Since the advent of independent databases created in the early-to-mid 2010s to track incidents of “officer-involved shooting deaths,” it has been calculated that US law enforcement is responsible for the deaths of approximately 1,000 people every year, and statistical analyses show that law enforcement officers more often target Black people than white people. (“Police Brutality Statistics: What the Data Says about Police Violence in America.” Police Brutality Center). The FBI has also acknowledged the critical gap in the federal data on this widespread issue, and independent researchers have determined that more than half of such deaths go uncounted by the federal government. Public outrage over repeated occurrences of officer-involved shootings and similar issues has led to the rise of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which began in 2013 after neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman was acquitted of murder charges for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager. The movement has since gained worldwide support and is dedicated to protesting police brutality and overcoming systemic racism.

Parallels to several 2014 and 2015 police killings are implicit in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give, which is a scathing indictment of the systemic racism that condones cases of police brutality.