This book looks at the impact of two major police reform movements on the social mobility of ethnic groups, the distribution of political power, the struggle for status in urban America, and police professionalism are explored. Social and political pressures which led to waves of police reform in 1890 to 1930 and again about 1940 to 1970 not only changed the average city police department into a centralized, trained group of professionals, but also changed the character of the American city. Before 1890, the police department was an adjunct of the political machine. Ward bosses hired and fired; therefore, police loyalty was to the neighborhood. Most patrol jobs were political rewards and went to immigrants or sons of immigrants from the immediate area. Laws were enforced on an ethnic basis. The cost of this community control was widespread corruption and abuse. The first wave of reform began about 1890 when middle-class clergymen, business leaders, and social reformers began a move to centralize the police and remove political appointments. A military model was adopted and the phrase 'war on crime' coined. By 1930 most major police departments had adopted the centralized beat approach and a civil service system was beginning. A second wave of reform came from within police departments themselves. Greater training, greater professionalism, and greater status for police were the cornerstones of this wave. The emergence of police unions, which became major political power blocs, increased the force of the movement. A third reform started tentatively in the late 1960s. This movement calls for return of police accountability to the neighborhoods. To date, it has made little headway because police commissioners have incorporated its protests into the existing police department structure through community relations boards, community grievance procedures, and other institutionalized devices.

This book looks at the impact of two major police reform movements on the social mobility of ethnic groups, the distribution of political power, the struggle for status in urban America, and police professionalism are explored. Social and political pressures which led to waves of police reform in 1890 to 1930 and again about 1940 to 1970 not only changed the average city police department into a centralized, trained group of professionals, but also changed the character of the American city. Before 1890, the police department was an adjunct of the political machine. Ward bosses hired and fired; therefore, police loyalty was to the neighborhood. Most patrol jobs were political rewards and went to immigrants or sons of immigrants from the immediate area. Laws were enforced on an ethnic basis. The cost of this community control was widespread corruption and abuse. The first wave of reform began about 1890 when middle-class clergymen, business leaders, and social reformers began a move to centralize the police and remove political appointments. A military model was adopted and the phrase 'war on crime' coined. By 1930 most major police departments had adopted the centralized beat approach and a civil service system was beginning. A second wave of reform came from within police departments themselves. Greater training, greater professionalism, and greater status for police were the cornerstones of this wave. The emergence of police unions, which became major political power blocs, increased the force of the movement. A third reform started tentatively in the late 1960s. This movement calls for return of police accountability to the neighborhoods. To date, it has made little headway because police commissioners have incorporated its protests into the existing police department structure through community relations boards, community grievance procedures, and other institutionalized devices.

This landmark 1973 study of city policemen portrays in detail work "on the street,"the way police regard their work, the way they deal day-by-day with suspects and criminals, with colleague and superiors, and with the general public. Jonathan Rubinstein spent over a year with the Philadelphia police force, riding second man in patrol cars on all shifts, and from this experience he describes every aspects of a policeman's working life: his conception of the place he polices; his sense of territory; the extent of his knowledge of the people he polices; his technique for surveillance of his area; his use of the tools of the trade to control people; his complicated relationships with his coworkers and his sergeant, who dominates his working life. And, of course, he deals extensively with the eternal problems of corruption and brutality. Written with great insight and without pro- or anti-police bias, City Police is rich in illustrative incidents and serves as an excellent model for future studies of police work.

A disillusioned newspaper reporter turned private detective, Ray Dudgeon isn't trying to save the world. He just wants to do an honest job, and do it well. But when doing an honest job threatens society's most powerful and corrupt, Ray's odds for survival make for a sucker's bet. . . . While working on a movie in Chicago, Hollywood locations manager Bob Loniski saw something he shouldn't have. Now he's a prosecution witness against a suspected member of the Chicago Outfit. Petrified, he comes to Ray for protection. Ray's mob contacts insist that they have no interest in Loniski, so he takes the bodyguard gig. Then people start dying and everything goes to hell. Ray's investigation leads to a stash of blackmail files involving the sex trade, Washington political corruption, and a deadly power struggle among Chicago's organized crime bosses—setting the FBI, the Chicago police, and the mob on his tail. He now holds evidence against top-ranking cops and politicians . . . but with the line between good and bad blurring, he doesn't know who he can trust. If he does the right thing, Ray is sure to die. But if he doesn't, how can he live with himself? From the back alleys of Chicago to the man-sions of Beverly Hills to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., Sean Chercover's Big City, Bad Blood propels readers relentlessly forward on a bullet-fast, adrenaline-pumping ride they will not soon forget.

The massive uprising following the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020--by some estimates the largest protests in US history--thrust the argument to defund the police to the forefront of international politics. It also made The End of Policing a bestseller and Alex Vitale, its author, a leading figure in the urgent public discussion over police and racial justice. As the writer Rachel Kushner put it in an article called "Things I Can't Live Without", this book explains that "unfortunately, no increased diversity on police forces, nor body cameras, nor better training, has made any seeming difference" in reducing police killings and abuse. "We need to restructure our society and put resources into communities themselves, an argument Alex Vitale makes very persuasively." The problem, Vitale demonstrates, is policing itself-the dramatic expansion of the police role over the last forty years. Drawing on first-hand research from across the globe, The End of Policing describes how the implementation of alternatives to policing, like drug legalization, regulation, and harm reduction instead of the policing of drugs, has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice. This edition includes a new introduction that takes stock of the renewed movement to challenge police impunity and shows how we move forward, evaluating protest, policy, and the political situation.

Whatever your position is on Black Lives Matter, defunding the police, and equity in law enforcement, former police chief Carmen Best shares the leadership lessons she learned as the first Black woman to lead the Seattle Police Department—a personal insider story that will challenge your assumptions on how to move the country forward. Chief Carmen Best has spent the last 28 years as a member of a big-city police force, an institution where minorities and women have historically found it especially difficult to succeed. She defied the odds and became the first Black woman to lead the Seattle Police Department. During her tenure, she was successful in bringing significantly more diversity to the force. However, when the city council cut her budget amid months of protests against police violence, she had no choice but to step aside. Without the city’s support, she felt she wouldn’t be able to continue changing the status quo of the police force from within. Throughout her career, Chief Best has learned lessons that those coming up behind her can benefit from. In this book, she will use her story to share those urgent lessons. Readers will read about: How Chief Best grew up to believe in the change she set out to create. Her early days in the police force, including lessons from the academy and her time on patrol. How she progressed in her career within a primarily white law enforcement culture and the events that led to her becoming Chief. How she built her team and overcame the politics involved in her high-level position until the call for defunding came. Carmen Best teaches readers the core qualities and mindset to persevere and rise through the ranks, even within a workplace whose culture and leadership must be challenged, and policies changed on the way to achieving that vision. Her motivating story serves as a master class in guiding principles for anyone striving to serve their community and rise to the highest echelon of success.

This elegantly written book describes the changes in the perception and experience of the night in three great European cities: Paris, Berlin and London. The lighting up of the European city by gas and electricity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought about a new relationship with the night, in respect of both work and pleasure. Nights in the Big City explores this new awareness of the city in all its ramifications. Joachim Schlor has spent his days sifting through countless police and church archives, and first-hand accounts, and his nights exploring the highways and byways of these three great capitals. Illustrated with haunting and evocative photographs by, among others, Brandt and Kertesz, and filled with contemporary literary references, Nights in the Big City has already been acclaimed in the German press as a milestone in the cultural history of the city. " Schlor] is erudite, and his literary style is alluring." Architect's Journal"

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.

Here is the 10th Anniversary Edition of the first full-scale biography of Frank Rizzo, one of the most beloved and feared public figures in urban American history. Sweeping and finely detailed, this is a work of scholarship that reads like a novel, packed with colorful new details and revealing new stories about a man whose life demonstrated how the force of personality can affect history.

Discusses many of the ways that New York City dropped its crime rate between the years of 1991 and 2000.