Ways we can make our society more civil, our police more humane, our population more responsible. Sociology. Cuts closer to the bone of truth about the police in America than any book I have read.--NY Times Book Review

Exploring the basic meaning of police power and how it must be redefined. My ultimate objective is uncovering the dynamics of the police-citizen contact, including the emotional nature of not only the police officer but also the private citizen, and probing those wounds of discontent, frustration, and anger. We have to do it now. This is the year 2021, and we have to realize that nothing has changed. We see the failings of the police-citizen contact with no relief in sight. I hope to have an impact on all who read these practical insights that I have gained over forty-five years. I will help you recognize that it is necessary for the private citizens in the community to accept the fact that the police have a very difficult job. The police have to intercede in the citizens' personal issues of domestic violence, the acts of gangs and drugs that create victims, and other criminal acts in general that make the community feel unsafe. However, the demeanor in which an officer responds to these issues must be taught and controlled. We have seen that there is a cost to neglecting to teach the police self-reliance. Police officers' sense of self-reliance must become a foundation of police training. Just as we teach our children how to get dressed, use a fork properly, and drive a car, the police must be taught to be prepared beyond reading a book, self-defense, and shooting a pistol. There is a necessity for the police to not only prepare for resistance, defiance, and physical attacks but also to teach, guide, reinforce, and provide constant remedial training on the recognition and control of their reactions to their emotions. This cannot be a basic training subject; it must be an occupational necessity with daily reminders of advice, guidance, and support. It must also be recognized that it is not just an individual responsibility to work at such a complex nature of human reaction to emotions but a team effort. It begins at the top with recognition, education, and guidance. It must filter down with complete support for the man and woman wearing the badge and facing the onslaught of verbal attacks of overzealousness, callousness, and even racism at a time that emotions are strained and unpredictable. Self-reliance is only up to you. It creates your future and will reflect your success. My motivation has been to make clear that the small components in law enforcement are actually important. Failure to acknowledge their importance creates a sequence of events that perpetuate a lack of emotional control at a time that control is most important. Hopefully, this information will help in understanding the root of our failure to deal with our reactions to our emotions. This book is a must-have practical reference for both the police and the public alike.

The Law of the Police, Second Edition provides materials and analysis for law school classes on policing and the law. It offers a resource for students and others seeking to understand and evaluate how American law governs police interactions with the public. The book provides primary materials, including cases, statutes, and departmental policies, and commentary and questions designed to help readers explore policing practices; the law that governs them; and the law’s consequences for the costs, benefits, fairness, and accountability of policing. Among other issues, the notes and questions encourage readers to consider the form and content of the law; how it might change; who is making it; and how the law affects policing. Part I introduces local policing—its history, its goals, and its problems; Part II considers the law that regulates criminal investigations; Part III addresses the law that governs street policing; and Part IV looks at policing’s legal remedies and reforms. New to the Second Edition: New sections and materials on no-knock warrants, facial recognition technology, state regulation of pedestrian stops, alternatives to police-initiated traffic stops, state laws granting arrest authority, retaliatory arrest claims, state qualified immunity reform, private civil settlements for police reform, and community strategies to limit the scope of policing. New notes and materials on the role of prosecutors in shaping police conduct, the Second Amendment, the use of race in policing, policing homelessness, the impact of police unions and collective bargaining, and the Biden Administration’s pattern-or-practice suits. A recent federal indictment charging an officer with constitutionally excessive force. Updates to laws and notes to reflect new data, laws, and criminological and legal research. Additional examples of controversial police encounters to illustrate legal issues and concepts. Benefits for instructors and students: Chapters and notes designed to allow flexibility—allow professors to assign materials selectively according to the needs of the course. As a result, the casebook can serve as materials for a range of lecture and discussion-based courses on the law regulating police conduct; on legal remedies and reforms for problems in policing; or on more specific topics, such as the use of force or constitutional rules governing police conduct. Descriptions of controversial policing encounters and links to and discussion of videos of such incidents—help students practice applying the law, consider its policy implications, and gain awareness of contemporary controversies on policing. Diverse primary materials, including federal and state cases and statutes and police department policies—provide a broad exposure to the types of law that govern public policing. Photos, links to videos, protest art, and charts—pique student interest, enable richer discussions, and provide additional context for legal materials in the book. Integration of scholarly work on policing, on the law, and on the impact of police practices—enables students to make more sophisticated assessments of the law. Notes and questions—designed to (a) highlight alternative strategies lawyers might use to change the law, and (b) raise comparative institutional questions about who is best suited to regulate the police. Discussion of legal topics relevant to contemporary discussions of policing—studied nowhere else in the law school curriculum.

Policing the Media is an investigation into one of the paradoxes of the mass-mediated age. Issues, events, and people that we "see" most on our television screens are often those that we understand the least. David Perlmutter examined this issue as it relates to one of the most frequently portrayed groups of people on television: police officers. Policing the Media is a report on the ethnography of a police department, derived from the author′s experience riding on patrol with officers and joining the department as a reserve policeman. Drawing upon interviews, personal observations, and the author′s black-and-white photographs of cops and the "clients," Perlmutter describes the lives and philosophies of street patrol officers. He finds that cops hold ambiguous attitudes toward their television comrades, for much of TV copland is fantastic and preposterous. Even those programs that boast gritty realism little resemble actual police work. Moreover, the officers perceive that the public′s attitudes toward law enforcement and crime are directly (and largely nefariously) influenced by mass media. This in turn, he suggests, influences the way that they themselves behave and "perform" on the street, and that unreal and surreal expectations of them are propagated by television cop shows. This cycle of perceptual influence may itself profoundly impact the contemporary criminal justice system, on the street, in the courts, and in the hearts and minds of ordinary people.

A provocative account of policing our turbulent democracy from a political philosopher who spent two decades as a police officer.

Are police forces agents of the state or of society? How do different police forces maintain order? How does the nature of a country's political system affect the state's reaction to disorder? This study identifies trends in public-order policing across a broad sample of seven countries: Britain, Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic, the United States of America, Israel, South Africa and China. It explains why the handling of disorder has become a controversial and topical issue in different parts of the world. Each chapter provides a range of data on the size, make-up and cost of the police and follows a common format in analysing the place of the police at the junction of state-society relations.