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Violence and policing are inevitably associated. Criminals use violence not only against innocent members of the public, but also against the police themselves. For our own protection and theirs, we have given police a licence to use force, sometimes with lethal consequences. But the exercise of this licence is fraught with risk to the community. The disturbing record of police shootings in Victoria, and irresponsible police violence elsewhere in recent years, vividly illustrate this risk. The public outcry against such events is understandable. To find a solution, we need to analyse the contexts and the cultural background of the use of police violence, and to think hard about its causes and proper limits. In Violence and Police Culture, eminent contributors offer valuable insights and experience to the growing debate. While Australian in origin and emphasis, the book addresses a public issue that resonates as far afield as London, New York, Tokyo and Belfast. Violence and Police Culture argues that there are features of police culture which foster abuse of the right to use violence. The book makes positive suggestions about institutional changes that might alleviate the problems bedevilling what the philosopher Thomas Hobbes called 'the right of the sword'.
A study of the municipal police force in a midwestern city.
Although the prevalence of police-citizen conflict has diminished in recent decades, police use of excessive force remains a concern of police departments nationwide. This timely book focuses on what is known and what still needs to be learned to understand, prevent, and remediate police abuse of force. The topics covered include: a theory of police abuse of force; the causes of police brutality; measures of its prevalence; the violence-prone police officer; public opinion about police abuse of force; the issue of race; officer selection, training, and attitudes; police unions and police culture; administrative review; procedural justice and the review of citizen complaints; the role of lawsuits; and a survey of police brutality abroad. In the final chapter Geller and Toch suggest new directions for research and practical innovations in law enforcement, from which both police and citizens can benefit. The contributors to this volume are scholars of criminology, criminal justice, social psychology, law, and public administration; former police managers; a police union leader; civilian oversight agency administrators and analysts; civil liberties advocates; police litigation expert witnesses; and media commentators. The combination of theoretical and practical perspectives makes this book ideal for students and scholars of democratic policing and for those in police departments, government, and the media charged with addressing and understanding the problem of improper exercise of force.
Criminology Explains Police Violence offers a concise and targeted overview of criminological theory applied to the phenomenon of police violence. In this engaging and accessible book, Philip M. Stinson, Sr. highlights the similarities and differences among criminological theories, and provides linkages across explanatory levels and across time and geography to explain police violence. This book is appropriate as a resource in criminology, policing, and criminal justice special topic courses, as well as a variety of violence and police courses such as policing, policing administration, police-community relations, police misconduct, and violence in society. Stinson uses examples from his own research to explore police violence, acknowledging the difficulty in studying the topic because violence is often seen as a normal part of policing.
When Harvard-trained sociologist Peter Moskos left the classroom to become a cop in Baltimore's Eastern District, he was thrust deep into police culture and the ways of the street--the nerve-rattling patrols, the thriving drug corners, and a world of poverty and violence that outsiders never see. In Cop in the Hood, Moskos reveals the truths he learned on the midnight shift. Through Moskos's eyes, we see police academy graduates unprepared for the realities of the street, success measured by number of arrests, and the ultimate failure of the war on drugs. In addition to telling an explosive insider's story of what it is really like to be a police officer, he makes a passionate argument for drug legalization as the only realistic way to end drug violence--and let cops once again protect and serve. In a new afterword, Moskos describes the many benefits of foot patrol--or, as he calls it, "policing green."
This fascinating new title offers an ethnographical investigation of contemporary police culture based on extensive field work across a range of ranks and units in the UK's police force. By drawing on over 600 hours of direct observation of operational policing in urban and rural areas and interviews with over 60 officers, the author assesses what impact three decades of social, economic and political change have had on police culture. She offers new understandings of the policing of ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and the ways in which reform initiatives are accommodated and resisted within the police. The author also explores the attempts of one force to effect cultural change both to improve the working conditions of staff and to deliver a more effective and equitable service to all groups in society. Beginning with a review of the literature on police culture from 30 years ago, the author goes on to outline the new social, economic and political field of contemporary British policing. Taking this as a starting point, the remaining chapters present the main findings of the empirical research in what is a a truly comprehensive analysis of present day policing culture.
Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.
Named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by The Washington Post “Tangled Up in Blue is a wonderfully insightful book that provides a lens to critically analyze urban policing and a road map for how our most dispossessed citizens may better relate to those sworn to protect and serve.” —The Washington Post “Remarkable . . . Brooks has produced an engaging page-turner that also outlines many broadly applicable lessons and sensible policy reforms.” —Foreign Affairs Journalist and law professor Rosa Brooks goes beyond the "blue wall of silence" in this radical inside examination of American policing In her forties, with two children, a spouse, a dog, a mortgage, and a full-time job as a tenured law professor at Georgetown University, Rosa Brooks decided to become a cop. A liberal academic and journalist with an enduring interest in law's troubled relationship with violence, Brooks wanted the kind of insider experience that would help her understand how police officers make sense of their world—and whether that world can be changed. In 2015, against the advice of everyone she knew, she applied to become a sworn, armed reserve police officer with the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department. Then as now, police violence was constantly in the news. The Black Lives Matter movement was gaining momentum, protests wracked America's cities, and each day brought more stories of cruel, corrupt cops, police violence, and the racial disparities that mar our criminal justice system. Lines were being drawn, and people were taking sides. But as Brooks made her way through the police academy and began work as a patrol officer in the poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods of the nation's capital, she found a reality far more complex than the headlines suggested. In Tangled Up in Blue, Brooks recounts her experiences inside the usually closed world of policing. From street shootings and domestic violence calls to the behind-the-scenes police work during Donald Trump's 2016 presidential inauguration, Brooks presents a revelatory account of what it's like inside the "blue wall of silence." She issues an urgent call for new laws and institutions, and argues that in a nation increasingly divided by race, class, ethnicity, geography, and ideology, a truly transformative approach to policing requires us to move beyond sound bites, slogans, and stereotypes. An explosive and groundbreaking investigation, Tangled Up in Blue complicates matters rather than simplifies them, and gives pause both to those who think police can do no wrong—and those who think they can do no right.
A highly identifiable topic of discussion among scholars and practitioners alike is police culture. Unfortunately, a large degree of vagueness and confusion also comes with this concept, as a variety of definitions, perspectives, and levels of aggregation are used to describe the ways in which officers cope with the problems and conditions faced out on the street and inside the police department. Police Culture: Adapting to the Strains of the Job provides clarity to such discussions by comprehensively organizing the disparate conceptualizations of police culture based on key assumptions, foundational research, primary cultural explanation, and common research methodologies. Based on in-person surveys of patrol officers from seven agencies of varying size, structure, and geographic locale, the book also provides one of the most comprehensive empirical examinations of police culture to date. The findings point to features of the occupation where there is widespread agreement among officers, as well as elements that produce cultural heterogeneity. The implications of these findings for the "homogeneity versus heterogeneity" police culture debate are discussed. The book also uniquely traces the historical context of police culture across five primary policing eras spanning the past several hundred years. The "lessons from the field" section offers several helpful hints for those interested in police research (in general) and survey methodologies specifically. The book is intended for police researchers, students, and practitioners with various interests and knowledge levels. "This is probably one of the most comprehensive studies of what police culture actually entails, delving into the aspects of what officers routinely deal with out in the field on a daily basis...what is so refreshing about this book is that not only is it well written and the subject matter so well researched, it is surprisingly easy to follow about the intentions of the study and the outcome of the findings themselves on police culture." -- Frank Fuller, Criminal Justice Review 39(4)
This book examines the beliefs of law enforcement officers who support the use of torture and the implications of these beliefs for officers' responses to human rights activism and education.