Franklin Zimring compiles data from federal records, crowdsourced research, and investigative journalism to provide a comprehensive, fact-based picture of how, when, where, and why police use deadly ...force. He offers prescriptions for how federal, state, and local governments could reduce killings at minimum cost without risking officers' lives.
Whenever police officers come into contact with citizens there is a chance that the encounter will digress to one in which force is used on a suspect. Fortunately, most police activities do not ...involve the use of force. But those that do reflect important patterns of interaction between the officer and the citizen. This book examines those patterns. It begins with a brief survey of prior research, and then goes on to present data and findings. Among the data are the force factor applied - that is, the level of force used relative to suspect resistance - and data on the sequential order of incidents of force. The authors also examine police use of force from the suspect's perspective. In analyzing this data they put forward a conceptual framework, the Authority Maintenance Theory, for examining and assessing police use of force.
Race and Policing in America is about relations between police and citizens, with a focus on racial differences. It utilizes both the authors' own research and other studies to examine Americans' ...opinions, preferences, and personal experiences regarding the police. Guided by group-position theory and using both existing studies and the authors' own quantitative and qualitative data (from a nationally representative survey of whites, blacks, and Hispanics), this book examines the roles of personal experience, knowledge of others' experiences (vicarious experience), mass media reporting on the police, and neighborhood conditions (including crime and socioeconomic disadvantage) in structuring citizen views in four major areas: overall satisfaction with police in one's city and neighborhood, perceptions of several types of police misconduct, perceptions of police racial bias and discrimination, and evaluations of and support for a large number of reforms in policing.
"Police Matters moves beyond the city to examine the intertwined nature of police and caste in the Tamil countryside. Radha Kumar argues that the colonial police acted as tools of the state in ...deploying rigid notions of caste, refashioning rural identities in a process that has cast long postcolonial shadows. Kumar draws on unexplored police archives to enter the dusty streets and market squares where local constables walked, following their gaze and observing their actions towards potential subversives. Station records present a textured view of ordinary interactions between police and society, showing that state coercion was not only exceptional and spectacular; it was also subtle and continuous, woven into everyday life. The colonial police categorized Indian subjects based on caste to ensure the security of agriculture and trade, and thus the smooth running of the economy. Among policemen and among the objects of their coercive gaze, caste became a particularly salient form of identity in the politics of public spaces. Police Matters demonstrates that, without doubt, modern caste politics have both been shaped by, and shaped, state policing. Thanks to generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, through The Sustainable History Monograph Pilot, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellopen.org) and other repositories."
How many times have you read a news story about someone being shot by the police while reaching for their waistband? Or about an officer who testified at trial that the person he shot during a ...physical struggle had superhuman strength or a thousand-yard stare in his eyes? And how many times have you watched a police chief or sheriff during a press conference invoke the "21-foot rule" to justify their officer's killing of a mentally ill person with a knife?These and a host of other verbal devices are what author William Harmening calls the "deadly force script." It is a strategy that has been employed with great success by the law enforcement community in the decades following the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Tennessee v. Garner (1985), the case that for the first time placed significant restrictions on a police officer's use of deadly force. It is a strategy that has gone relatively unnoticed by the general public, the media, elected prosecutors, and the judges and juries who must rule on the reasonableness of an officer's actions.Now, perhaps for the very first time, William Harmening pulls back the veil to expose the deadly force script for all to see. He does this in a unique and informative way by presenting actual case studies where the script was employed following a deadly police encounter, typically right under the unsuspecting noses of local media and the prosecutor tasked with deciding whether to criminally charge the officers involved. Anyone with an interest in the twin ideals of an equitable system of justice and a professional and bias-free police force will find this book both fascinating and enlightening.
