University of Manchester sociology lecturer Siobhan O’Neill’s research, published in the January 2026 edition of the IRR’s journal Race & Class, emerges out of community organising around an under-researched aspect of state violence: police pursuits.
According to the IOPC, in the last ten years there have been 299 police-related road traffic fatalities in England and Wales.
Behind this stark statistic lies the tragedy of premature deaths of young racially minoritised and working-class teenagers, often following police pursuits for minor traffic violations and/or alleged non-violent offences. Now thanks to pioneering research by University of Manchester sociology lecturer and Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP) steering group member, Siobhan O Neill, these fatal crashes, and the impacts they have on communities, are given due consideration.
O’ Neill focuses on three cases central to the formation of the #EndPolicePursuits (EPP) campaign, a family-led collective that seeks justice for those affected and/or bereaved by police pursuit. Brandon Geasley (18), Devonte Scott (18), and Ronaldo Johnson (17), all of whom died following high-risk, high-speed pursuits by Greater Manchester Police in 2021, a year in which a total of eight people were killed in pursuits involving GMP, the highest of any police force in England and Wales that year.
The focus of O’Neill’s Race & Class intervention is not just the circumstances of these deaths. Crucially, she also addresses the brutality and dehumanising nature of surrounding legal processes – described as a form of ‘slow violence’ – and documents the resistance strategies adopted by families, friends and campaigners. The author, who attended the inquests of Brandon Gealey, Devonte Scott and Ronaldo Johnson, alongside families and friends, also draws on publicly available information such as statements from the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), news reports, social media and campaign documents.
It is to be hoped that journalists will study the research’s findings about the role played by local newspapers in replicating dehumanising processes. Too often, media reporting relies solely on police press releases and narratives that portray the young victims of fatal police pursuits as ‘criminals’ and therefore unworthy of sympathy. This had the impact of rendering the deaths of these three Mancunian teenagers as ‘ungrievable’, further intensifying the harm to the families.
The bereaved families have never passively accepted a hopeless situation, concludes O’Neill. On the contrary, the families have come together, with their ‘shared marginality’ forming the ‘basis of collective struggle and solidarity across difference’. Indeed, it was the efforts of these three brave families from different ethnic backgrounds that gave birth to the EPP campaign. Simple acts of caring and solidarity with each other, has acted as a spur for further campaigning strategies, that are now spreading across the country.