A People’s Archive of Police Violence was conceived during the 2020 George Floyd Protests, when the mass movement came under the intense scrutiny of the US government and public media, and therefore its audience. Millions of Americans and people around the world watched the protests from their devices; security camera footage, aerial drone shots, on-site reporters staying a ‘safe’ distance from the action, reports in the studio bringing in 3-minute guests for their most bite-size beliefs. In 20 years, will accounts of police violence in America do justice to the screams, the fear, the pain, and the heartbreaking loss felt by even one murdered man’s mother. Every year in the US, thousands of Black men are murdered by police, some of whose stories are left un-reported entirely, passed over for publicity due to a lack of video evidence, lost in the sea of similar stories, or even simply covered up in utero at the scene of the crime. 

The archive is a collective project that seeks to collect, preserve, and share the stories of police and state violence of the People, by the People and for the People. All are welcome to participate, learn, and heal through the stories in the archive. Together, we can move towards liberating minds as well as liberating society. 

Monolithic media representations and narrow misconceptions about police and state violence must be challenged. This archive serves as a record of experiences with police and state violence, impossible to sweep to the wayside. These stories will be present, they will be shared, and they will not be forgotten or passed over. Statistics have their value, but let us not forget that every statistic and news headline, every brutalization and death, is a person.