Samuel Sinyangwe (born May 12, 1990)[1] is an Americanpolicy analyst andracial justiceactivist. Sinyangwe is a member of theMovement for Black Lives, the founder of Mapping Police Violence, a database ofpolice killings in the United States and the Police Scorecard, a website with data on police use of force and accountability metrics on US police and sheriff's departments. Sinyangwe is also a co-founder of We the Protestors, a group of digital tools that includeCampaign Zero, a policy platform to end police violence and a co-host of thePod Save the People podcast, where he discusses the week's news with a panel of other activists.
Sinyangwe was born May 12, 1990, to a Tanzanian father and a European Jewish mother who met while studying atCornell University.[2][3] He grew up in theCollege Park neighborhood ofOrlando, Florida and attendedWinter Park High School in theInternational Baccalaureate program.[4] He has discussed the influence of his upbringing in Florida, where he was a black child often surrounded by white peers, on his eventual career trajectory; he was shaken and moved to action after the 2013acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death ofTrayvon Martin inSanford, Florida, where Sinyangwe had regularly attended soccer practice: "I was that kid. I could have been Trayvon. That’s why it hit me so personally and that’s why I realized that needed to be something that took the priority in terms of my focus."[4]
Sinyangwe graduated fromStanford University, where he studied how race intersects with American politics, economics, and class.[5]
Sinyangwe started his career atPolicyLink with the Promise Neighborhoods Institute.[6] As protests emerged in the wake of the 2014shooting of Michael Brown inFerguson, Missouri, he connected with Ferguson activists online.[6] WithDeRay Mckesson,Brittney Packnett andJohnetta Elzie, he began working to develop policy solutions to address police violence in America.[5] Sinyangwe particularly noticed the absence of official government statistics on police violence and began compiling them from other sources like Fatal Encounters and KilledbythePolice.net, in order to challenge claims about police shootings being rare events or only resulting from resisting arrest.[6]
With other activists, Sinyangwe founded We the Protestors, an organization aimed at developing a set of digital tools to supportBlack Lives Matter activism.[7] Sinyangwe built projects including a database of police killings, Mapping Police Violence,[8] and a platform of policy solutions to end police violence calledCampaign Zero.[9][10] Sinyangwe also serves as a data scientist for OurStates.org, a project focused on state legislatures[11] and with Mckesson andBrittney Packnett founded theResistance Manual, an open-source project aimed at connecting anti-racist activists with activists focused on intersecting issues.[12] He has also been responsible for a number ofCPRA requests for RIPA-formatted police stops data through the non-profit organizationMuckRock.[13]
During the2016 U.S. Presidential campaign, Sinyangwe and colleagues met with Democratic candidatesBernie Sanders[14] andHillary Clinton on these policy issues.[15] He has been a vocal critic of the "Ferguson Effect", using data to refute the theory that policing had diminished and crime increased in face of activist scrutiny of police use of force.[16]Melissa Harris-Perry has compared Sinyangwe to journalist and anti-lynching activistIda B. Wells, noting that Wells began her work by "compil[ing] the data, the social science and research about how, when and where lynchings were happening to begin to make it stop."[6]
Sinyangwe is a co-host of Mckesson's podcastPod Save the People, which discusses the week's news with a panel of other activists including Mckesson, Packnett andClint Smith.[17] The podcast particularly focuses on race, grassroots activism, discrimination and other forms of inequality;[18] recommendingPod Save The People inGQ, June Diane Raphael ofHow Did This Get Made? wrote, "The stories they uplift and think critically about are the ones I'm now wondering why I've never been exposed to/exposed myself to."[19] Sinyangwe has also been featured onCNN,[20]MSNBC,[21]BBC News,[22]FiveThirtyEight,[23]The Los Angeles Times,[24] and other publications. He has written for theHuffington Post andThe Guardian.[25]
