Living with trauma: impact of police killings on the lives of the family and Community of Child and Teen Victims
- PDF / 418,650 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 96 Downloads / 196 Views
Living with trauma: impact of police killings on the lives of the family and Community of Child and Teen Victims Rafael L. Outland 1
&
Thomas Noel Jr 2 & Kris Rounsville 1 & Tomas Boatwright 3 & Craig Waleed 1 & Asia Abraham 1
Accepted: 14 October 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Youth homicide by police in the U.S. remain a public health and safety concern. The purpose of this paper was to understand the impact of police killings on the lives of the family and community of youth victims. Participants were representative of 10 youth killed by police in 2016 and 2017 in seven cities and three states in Northeast U.S., including New York, New Jersey, and Maryland. Thirty-five adults participated in this research. This study utilized an in-depth interview design, along with in-depth and public interviews for data collection. Grounded theory approaches were used for data analysis. Findings produced several major themes surrounding the experiences of survivors of youth homicide by police, including living with trauma, meaning of state violence, holding police accountable, and limited resources and support following police killings. These themes were indicative of the mental, emotional, and social challenges experienced by survivors of youth homicide by police. Implications for service providers and researchers who work with families and communities of youth victims of police homicide are discussed. Keywords Children and teens . Police violence . Extrajudicial killings . Trauma . Qualitative research . Mental health
Extrajudicial killings by police of people in the United States of America (U.S.) remains an ongoing epidemic. Specifically, since 2016, close to an average of 1000 people have lost their lives at the hands of police officers, each year. Of the total victims, children and teens between ages of birth and 19 years, have also died as a result of police involvement. For example, a recent study indicated that from January 2016 to August 2017, at least 115 children and teenagers were killed by police (Primary Author 2019). Despite the ongoing epidemic of police killings of people in the U.S., especially youth, it is rare that police officers are found guilty of a crime or held liable for
their actions in a court of law. In other words, most cases involving the loss of life at the hands of police officers, are determined as justified homicides by courts. Recent reports have suggested that less than 10, if not fewer, officers have been convicted of a crime involving police homicides in the last five years (Shane et al. 2017). The untold story surrounding police killings of people in the U.S. is that in the aftermath of these circumstances, the reality is that the family and loved ones of victims are left to endure the pain and suffering of the deceased youth. Although literature surrounding the impact of police killings on the
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01129-w) contains supplementary
Data Loading...
