Considering Social Work Roles in Policing

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement continues to bring attention and direct action to incidents of racially motivated aggression and police violence. Although BLM is a not a formal centralized organization, numerous branded bodies, such as the international BLM Global Network (BLM Global Network, n.d.), use the term “Black Lives Matter” to represent the mandate of their group. Regardless, BLM operates as a collection of individuals and organizations that commonly promote change aimed at combatting police brutality while supporting an overall agenda of Black liberation. The movement began in 2013 in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of  Travon Martin, an African American teenager. Over the past eight years, BLM has taken action following law enforcement– related deaths of other African Americans across the United States (Day, 2015). In 2020, the movement gained national attention during protests that resulted from the killing of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. BLM has emerged as one of the largest social movements the country has seen to date (Buchanan, Bui, & Patel, 2020).