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UCL Anthropology Working Papers Series
UCL Anthropology
University College London
14 Taviton Street, London
WC1H 0BW, U.K.
Working Paper No. 20/2020
Published online 11 June 2020
© Copyright rests with the authors
‘DON’T SHOOT!’ COP WATCHING: HOW TECHNOLOGICALLY MEDIATED CONCEPTS OF VISION ARE IMPACTING AFRICAN AMERICAN SUBJECTIVITIES
MAHALIA CHANGLEE
ABSTRACT
Cop watch groups that film the police have arisen in part as a response to the growing awareness of police violence. High profile footage of African Americans being killed at the hands of white police officers have become emblems of resistance across the USA and fuelled the Black Lives Matter movement. Subsequently, cop watching as a visual mode of exposing police violence has amplified the profile of racial tensions in the US. Based on interviews and secondary analysis, this thesis examines how shooting citizen video can help re-conceptualise the relationships between African Americans and the police. Using the lens of surveillance and vision as a legacy of power during slavery and segregation, it explores how for African Americans cop watching is an assertion of physical presence and persecution previously veiled from the wider public. This dissertation concludes, cop watching is provoking an innovative observational engagement between African Americans and the police state that re-politicises public space as a key arena for one’s right to look.