Rise of the Warrior Cop

Rise of the Warrior Cop PDF Author: Radley Balko
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541700287
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

Get Book Here

Book Description
This groundbreaking history of how American police forces have been militarized is now revised and updated. Newly added material brings the story through 2020, including analysis of the Ferguson protests, the Obama and Trump administrations, and the George Floyd protests. The last days of colonialism taught America’s revolutionaries that soldiers in the streets bring conflict and tyranny. As a result, our country has generally worked to keep the military out of law enforcement. But over the last two centuries, America’s cops have increasingly come to resemble ground troops. The consequences have been dire: the home is no longer a place of sanctuary, the Fourth Amendment has been gutted, and police today have been conditioned to see the citizens they serve as enemies. In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Balko shows how politicians’ ill-considered policies and relentless declarations of war against vague enemies like crime, drugs, and terror have blurred the distinction between cop and soldier. His fascinating, frightening narrative that spans from America’s earliest days through today shows how a creeping battlefield mentality has isolated and alienated American police officers and put them on a collision course with the values of a free society.

Rise of the Warrior Cop

Rise of the Warrior Cop PDF Author: Radley Balko
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541700287
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

Get Book Here

Book Description
This groundbreaking history of how American police forces have been militarized is now revised and updated. Newly added material brings the story through 2020, including analysis of the Ferguson protests, the Obama and Trump administrations, and the George Floyd protests. The last days of colonialism taught America’s revolutionaries that soldiers in the streets bring conflict and tyranny. As a result, our country has generally worked to keep the military out of law enforcement. But over the last two centuries, America’s cops have increasingly come to resemble ground troops. The consequences have been dire: the home is no longer a place of sanctuary, the Fourth Amendment has been gutted, and police today have been conditioned to see the citizens they serve as enemies. In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Balko shows how politicians’ ill-considered policies and relentless declarations of war against vague enemies like crime, drugs, and terror have blurred the distinction between cop and soldier. His fascinating, frightening narrative that spans from America’s earliest days through today shows how a creeping battlefield mentality has isolated and alienated American police officers and put them on a collision course with the values of a free society.

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist PDF Author: Radley Balko
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610396928
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
A shocking and deeply reported account of the persistent plague of institutional racism and junk forensic science in our criminal justice system, and its devastating effect on innocent lives After two three-year-old girls were raped and murdered in rural Mississippi, law enforcement pursued and convicted two innocent men: Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. Together they spent a combined thirty years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2008. Meanwhile, the real killer remained free. The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist recounts the story of how the criminal justice system allowed this to happen, and of how two men, Dr. Steven Hayne and Dr. Michael West, built successful careers on the back of that structure. For nearly two decades, Hayne, a medical examiner, performed the vast majority of Mississippi's autopsies, while his friend Dr. West, a local dentist, pitched himself as a forensic jack-of-all-trades. Together they became the go-to experts for prosecutors and helped put countless Mississippians in prison. But then some of those convictions began to fall apart. Here, Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington tell the haunting story of how the courts and Mississippi's death investigation system -- a relic of the Jim Crow era -- failed to deliver justice for its citizens. The authors argue that bad forensics, structural racism, and institutional failures are at fault, raising sobering questions about our ability and willingness to address these crucial issues.

Our Enemies in Blue

Our Enemies in Blue PDF Author: Kristian Williams
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849352151
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Get Book Here

Book Description
Let's begin with the basics: violence is an inherent part of policing. The police represent the most direct means by which the state imposes its will on the citizenry. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent. Using media reports alone, the Cato Institute's last annual study listed nearly seven thousand victims of police "misconduct" in the United States. But such stories of police brutality only scratch the surface of a national epidemic. Every year, tens of thousands are framed, blackmailed, beaten, sexually assaulted, or killed by cops. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on civil judgments and settlements annually. Individual lives, families, and communities are destroyed. In this extensively revised and updated edition of his seminal study of policing in the United States, Kristian Williams shows that police brutality isn't an anomaly, but is built into the very meaning of law enforcement in the United States. From antebellum slave patrols to today's unarmed youth being gunned down in the streets, "peace keepers" have always used force to shape behavior, repress dissent, and defend the powerful. Our Enemies in Blue is a well-researched page-turner that both makes historical sense of this legalized social pathology and maps out possible alternatives.

A Government of Wolves

A Government of Wolves PDF Author: John W. Whitehead
Publisher: SelectBooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1590799836
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Get Book Here

Book Description
“A NATION OF SHEEP WILL BEGET A GOVERNMENT OF WOLVES”–EDWARD R. MURROW America is fast moving into a state of lockdown. Surveillance cameras, drug-sniffing dogs, SWAT team raids, roadside strip searches, blood draws at DUI checkpoints, mosquito drones, tasers, privatized prisons, GPS tracking devices, zero tolerance policies, overcriminalization, free speech zones—these are all symptoms of the emerging police state in America. A GOVERNMENT OF WOLVES paints a chilling portrait of a nation in the final stages of transformation into outright authoritarianism, whose citizens have become little more than a nation of suspects to be cowed, corralled, and controlled. Pulling from his extensive knowledge of constitutional law, history, and futuristic films, John W. Whitehead helps readers navigate this treacherous terrain and provides them with a blueprint for hopefully finding their way back to freedom.

