At UCLA, a new book on lives lost to police violence is grounded in student research

On a recent rainy afternoon, a handful of students gathered in a small UCLA classroom to pore over autopsy reports and death records.

They took turns presenting different cases, sharing what they’d gleaned from documents about people who died at the hands of police. After an overview, they honed in on the reports’ details.

As part of the university’s BioCritical Studies Lab, the significance of the students’ work extends far beyond the classroom.

Terence Keel, a professor in the Department of African American Studies and the Institute for Society and Genetics, founded the lab in 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. After watching police take Floyd’s life, Keel wondered how many others died under similar circumstances.

Together, Keel and his students have produced multiple reports about in-custody deaths. Through this work, the professor has learned that every day in the U.S., about five people die in jail or during arrests.

The reports, coupled with conversations with community activists and people who’ve lost loved ones across the country, underpin Keel’s new book, The Coroner's Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence.

How a lab discussion uncovers details

This recent class session started by examining a San Diego case involving a man who died in 2020 after being tased by police three times.

One student said it was “pretty shocking” that no officers faced liability. Another brought up the difference between what was stated in the autopsy report and the San Diego district attorney's account.

In the latter, the student noted, “It says that [an] officer put his left knee on [the man’s] upper back and neck. ... That provides a lot more context as to why [the man] became unresponsive.”

Not only was that detail left out of the autopsy report, another student added, “But on page seven, it says, ‘It does not appear that the officers at any time significantly placed their weight or pressure on the decedent’s head, neck or torso’ — which directly goes against what you just read.”

“Did anyone notice, on Page 5 of the [autopsy], the contributing factor to death was ‘atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease,’” Keel asked the class. “What did you all make of that?”

The lab secures autopsy reports and death records through public records requests. Students are assigned at least one case per week. They’re tasked with coding these cases, following a strict protocol. As they answer questions provided by their instructors, the students input the data in a survey for the lab’s Coroner Report Project.

In his new book, Keel describes the obstacles he faced in securing these records.

The professor says “a part of [him] had to perish” to write the text — the part of him that “wanted to believe America was growing into our best values and evolving beyond the primitivism of our past.”

“I am grateful for this loss,” he writes.

Before conducting his research, “I could not imagine how often these deaths occurred, how they were hidden from the public or the sheer magnitude of lethal police violence,” Keel adds.

“I hope you lose a part of yourself,” too, he tells readers, “and gain in return the ability to see the humanity of the people we are socialized to forget.”

Keel’s students already are heeding the call.

What kinds of students participate

The professor's students span majors from the humanities to life sciences. Many of them are pre-med. Grace Sosa, a former student, is the lab’s assistant director and co-leads class discussion.

“We welcome the feelings that come up — the rage and the sadness and the anger — all that stuff,” Sosa said. “The data collection that we do is important, but it's also important to never lose sight of the fact that every single one of these deaths should not have happened. And that should make us feel something.”

This approach sits well with students like Stepheny Nguyenle, a recent graduate who continues to be part of the lab.

“More than anything,” she told LAist, “I joined because I wanted to learn and grow alongside a group of people who believe in a better world, where human dignity takes precedence.”

For others, the lab is an invitation to take what’s learned and probe the world around them.

Senior Zaia Hammond (center), a Human Biology & Society major and African American Studies minor, said Keel's lab has helped her become more empathetic toward others, especially incarcerated people.

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Julia Barajas

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LAist

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“[T]his is the first time I've ever looked at an autopsy report,” said sophomore Ellie Portman, who's now prone to scrutinizing news media. “We [grow up thinking] that whatever is in an autopsy report is correct and whatever the police do is right. ... This lab has taught me the importance of asking questions and being curious,” she said.

Junior Manhoor Ahmad also said the lab “has really taught me to go deeper.”

“I pay attention to the layers behind every incident: the police tactics used; the medical vulnerabilities of the person involved; how force escalates; the stress on the body; and the role that institutions play in framing these [deaths] as unavoidable,” she said.

How the community has been involved

When Keel launched the lab, a local woman named Helen Jones helped guide discussions.

Jones, a Watts native, lost her son in 2009. His name was John Horton III, and he was 22 years old when he died inside Men’s Central Jail in downtown L.A. authorities said he died by suicide in solitary confinement. But in Jones’ view, his body told a different story.

When Horton’s body was being prepared at a mortuary, Jones noticed wounds, bruises and scrapes across his body.

In his book, Keel notes that Horton “had no record of mental illness and was not under suicide watch when he was taken to prison.” Plus, when his family received the lab results, “they revealed that [Horton] had sustained recent injuries to his abdomen, adrenal glands, skeletal muscles in his lower back and kidneys.”

In the autopsy report, the coroner ascribed Horton’s death to “hanging and other undetermined factors.” But if Horton was alone in his cell, his mother wondered, how did those internal injuries occur?

Keel met Horton’s mother in 2020. At the time, she was a community organizer with Dignity and Power Now, a grassroots organization based in L.A. that’s working toward prison abolition. The experience of losing her son pushed Jones to become well-versed in death records. When Keel’s lab took off, she’d bring records of people who’d lost their life in custody and share her insights with his students.

Jones “had a wealth of knowledge and expertise about the faults and virtues of our death investigation system that would have taken decades for most academics to acquire,” Keel says in his book.

Through Jones, Keel and his students learned about “how death investigators weaponized details about the criminal history of the deceased, or their troubles with substance abuse or, even worse, their health history, making the case that they were going to die regardless of the actions of police.” Jones drew the lab’s attention “to the places in the autopsy where illegible handwriting, unchecked boxes, missing files and vague language obscured or distorted what happened to the victim and why.”

Keel’s lab and book also have been shaped by other families who’ve grappled with in-custody deaths. Out of necessity and desperation, he said, these families likewise taught themselves how to read autopsy reports, using anatomy books, along with legal and medical dictionaries.

Keel hopes his book finds its way to people who think in-custody deaths are an issue from which they’re far removed.

“[T]here is a perception that [this] is a Black and brown problem,” Keel told LAist. “But when you look at the data, look at the raw numbers, white Americans are the largest group in the nation being killed by police. ... And when you look at all of the people who are dying in custody, every single demographic in [the U.S.] is represented.”

Disclosure: Julia Barajas is a part-time law student at UCLA.