While images of police violence exemplify major urban centers, it is important to remember the biases in police conduct within the country’s micropolitan areas—including Cheyenne, WY.

Between a period of 2013-2017, the city’s population became whiter, approx. 78.2% across seven districts, per the Census Bureau (it is unclear where CPD sources it’s demographic data).

In that time, the percentage of. Lack residents has remained relatively steady at 3.2%.

Yet, from 2016-2019, CPD’s own annual reporting of ticketed racial/ethnic groups suggest that the share of tickets involving Black residents essentially DOUBLED, from 3.2%-7.4%.

Again, DESPITE the city becoming whiter and Black population remaining stagnant.

Conspicuously missing from the 2019 report is demography for “use of force” indicents. In 2016, the report showed 9% of these types of incidents involved Black suspects.

In 2017, this percentage was even higher, with 10% and 14% of 233 use of force cases involving Black men and Black women, respectively. Incidentally, 2017 is the last year this statistic is reported by CPD.

Proponents of the “violent subculture theory” would like to say that Black communities commit more crimes that require use of force.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Especially without proper contextualization of systemic racism.

Besides this being a racist idea that assumes Black Cheyenneites have developed a tolerance to violence, multiple studies suggest this is not the case at a national level. It is unlikely that Cheyenne is an anomaly.

Police brutality and misconduct in Wyoming is glaringly underreported & understudied, yet what this data suggests—at its bare bones, surface-level numbers—is that Cheyenne’s Black communities are disproportionately overpoliced.

They are overpoliced in relation to population changes and overpoliced in relation to other racial/ethnic groups.

Therefore, the mission of #BlackLivesMatter involves a significantly deeper and more expansive measure for justice that includes accountability in predominantly white states and in the nation’s seemingly homogenous small cities.