Tyranny Comes Home

Tyranny Comes Home PDF Author: Christopher J. Coyne
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503605280
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book Here

Book Description
Many Americans believe that foreign military intervention is central to protecting our domestic freedoms. But Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall urge engaged citizens to think again. Overseas, our government takes actions in the name of defense that would not be permissible within national borders. Emboldened by the relative weakness of governance abroad, the U.S. government is able to experiment with a broader range of social controls. Under certain conditions, these policies, tactics, and technologies are then re-imported to America, changing the national landscape and increasing the extent to which we live in a police state. Coyne and Hall examine this pattern—which they dub "the boomerang effect"—considering a variety of rich cases that include the rise of state surveillance, the militarization of domestic law enforcement, the expanding use of drones, and torture in U.S. prisons. Synthesizing research and applying an economic lens, they develop a generalizable theory to predict and explain a startling trend. Tyranny Comes Home unveils a new aspect of the symbiotic relationship between foreign interventions and domestic politics. It gives us alarming insight into incidents like the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri and the Snowden case—which tell a common story about contemporary foreign policy and its impact on our civil liberties.

To Protect and Serve

To Protect and Serve PDF Author: Norm Stamper
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568585411
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
The police in America belong to the people -- not the other way around. Yet millions of Americans experience their cops as racist, brutal, and trigger-happy: an overly aggressive, militarized enemy of the people. For their part, today's officers feel they are under siege -- misunderstood, unfairly criticized, and scapegoated for society's ills. Is there a fix? Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper believes there is. Policing is in crisis. The last decade has witnessed a vast increase in police aggression, misconduct, and militarization, along with a corresponding reduction in transparency and accountability. It is not just noticeable in African American and other minority communities -- where there have been a series of high-profile tragedies -- but in towns and cities across the country. Racism -- from raw, individualized versions to insidious systemic examples -- appears to be on the rise in our police departments. Overall, our police officers have grown more and more alienated from the people they've been hired to serve. In To Protect and Serve, Stamper delivers a revolutionary new model for American law enforcement: the community-based police department. It calls for fundamental changes in the federal government's role in local policing as well as citizen participation in all aspects of police operations: policymaking, program development, crime fighting and service delivery, entry-level and ongoing education and training, oversight of police conduct, and -- especially relevant to today's challenges -- joint community-police crisis management. Nothing will ever change until the system itself is radically restructured, and here Stamper shows us how.

Drug Warrior

Drug Warrior PDF Author: Jack Riley
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 1602865841
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
DEA Agent Jack Riley, "[Chicago's] most famous federal agent since the days of The Untouchables" (-Rolling Stone)tells the inside story of his 30-year hunt for the drug kingpin known as El Chapo, and reveals the true causes of the American opioid epidemic. Jack Riley, grandson of a Chicago cop known for using his fists, was born to be a drug warrior. Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, who farmed marijuana and opium poppies as a teenager in Mexico, was born to be a drug lord. Their worlds collided when Riley, a career special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, was promoted to lead the fight against Chapo on the border at El Paso. Drug Warrior is the story of Riley's decades-long hunt for the world's most wanted drug lord, set against the rise of modern international drug trafficking, and America's spiraling opioid epidemic. Jack Riley started his career as an undercover street agent in Chicago busting small-time dealers. By the time he worked his way up to second in command of the DEA-a post few field agents ever reach-he had overseen every major mission to capture foreign drug kingpins since the 1990s, and had witnessed first-hand how El Chapo changed the game. As brilliant as he was lethal, Chapo not only decimated his competition, he foresaw Americans' dependence on opioids and heroin, and manipulated supply to increase demand. Riley's story culminates as he and the DEA win their greatest victory-the capture and extradition of his long-time nemesis-and Chapo faces his darkest fear: U.S. justice. A riveting memoir of life inside the drug wars, and a never-before-seen glimpse of the inner-workings of the DEA, Drug Warrior is a critical examination of how America's opioid crisis came to be, and the extraordinary people fighting it.

Into the Kill Zone

Into the Kill Zone PDF Author: David Klinger
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118429761
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
What's it like to have the legal sanction to shoot and kill? This compelling and often startling book answers this, and many other questions about the oft-times violent world inhabited by our nation's police officers. Written by a cop-turned university professor who interviewed scores of officers who have shot people in the course of their duties, Into the Kill Zone presents firsthand accounts of the role that deadly force plays in American police work. This brilliantly written book tells how novice officers are trained to think about and use the power they have over life and death, explains how cops live with the awesome responsibility that comes from the barrels of their guns, reports how officers often hold their fire when they clearly could have shot, presents hair-raising accounts of what it's like to be involved in shoot-outs, and details how shooting someone affects officers who pull the trigger. From academy training to post-shooting reactions, this book tells the compelling story of the role that extreme violence plays in the lives of America's cops.

Edge of the Knife

Edge of the Knife PDF Author: Paul Chevigny
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781565841840
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines police violence in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, discussing its possible causes and some deterrents

Badges without Borders

Badges without Borders PDF Author: Stuart Schrader
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520968336
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the Cold War through today, the U.S. has quietly assisted dozens of regimes around the world in suppressing civil unrest and securing the conditions for the smooth operation of capitalism. Casting a new light on American empire, Badges Without Borders shows, for the first time, that the very same people charged with global counterinsurgency also militarized American policing at home. In this groundbreaking exposé, Stuart Schrader shows how the United States projected imperial power overseas through police training and technical assistance—and how this effort reverberated to shape the policing of city streets at home. Examining diverse records, from recently declassified national security and intelligence materials to police textbooks and professional magazines, Schrader reveals how U.S. police leaders envisioned the beat to be as wide as the globe and worked to put everyday policing at the core of the Cold War project of counterinsurgency. A “smoking gun” book, Badges without Borders offers a new account of the War on Crime, “law and order” politics, and global counterinsurgency, revealing the connections between foreign and domestic racial control.