.ca/sites/default/files/media/documents/OP%204.36.2%20Police%20Pursuits%20-%20PUBLIC.pdf).

42.

See for example the IOPC’s statements following the inquests of Devonte and Brandon, both of which state that ‘while it would be reasonable to suggest that a police presence may have affected the manner of the driving . . . the evidence indicates that officers acted in accordance with local and national policies and their training’. In the statement relating to Brandon, it also notes that the coroner concluded that ‘the pursuit was reasonable’.

43.

G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by K. D. Heller-Roazen (Stanford University Press, 1998).

44.

Go, Policing Empires, 39.

45.

Wythenshawe is an urban working-class area of Manchester that that has not experienced the same redevelopment and/or ‘urban renaissance’ that other southern inner-city wards have benefitted from. See K. Ward, C. Fagan, L. McDowell, D. Perrons and K. Ray, “Living and working in urban working class communities,” Geoforum 38, no. 2 (2007): 312–25.

46.

Despite the fact that the Authorised Professional Practice (APP) guidelines instruct officers to take into consideration the age and vulnerability of those in a pursued vehicle when risk assessing a pursuit; see College of Policing, “Police pursuits: Authorised professional practice,” College of Policing, last updated May 23, 2024, https://www.college.police.uk/app/roads-policing/police-pursuits.

47.

G. Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives (Guardian Faber Publishing, 2016), 256.

48.

J. Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (Verso, 2016), 21.

49.

Butler, Frames of War, 23.

50.

College of Policing, “Police pursuits: Authorised professional practice.”

51.

College of Policing, “Police pursuits: Authorised professional practice.”

52.

College of Policing, “Police pursuits: Authorised professional practice.”

53.

Imran Khan & Partners, “Inquest touching upon the Death of Ronaldo Johnson.”

54.

NPMP, “Ronaldo Johnson: Family statement following Coroner’s inquest.”

55.

A. Mbembe, Necropolitics (Duke University Press, 2019).

56.

Williams et al., “Omission, erasure and obfuscation in the police institutional killing of Black men,” 260.

57.

Greater Manchester Police, “Uninsured driver who killed friend speeding whilst trying to evade police has been sentenced to 6 years,” Greater Manchester Police News, October 14, 2022, https://www.gmp.police.uk/news/greater-manchester/news/news/2022/october/unlicensed-and-uninsured-man-sentenced-to-6-years-for-causing-death-by-dangerous-driving/.

58.

Despite its name, the IOPC is not seen as independent from the police but rather it has historically been considered by families as “weak in its power and reluctant to face up to police misconduct,” and very much “part of the problem”; see H. Athwal and J. Bourne (eds), Dying for Justice (Institute of Race Relations), 4, https://irr.org.uk/app/uploads/2015/03/Dying_for_Justice_web.pdf.

59.

IOPC, “Investigation concludes following fatal police pursuit in South Manchester.”

60.

A. Farrow, “Reg 28 Report - Pryde & Faulkner - Regulation 28: Prevention of future deaths report,” Judiciary.UK, 2022, https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Brandon-Pryde-and-David-Faulkner-Prevention-of-future-deaths-report-2022-0250_Published.pdf. Also note that the coroner’s reporting ought also to be included within “state-talk” as, despite raising some concerns, it does not challenge police power.

61.

Williams et al., “Omission, erasure and obfuscation in the police institutional killing of Black men,” 262.

62.

R. Erfani-Ghettani, “The defamation of Joy Gardner: Press, police and Black deaths in custody,” Race & Class 56, no. 3 (2015): 103.

63.

T. George, “Teenager killed in horror crash during police chase was driving ‘stolen’ car on false plates,” Manchester Evening News, August 9, 2022, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/teenager-killed-horror-crash-during-24714061.

64.

L. Kerwin, “No justice no peace: Families and campaigners call for an end to ‘unnecessary’ police pursuits by GMP,” The Northern Quota, 2024, https://thenorthernquota.org/no-justice-no-peace-families-and-campaigners-call-for-an-end-to-unnecessary-police-pursuits-by-gmp/.

65.

Vickery and Sharman, “Teen with tendency to ‘panic’.”

66.

NPMP, “Statement from family of Brandon Geasley following inquest,” The Northern Police Monitoring Project, no date, https://npolicemonitor.co.uk/uncategorized/statement-from-family-of-brandon-geasley-pryde-following-inquest/.

67.

Again, quote marks suggest that the newspaper is likely quoting another source, likely the police and/or other prior official reporting.

68.

S. Topping, “The 18-year-old Wythenshawe man killed in M60 horror smash in a ‘stolen BMW’ – That left a 77-year-old man dead,” Manchester Evening News, May 28, 2021, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/my-whole-family-broken-tributes-20702703.

69.

D. Baker, D. Norris and V. Cherneva, “Disenfranchised grief and families’ experiences of death after police contact in the United States,” OMEGA – Journal of Death and Dying 83, no. 2 (2021): 239–56. See also, K. Doka, Disenfranchised Grief: Recognising Hidden Sorrow (Lexington, 1989).

70.

