This work highlights survivors’ voices in the exploration of police violence and homicide in the United States. Making vital connections between U.S. colonialism, structured and deputized violence, history of policing, and armed resistance by grassroots movements, the authors expand readers’ understanding of the purpose of U.S. policing.

Responding to data that showed that in 2016 and 2017, more than 135 children and teens lost their lives to police violence, the author team traveled to multiple locations across the United States to sit with, learn from, and capture survivors’ stories and experiences. Utilizing in-depth and public interviews, the book presents breathtaking, honest, and heart-wrenching narratives surrounding the impact of youth killed by police on the family, community, and activists. This book makes important connections between colonialism, the history of police corruption, and police killings of marginalized groups. Survivors’ narratives provide important, nuanced information surrounding the impact of youth killed by police, often with impunity, on friends, family, and loved ones of the victims.

Synthesizing these stories with an overview of the state of policing in the United States, this scholarship extends recommendations and strategies for organizers, activists, students, and scholars to redefine public safety, as well as police power and accountability, in Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities.