Before the Badge: How Academy Training Shapes Police Violence
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An inside look at how police officers are trained to perpetuate state violence Michael Brown. Philando Castile. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. As the names of those killed by the police became cemented into public memory, the American public took to the streets in unprecedented numbers to mourn, organize, and demand changes to the current system of policing. In response, police departments across the country committed themselves to change, pledging to hire more women and people of color, incorporate diversity training, and instruct officers to verbally de-escalate interactions with the public. These reform efforts tend to rely on a "bad apple" argument, focusing the nature and scope of the problem on the behavior of specific individuals and rarely considering the broader organizational process that determines who is allowed to patrol the public and how they learn to do their jobs. In Before the Badge, Samantha J. Simon provides a firsthand look into how police officers are selected and trained, describing every stage of the process, including recruitment, classroom instruction, and tactical training. Simon spent a year at police academies participating in the training alongside cadets, giving her a visceral, hands-on understanding of how police training operates. Using rich and detailed examples, she reveals that the process does more than test a cadet's physical or intellectual abilities. Instead, it socializes cadets into a system of state violence. As training progresses, cadets are expected to see themselves as warriors and to view Black and Latino/a members of the public as their enemies. Cadets who cannot or will not uphold this approach end up washing out. In Before the Badge, Simon explains how this training creates a context in which patterns of police violence persist and implores readers to re-envision the future of policing in the United States.
The Danger Imperative: Violence, Death, and the Soul of Policing
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Policing is violent. And its violence is not distributed equally: stark racial disparities persist despite decades of efforts to address them. Amid public outcry and an ongoing crisis of police legitimacy, there is pressing need to understand not only how police perceive and use violence but also why. With unprecedented access to three police departments and drawing on more than 100 interviews and 1,000 hours on patrol, The Danger Imperative provides vital insight into how police culture shapes officers' perception and practice of violence. From the front seat of a patrol car, it shows how the institution of policing reinforces a cultural preoccupation with violence through academy training, departmental routines, powerful symbols, and officers' street-level behavior. This violence-centric culture makes no explicit mention of race, relying on the colorblind language of "threat" and "officer safety." Nonetheless, existing patterns of systemic disadvantage funnel police hyperfocused on survival into poor minority neighborhoods. Without requiring individual bigotry, this combination of social structure, culture, and behavior perpetuates enduring inequalities in police violence. A trailblazing, on-the-ground account of modern policing, this book shows that violence is the logical consequence of an institutional culture that privileges officer survival over public safety.
Police Use of Force
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This volume provides a comprehensive examination and analysis of the concepts and issues related to police use of force, particularly the use of deadly force with a firearm, from multi-faceted and international perspectives. It explores innovative training, protocols, policies, tactical options for de-escalation, and recommendations for the restriction of the use of force by law enforcement officers in an effort to reduce the likelihood of injury to police, the pubic and criminal suspects. Additionally, it outlines tactics for effective crowd control at demonstrations and during riots. This book specifically delineates practical policy implications suggested from highly recognized professionals with extensive experience in policing, training and related research. It is ideal for graduate and upper level undergraduate students, scholars, academics, researchers, government and community leaders, and criminal justice and law enforcement administrators and policy makers.
Policing in the United States
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The Cambridge Handbook of Policing in the United States provides a comprehensive collection of essays on police and policing, written by leading experts in political theory, sociology, criminology, economics, law, public health, and critical theory. It unveils a range of experiences - from the police chief of a major metropolitan force to ordinary people targeted for policing on the street - and asks important questions about whether and why we need the police, before analyzing the law of policing, police use of force, and police violence, paying particular attention to the issue of discrimination against marginalized and vulnerable communities at the blunt end of police interference. The book also discusses technological innovations and proposals for reform. Written in accessible language, this interdisciplinary work will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding the present and future of policing in the United States.
Protect, Serve, and Deport: The Rise of Policing as Immigration Enforcement
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Protect, Serve, and Deport exposes the on-the-ground workings of local immigration enforcement in Nashville, Tennessee. Between 2007 and 2012, Nashville's local jail participated in an immigration enforcement program called 287(g), which turned jail employees into immigration officers who identified over ten thousand removable immigrants for deportation. The vast majority of those identified for removal were not serious criminals, but Latino residents arrested by local police for minor violations. Protect, Serve, and Deport explains how local politics, state laws, institutional policies, and police practices work together to deliver immigrants into an expanding federal deportation system, conveying powerful messages about race, citizenship, and belonging.