Policing China Scoggins, Suzanne E
2021, 2021-06-15
eBook
In Policing China, Suzanne E. Scoggins delves into the paradox of China's self-projection of a strong security state while having a weak police bureaucracy. Assessing the problems of resources, ...enforcement, and oversight that beset the police, outside of cracking down on political protests, Scoggins finds that the central government and the Ministry of Public Security have prioritized "stability maintenance" (weiwen) to the detriment of nearly every aspect of policing. The result, she argues, is a hollowed out and ineffective police force that struggles to deal with everyday crime. Using interviews with police officers up and down the hierarchy, as well as station data, news reports, and social media postings, Scoggins probes the challenges faced by ground-level officers and their superiors at the Ministry of Public Security as they attempt to do their jobs in the face of funding limitations, reform challenges, and structural issues. Policing China concludes that despite the social control exerted by China's powerful bureaucracies, security failures at the street level have undermined Chinese citizens' trust in the legitimacy of the police and the capabilities of the state.
Despite constant calls for reform, policing in the United States and Britain has changed little over the past thirty years. In Policing Contingencies, Peter K. Manning draws on decades of fieldwork ...to investigate how law enforcement works on the ground and in the symbolic realm, and why most efforts to reform the way police work have failed so far. Manning begins by developing a model of policing as drama—a way of communicating various messages to the public in an effort to enforce moral boundaries. Unexpected outcomes, or contingencies, continually rewrite the plot of this drama, requiring officers to adjust accordingly. New information technologies, media scrutiny and representations, and community policing also play important roles, and Manning studies these influences in detail. He concludes that their impacts have been quite limited, because the basic structure of policing—officer assessments based on encounters during routine patrols—has remained unchanged. For policing to really change, Manning argues, its focus will need to shift to prevention. Written with precision and judiciously argued, Policing Contingencies will be of value to scholars of sociology, criminology, information technology, and cultural theory.
The State and the police are traditionally seen as closely connected phenomena. Today, however, rapid EU legal developments mean that European police forces are no longer tied to a specific national ...legal context or a specific territory in the way they used to be. Norway is not a member of the EU. Or is it? This book shows that although it lacks formal membership status, Norway has become part of almost all of the major EU police cooperation measures and agreements. Not only does this mean that foreign police forces may operate on Norwegian territory and vice versa, but in addition, a wide range of EU regulations and cooperation instruments are incorporated directly into Norwegian law. With the increased focus on international and transnational police cooperation in mind, what does it mean to be a sovereign state in Europe today? This book combines strong legal and theoretical analyses of a specific national system to show how this country is tied to and dependent on a wider international and supranational system of legal rules, technologies and concepts. This makes the book relevant not only for the Norwegian prosecution and police authorities, but also for readers outside Norway interested in exploring how and whether the police as a modern state function has changed through the implementation of international cross-border cooperation mechanisms.
In the United States, the exercise of police authority—and the public’s trust that police authority is used properly—is a recurring concern. Contemporary prescriptions for police reform hold that the ...public would trust the police more and feel a greater obligation to comply and cooperate if police-citizen interactions were marked by higher levels of procedural justice by police. In this book, Robert E. Worden and Sarah J. McLean argue that the procedural justice model of reform is a mirage. From a distance, procedural justice seems to offer relief from strained police-community relations. But a closer look at police organizations and police-citizen interactions shows that the relief offered by such reform is, in fact, illusory. A procedural justice model of policing is likely to be only loosely coupled with police practice, despite the best intentions, and improvements in procedural justice on the part of police are unlikely to result in corresponding improvements in citizens’ perceptions of procedural justice.
A critical look at the realities of community policing in South Los Angeles
The Limits of Community Policing addresses conflicts between police and communities. Luis Daniel Gascón and Aaron ...Roussell depart from traditional conceptions, arguing that community policing—popularized for decades as a racial panacea—is not the solution it seems to be.
Tracing this policy back to its origins, they focus on the Los Angeles Police Department, which first introduced community policing after the high-profile Rodney King riots. Drawing on over sixty interviews with officers, residents, and stakeholders in South LA’s “Lakeside” precinct, they show how police tactics amplified—rather than resolved—racial tensions, complicating partnership efforts, crime response and prevention, and accountability.
Gascón and Roussell shine a new light on the residents of this neighborhood to address the enduring—and frequently explosive—conflicts between police and communities. At a time when these issues have taken center stage, this volume offers a critical understanding of how community policing really works.
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