Meet Samuel Sinyangwe, The Policy Analyst Using Data To Combat Police Brutality

By Michell C. Clark


you could might not directly have the ability to recognize Samuel Sinyangwe by name, however you’ve absolutely seen him on your Twitter timeline.


With over 160,000 followers, Sinyangwe is a driving force on the platform as well as a brilliant example of how people can use social media to both inform readers and spark a revolution. A information scientist and policy analyst by trade, he was galvanized by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. It was then that he involving DeRay McKesson, a vocal activist and organizer on the ground in Ferguson, to studies policy involves that were efficient in eliminating police violence. Sinyangwe afterward collaborated with McKesson, Brittany Packnett, and Johnetta Elzie to launch a police reform platform called Campaign Zero and recommend ten policy solutions for police reform — including the decriminalization of offenses that don’t threaten public safety, establishment of efficient civilian oversight structures, and creation of national standards for the practice — and reporting — of police use of deadly force.


Since its inception, Campaign Zero has used a series of data-driven initiatives to spark conversation and influence policy with regard to police reform and accountability — Mapping Police Violence provides a frequently updated interactive map of every person killed by police in the United States; the Police Scorecard displays perplexing evaluations of use of force policies and accountability for every police department in the state of California; and the Police Use of Force Project gauges the efficacy of use of force policies in America’s 100 largest city police departments.


Sinyangwe is devoted to fighting for policies and legislation that hold police departments accountable and eliminate police violence and believes that using information is integral to ensuring that the planned solutions are efficient. His vantage point has proven to be invaluable, as institutions like the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI have failed to gather intelligence with enough substance to provide insight into efficient solutions. In 1994, Congress instructed the Attorney General to “acquire intelligence about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers” and “publish an annual summary” of the findings, yet that process was never implemented. To this day, the U.S. does not count how several lives are lost due to police use of deadly force.


According to Mapping Police Violence, police killed 1,164 people in the U.S. In 2018. Because the 2020 Presidential election approaches, Sinyangwe plans to use his studies to hold candidates accountable as it relates to policies that will prevent this trend from continuing. So far, Campaign Zero has engaged with Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, along with former Housing Secretary Julián Castro, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former Vice President Joe Biden.


He talked with MTV News discussed about personalized experiences that pulled him into activism, how he uses information to inform his activism, and what people should know leading up to the 2020 election.


MTV News: Once did you commit to creating change as an activist?


Sinyangwe: The deaths of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown brought up me to gradually become conscious of the need to address police violence and violence in the criminal justice system. While in the weeks and months soon after Mike Brown’s killing, I started to connect with activists on the ground in Ferguson to calculate how I might best be of service — my background in statistics science allowed me to be able to see that there was very little information obtainable in regards to policing.


I was used to operating in the education space while in the “No Child Left Behind” era, where everything was tracked, from the individual school level up by means of the district. The federal government could tell you how much rainfall there was in rural Missouri in the past 100 years, yet couldn’t tell you how several people were killed by police last year. Without intelligence, we couldn’t have a real conversation about solutions, because we had no way of evaluating their effectiveness. I sought to meet up and make use of information as a means of holding police institutions accountable and enacting solutions that are proven to address the core issue of police violence.


We’ve built Mapping Police Violence, the most comprehensive database of people killed by police in the nation. It launched in April 2015, and afterward became a model — the Washington Post and The Guardian used the same methodology a couple [of] months later to build their databases. The federal government is using that methodology to develop a comprehensive, official count of people killed by police.


MTV News: Was there anything about activism that surprised any time while you were first beginning out? 


Sinyangwe: I learned earlier into my journey that we don't need to wait for permission to take action. We’re conditioned to believe that we need permission, or funding, or an institutional co-sign to impact the world. The businesses that I would interface with were so focused on their own priorities that they were ignoring the issues that were driving people to protest in the streets.


there really are billions of dollars being spent in the field of criminology, and all of that is focused on how to use the police as a plan of action to promote public safety. None of that cash was being spent to statistics how to stop the police from committing violent crimes or endangering public safety. We had to prioritize asking questions, conducting studies, and implementing efficient solutions because of all the institutions I thought we required had already failed us.


MTV News: How did social media come to play a role in your activism? 


Sinyangwe: I learned about what was going on in the world through social media once the news wasn’t reporting on these issues. Once media did begin picking up what was happening in Ferguson, they were spinning a very different narrative than what I was seeing from people who were on the ground. Social media became an essential tool for learning about what was happening, and connecting people.


I regarding the other members of Campaign Zero — DeRay McKesson, Brittany Packnett, and Johnetta Elzie — through Twitter. I replied to one of DeRay’s tweets saying "I can assist create a policy platform to achieve these objectives in a data-driven way." Social media gave us a way to collaborate and contribute to causes we care about without the barriers that came with customary institutions.


