2025/10/30 by Siobhan O’Neill · 1 voice · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Gender, Feminism, and Media #Migration, Refugees, and Integration #Policing Practices and Perceptions
paper · doi:10.1177/03063968251388375
openalex publication_date 2025/10/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
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.