This undergraduate thesis explores how police violence is spatialized and why it matters,
centering on the city of Aurora, Colorado as a case study. Aurora has a long history of racial
violence perpetrated by its police force, with high-profile incidents in recent years. Despite
promises for reform, police violence persists seemingly unchanged. Understanding this
spatialized state sanctioned violence through the theoretical framework of racial capitalism, the
author explores how processes of difference and racialization connect to police violence as a
piece of a larger carceral apparatus. In conversation with abolition geographies and Black
geographic scholarship this case study demonstrates the realities for Black and brown bodies in
Aurora, a refusal of the naturalization of this violence. The thesis uses a multi-method analysis
producing the counter-cartographies of police violence and local resistance in Aurora,
synthesizing traditional GIS mapping with photographs and artistic interpretations of space. The
mapping is informed by participant interviews with local community members and activists who
want to see change for the sake of a better Aurora. The paper concludes by exploring how local
counter-imaginaries for space are contributing to place-making, freedom struggle, and the
(re)imaging of policing. (Re)imagining the values and realities of our spaces towards a more just
future and how community-based approaches can aid in the realization of this future.