MTV News: How do you approach the responsibility of having such an enormous social media following?


Sinyangwe: My responsibility is to share thoughts and statistics that will help people address fundamental challenges. It’s not just about critiquing what’s being mentioned or theorizing — it’s about adding direct value to the conversation and helping people contextualize what’s happening using information, facts, and studies. It’s crucial to arm people with the statistics that they require sort in attempt to be efficient advocates for change in their communities. To address police violence, people in each community, city, and county across the nation need to have access to equipment and statistics that will let them to evaluate people in power and hold them accountable. Putting out intelligence that assists the people to understand that process is a responsibility.


MTV News: How do you use statistics to inform your activism?


Sinyangwe: We began by collecting intelligence on the provide that was most urgent in the eyes of the people — people who’ve been killed by police nationwide. That intelligence was more likely to be announced by media than non-fatal incidences. We cross-referenced and compiled information nationwide from official databases, obituaries, and social media. This allowed us to make construct a more comprehensive database and draw conclusions about what was happening in different communities.


We learned that Black people were three times more likely to be killed by police than white people and more likely to be unarmed any time killed by the police. We were able to do this analysis by jurisdiction as a means of holding institutions accountable. There’s no national police department to address — there really are 1,800 police departments nationwide.


We broke down police violence in the 100 largest cities nationwide and noticed there’s a lot of variance in rates of police violence. We determined to ask questions about what was happening in cities with the lowest rates of police violence — like Irvine, California, and Buffalo, New York — in comparison to the rest of the nation. We evaluated police use of force policies, police union contracts, deadly force laws, and statistics on police training in every of these locations. We noticed that a set of policies and practices involving significantly lower rates of police violence — solutions that had evidence of effectiveness. Sharing intelligence about those solutions became our priority.


Several cities have adopted new policies in direct response to this studies. California just passed a deadly force law that directly borrowed language from our use of force analysis. Individual police departments like Baton Rouge, Orlando, and Sacramento have also adopted policies based on our statistics. We’re making a new field from scratch because preventing police violence hasn’t been a focus for previously existing organizations.


MTV News: Social media is really emotion-based, and is based on how people feel. However you work with plenty of statistics — why is bridging the two with each other crucial to you?


Sinyangwe: It’s critical because different people respond to different things. A lot of people respond to emotional appeals like seeing pieces of themselves, their son, or their daughter in someone who’s been killed by the police. That's what brings them into the space. Other folks are moved by what the numbers and trends mention, and why it applies to them.


MTV News: What objectives do you have for Campaign Zero’s impact on the 2020 election season?


Sinyangwe: During the 2016 Presidential election, we played a role in shaping several of the major candidates' police reform platforms — including Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley. In the present, we’re engaging with candidates like Kamala Harris, Julian Castro, Pete Buttigieg; as well as Joe Biden’s team, Elizabeth Warren’s team, as well as a span of others to make sure that we can share suggestions based on our studies. We desire to make sure that our studies is informing their public policy platform and holding them accountable to adopt platforms that resemble what works, as an alternative opposed to just giving lip service.


MTV News: What’s the most crucial thing you want people to know about the 2020 election right now?


Sinyangwe: I want people to know that the Federal Government can play a critical role in investigating police departments for misconduct and forcing them to change their policies and practices in ways that actually save lives. A VICE News investigation noticed that among the 50 largest police departments across the nation, police departments that had federal interventions had a 30 percent loss in police shootings.


We need to push candidates to embrace the concept of scaling up what is proven to be efficient. Under the Obama administration, the federal government only had the resources to investigate three police departments each year. There really are 18,000 police departments. If we know that these investigations have a notable impact, how come we only have resources allocated to investigate three police departments a year?


MTV News: How do you inform yourself voter and also a consumer of the news? What do you suggest for people seeking to inform their own choices?


Sinyangwe: I get a lot of statistics from people on Twitter who I trust — people who are experts at subjects like immigration or voting rights. Being aware of what’s happening in real-time is key. I also suggest researching the effectiveness of policy. I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the racial wealth gap, and I’ve realized that a lot of the suggested solutions, like education, don’t address the racial wealth gap at all. Issues of housing and inheritance are more closely tied to the racial wealth gap. I encourage each person to do the statistics to challenge their own assumptions so that they can be more efficient in their advocacy.


MTV News: What do you do once you’re not working? How do you engage in self-care to support you preserve your efforts?


Sinyangwe: I'm a foodie. I find a lot of happiness in exploring different types of cuisine. I don't have an excellent process as far as self-care. I think a lot of activists lack that process because this work is really taxing. I have to read by means of the stories of almost every person killed by police In America almost every year. It’s intense, and however it must be done. We have to grapple with reality group in attempt to change it, and while it’s crucial to take time off, there’s no easy way to prepare space for self-care while engaging in this field of work.