Supporting Better Police Reporting Through Strategic Storytelling

Raheem is an independent service for reporting police conduct in the U.S. It was founded in response to a lack of reporting, accountability, and oversight in policing where getting killed by the police is a leading cause of death among young black men in America. Given that 95% of people who experience police violence don’t report it, Raheem is working to change that by engaging with communities — using information and data to help people seek justice and advance policies to end police violence against Black people.

Raheem is a lean but mighty team with a clear vision and objectives, and they were looking for guidance on their storytelling and communication efforts. They also wanted to create new content that could help people visualize a world where police aren’t needed.

The Raheem team asked Bloom to look at how they could leverage communication to advance their objectives, which include:

• Building a robust database of police conduct
• Supporting individuals and communities who report police in seeking justice
• Promoting policy change, and
• Furthering a collective vision of a world without police

The Bloom team conducted a communications audit around Raheem’s current storytelling efforts. This involved analyzing their existing digital communication channels in terms of messaging consistency, effectiveness, weaknesses, and opportunities. We conducted interviews with the Raheem team and did landscape research around current abolitionist thinking and approaches as it connects to the defund the police movement. We then used our research and interviews to power recommendations for building on what was working to increase engagement.

The Raheem team wants their work to support and empower those who report police to their database, “moving them from being a victim of police violence to being an advocate for abolition.”

Based on the communication audit, staff interviews, and additional research, Bloom delivered:

• Robust strategic communication recommendations to spur greater engagement and action that included short- and long-term approaches to actualizing its objectives
• A creative brief outlining compelling ways to help users visualize a world without police

The Raheem team plans to use the recommendations to help further prioritize their communication strategy and take steps towards securing resources to build out the new digital content and develop animations.