S. Robson, “Talented teenage athlete killed as Manchester police chase ends in horror crash – Now his family are calling for ‘justice’,” Manchester Evening News, April 16, 2021, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/we-want-justice-familys-heartbreak-20379343#comments-wrapper.

71.

R. Erfani-Ghettani, “Racism, the press and Black deaths in police custody in the United Kingdom,” in Media, Crime and Racism, edited by M. Bhatia et al. (Springer International Publishing, 2018).

72.

Williams et al., “Omission, erasure and obfuscation in the police institutional killing of Black men”, 260.

73.

Slow violence was originally coined by Rob Nixon to capture the ‘threats whose fatal repercussions are dispersed across space and time’; it is a violence that builds up over time and has ‘delayed effects’, rather than being captured in a visceral singular moment of ‘crisis’. See R. Nixon, “Neoliberalism, slow violence, and the environmental picaresque,” Modern Fiction Studies 55, no. 3 (2009): 443–67.

74.

Kerwin, “No justice no peace.”

75.

As social theorist Avery Gordon put it in her examination of horror, history and haunting, ‘abusive systems of power make themselves known and . . . felt in everyday life’; see A. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), xvi.

76.

El-Enany, “From love to justice,” 69.

77.

See D. Machover, “Azelle Rodney: The protracted path to prosecution,” in Dying for Justice, edited by H. Athwal and J. Bourne (Institute of Race Relations, 2015).

78.

J. Alder and D. Glazebrook, Defiance: Racial Injustice, Police Brutality, A Sister’s Fight for the Truth (Dialogue Books, 2024), 130.

79.

Alder and Glazebrook, Defiance, 143.

80.

See Coroners and Justice Act 2009 c.25, § Section 1, 2009, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2009/25/section/1.

81.

D. Baker, “Deaths after police contact in England and Wales: The effects of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights on Coronial Practice,” International Journal of Law in Context 12, no. 2 (2016): 164.

82.

You must apply to a coroner as a ‘properly interested person’ to access them.

83.

D. Baker, “Researching deaths after police contact: Challenges and solutions,” Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice 2, no. 1 (2016): 19.

84.

Baker, “Deaths after police contact in England and Wales,” 164.

85.

Courts and Tribunal Judiciary, “Chapter 20: The Article 2 inquest,” Courts and Tribunal Judiciary, July 30, 2025, https://www.judiciary.uk/guidance-and-resources/chapter-20-the-article-2-inquest/.

86.

Baker, “Deaths after police contact in England and Wales.”

87.

According to judicial guidance, inquests require a jury when the coroner has reason to suspect the death resulted from an act or omission of a police officer or member of a service police force in the purported execution of their duty. See Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, “Chapter 11: Jury inquests,” January 1, 2025, Courts and Tribunal Judiciary, 2025, https://www.judiciary.uk/guidance-and-resources/jury-inquests/.

88.

A ‘narrative conclusion’ is just one of the types of ‘conclusions’ (previously ‘verdicts’) a coroner can give. It enables the coroner to ‘describe briefly the circumstances by which the death came about’. Other conclusions can be: natural causes; accident or misadventure; suicide; unlawful killing (or lawful killing); alcohol; drug related; industrial disease; Road Traffic Collision; neglect (usually attributing to another conclusion, e.g. natural causes); Open, meaning that there is insufficient evidence to decide how the death came about – the case is left open in case further evidence appears. A coroner can combine some of these conclusions together. See The Coroner’s Courts Support Service, “Inquests – A factsheet for families,” no date, https://coronerscourtssupportservice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/CCSS-EL_Inquest_Factsheet_Final29317221_3.pdf.

89.

Farrow, “Reg 28 Report - Pryde & Faulkner - Regulation 28: Prevention of future deaths report.”

90.

NPMP, “End police pursuits families campaign demands.”

91.

K. Johnson, “Written evidence submitted by Miss Keshia Johnson (TCS0006) – The Coroner service: Follow-up,” UK Parliament Justice Committee, December 2023, https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/127057/pdf/.

92.

Johnson, “Written evidence.”

93.

Alder and Glazebrook, Defiance, 130.

94.

El-Enany, “From love to justice,” 72.

95.

Kids of Colour is an anti-racist youth work organisation committed to racial justice for young people of colour in Greater Manchester, see https://kidsofcolour.com/.

96.

The United Friends and Family Campaign (UFFC) is a UK coalition of the families and friends of those who have died in state custody (police custody, prisons, psychiatric hospitals and immigration custody). Their annual march brings together a wide variety of families, friends and campaigners from across the country to demand justice and accountability for those who have died at the hands of the state, see https://uffcampaign.org/; https://uffcampaign.org/uffc-annual-rally-2024/.

97.

NPMP, “End police pursuits families campaign demands.”

98.

NPMP, “End police pursuits families campaign demands.”

99.

The People’s Tribunal on Police Killings is a radical grassroots initiative led by the families of those killed by the police in the UK who aim to ‘expose the extent of injustice and implement a series of actions to make real revolutionary change’. See People’s Tribunal on Police Killings, “The People’s Tribunal on Police Killings: Tribunal document,” 4–5.