Police Social

American culture loves Blackness. From music and fashion to activism and language, Black culture constantly achieves worldwide influence. Yet, when it comes to who is allowed to thrive from Black hipness, the pioneers are usually left behind as Black aesthetics are converted into mainstream success - and White profit. Weaving together narrative, scholarship, and critique, Lauren Michele Jackson reveals why cultural appropriation - something that's become embedded in our daily lives - deserves serious attention.

The murder of George Floyd sparked global outrage. At the center of the conflict and the controversy, Keith Ellison grappled with the means of bringing justice for Floyd and his family. Now, in this riveting account of the Derek Chauvin trial, Ellison takes the listener down the path his prosecutors took, offering different breakthroughs and revelations for a defining, generational moment of racial reckoning and social justice understanding.

When Baltimore Police Sergeant Wayne Jenkins said he had a monster, he meant he had found a big-time drug dealer - one who he wanted to rob. This is the story of Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a super group of dirty detectives who exploited some of America’s greatest problems: guns, drugs, toxic masculinity, and hypersegregation. In the upside-down world of the GTTF, cops were robbers and drug dealers were the perfect victims, because no one believed them.

The gun is antiquated technology, and it is responsible for tens of thousands of senseless killings every year. Humanity has accepted that killing is an unavoidable fact of life - but Rick Smith argues that it doesn’t need to be this way and that we have the means to make the bullet obsolete in our lifetime. Smith is the founder of TASER (now Axon), and in this book, he demonstrates that change won't come by way of stricter gun control laws. No, what holds us back is our skepticism about new technologies and their potential.

At three o'clock in the morning, Emergency receives a call. 'This is Zara Fanshawe. Always lost and never found.' An hour later, the wayward celebrity's Rolls Royce Phantom is found abandoned in dingy Becket Street. The paparazzi go wild. For some reason, news of Zara's disappearance prompts homeless woman Lena Wójcik to search the camps, nervously, for the bad-tempered vagrant known as 'Waitrose', a familiar sight in Oxford pushing his trolley of possessions. But he's nowhere to be found either.

Aviva Chomsky dismantles 21 of the most widespread and pernicious myths and beliefs about immigrants and immigration in this incisive book. They Take Our Jobs! challenges the underlying assumptions that fuel misinformed claims about immigrants, radically altering our notions of citizenship, discrimination, and US history. With fresh material including a new introduction and revised timeline, this expanded edition is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand how these myths are used to promote aggressive anti-immigrant policies.

Police dogs can do everything from tracking criminals to helping prevent riots. With its keen sense of smell and good hearing, a police dog is invaluable to its human partner. Learn more about these amazing animals, including how they are chosen, the training they go through, and the missions they complete.

The president of the National Bar Association and one of the most distinguished civil rights attorneys working today reflects on the landmark cases he has battled - including representing Trayvon Martin’s family - and offers a disturbing look at how the justice system is used to promote injustice in this memoir and clarion call as shocking and important as the best sellers Just Mercy and Slavery by Another Name and Ava DuVernay’s film 13th.

Over his decade and a half with the New York Police Department, Edwin Raymond consistently exposed the dark underbelly of modern policing, becoming the highest-ranking whistleblower in the history of the force and one of the country’s leading voices against police injustice. Offering a rare, often shocking view of American policing, An Inconvenient Cop pulls back the curtain on the many flaws woven into the NYPD’s training, data, and practices, which have since been repackaged and repurposed by police departments across the country.

Acclaimed journalist Randall Sullivan follows Russell Poole, a highly decorated LAPD detective who in 1997 was called to investigate a controversial cop-on-cop shooting, eventually to discover that the officer killed was tied to Marion “Suge” Knight’s notorious gangsta rap label, Death Row Records. During his investigation, Poole came to realize that a growing cadre of black officers were allied not only with Death Row, but with the murderous Bloods street gang. And incredibly, Poole began to uncover evidence that at least some of these “gangsta cops” may have been involved in the murders of rap superstars Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur.

Richard Gergel’s Unexampled Courage details the impact of the blinding of Sergeant Woodard on the racial awakening of President Truman and Judge Waring and traces their influential roles in changing the course of America’s civil rights history.

Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn’t have a realistic water gun. She said she feared for his safety, that police tend to think of little Black boys as older and less innocent than they really are. In this immersive audiobook adaptation—with wall-to-wall sound design, an expansive music soundtrack, and full-cast narration including the author and his son—Bell uses his sharp humor to examine how The Talk shaped intimate and public moments from childhood to adulthood.

American policing is in crisis. The last decade witnessed a vast increase in police aggression, misconduct, and militarization, along with a corresponding reduction in transparency and accountability. Nowhere is this more noticeable and painful than in African American and other ethnic minority communities. Racism - from raw, individualized versions to insidious systemic examples - appears to be on the rise in our police departments.

There are many publications out there written by ex-police officers on how to join the police, say the right things in an interview, how to pass exams, and of course the memoirs of those who survived their 30 years of service in various roles.

How much do you really know about the FBI? Do you know who the FBI is? Do you know what the FBI does? This manual debunks FBI myths and misconceptions for those who read, watch, and write crime dramas about the FBI or have always wanted to be a Special Agent. Like most people, you've probably learned about the FBI from popular culture - reading books and watching TV shows and movies, along with, of course, the news. You might be surprised to learn that a lot of what you've been reading and watching is inaccurate.

Daniel Reinhardt spent 24 years as a police officer near Cleveland, Ohio. He was long unaware of the ways the culture of the police department was shaping him, but gradually, through his own experiences as a police officer and through the mentorship of Black Christians in his life, his eyes were opened to a difficult truth: police brutality against racial minorities was endemic to the culture of the system itself. In Rethinking the Police, Reinhardt lays out a history of policing in the United States, showing how it developed a culture of dehumanization, systemic racism, and brutality.

Come along on a visit to the police station, including descriptions of the things and people found there.

A former police officer shares his investigative journey into anarchy, revealing unpopular truths that many people find to be discomforting. The author spent his adult life with a particular view of anarchism. After retiring from law enforcement, he became interested in philosophy, morality, reason, logic, and being the best darn himself that he could build. This included relational, financial and philosophical arenas.

Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today.

On the last Friday evening of the summer of 2013, five shots rang out in the parking lot of a new Boys & Girls Club in a part of northeast Denver known as the Holly. Long a destination for African American families fleeing the Jim Crow South, the Holly had become an “invisible city” within a historically white metropolis. While shootings weren’t uncommon, the identity of the shooter that night came as a shock.