Contemporary Policing: Controversies, Challenges, and Solutions presents a broad range of up-to-date articles on new policing strategies, promising approaches to the problem of crime, challenges facing the police from within and outside the organization, policing innovations, and issues of police deviance and ethics.
Editors Quint C. Thurman and Jihong Zhao have chosen key selections from notable scholars such as Lawrence W. Sherman, Samuel Walker, Ronald V. Clarke, former Minneapolis police chief Anthony Bouza, and others to examine how policing has responded to a myriad of challenges since the late 1990s--including crime and disorder, racial profiling, police use of deadly force, gangs, corruption, drug abuse, and sexual misconduct. The article topics range from problem-solving and problem-oriented criminal investigations to CompStat and geographic profiling.

Contains the 'Golden Rules' of Police Leadership. In Police Leadership in the Twenty-first Century the editors bring together a collection of authoritative and innovative contributions to show that: Leadership is less of a mystery than is often supposed; Much mainstream leadership theory can be adapted to police leadership; The qualities required can be developed by education and training; There are certain 'Golden Rules' for police leaders. 'This is an important and timely book, not only because of the depth and breadth of the coverage of the issues but because it addresses the practical challenge of leadership at all levels . . . When the challenges come . . . an understanding of the underpinning principles and conflicting values of policing is vital for organizational survival': John Grieve QPM (from the Foreword) Contributors: Robert Adlam, John Alderson, Ian Blair, Jennifer Brown, Sir Robert Bunyard, Garry Elliott, John Grieve, William C Heffernan, Seumas Miller, Terry Mitchell, Milan Pagon, Mick Palmer, Robert Panzarella, Neil Richards, Roger Scruton, and Peter Villiers. Editors: Robert Adlam was Reader in the National Police Leadership Faculty at Bramshill and Peter Villiers Head of Human Rights. Through their work at the Police Staff College and beyond, they gained a unique insight into the challenges and demands of police leadership and from the experience and beliefs of an extensive range of experts, including the contributors to this volume. They have been involved in leadership development programmes for senior officers from police forces in the United Kingdom and abroad, including nations seeking to join the European Community. This book is based on that work.

In The Cell, John Miller, an award-winning journalist and coanchor of ABC's 20/20, along with veteran reporter Michael Stone and Chris Mitchell, takes readers back more than 10 years to the birth of the terrorist cell that later metastasized into al Qaeda's New York operation. This remarkable book offers a firsthand account of what it is to be a police officer, an FBI agent or a reporter obsessed with a case few people will take seriously. It contains a first-person account of Miller's face-to-face meeting with bin Laden and provides the first full-length treatment to piece together what led up to the events of 9/11, ultimately delivering the disturbing answer to the question: Why, with all the information the intelligence community had, was no one able to stop the 9/11 attacks?

Policing in a capitalist economy is run on both state and private levels. Much existing literature on private policing assumes that the private sector is oriented almost exclusively towards loss prevention, and does not fulfil a crime-control function. In this carefully researched study, George Rigakos considers the increasingly important role of the 'parapolice' in the maintenance of social order. He argues that for-profit policing companies adopt many of the tactics and functions of the public police, and are less distinguishable from the latter than has been previously assumed in the criminological literature.

Rigakos conducted a detailed ethnographic and statistical case study of Intelligarde International - a well-known Canadian security firm - and uses his results to investigate the following: How are discipline and surveillance achieved organizationally and commodified as 'product'? How do security agents themselves, and those they police, resist social control?

This work offers wide-ranging theoretical implications, drawing on Foucauldian concepts such as risk, surveillance, and governmentality, and on Marxian formulations of commodity and aesthetic production. The first criminological ethnography of a contract security firm in Canada, this book will be of interest to criminologists, sociologists, lawyers, and policy-makers and to any non-academic reader with an interest in the experience of those employed in the parapolice.

"No two fingerprints are alike," or so it goes. For nearly a hundred years fingerprints have represented definitive proof of individual identity in our society. We trust them to tell us who committed a crime, whether a criminal record exists, and how to resolve questions of disputed identity.

But in "Suspect Identities," Simon Cole reveals that the history of criminal identification is far murkier than we have been led to believe. Cole traces the modern system of fingerprint identification to the nineteenth-century bureaucratic state, and its desire to track and control increasingly mobile, diverse populations whose race or ethnicity made them suspect in the eyes of authorities. In an intriguing history that traverses the globe, taking us to India, Argentina, France, England, and the United States, Cole excavates the forgotten history of criminal identification--from photography to exotic anthropometric systems based on measuring body parts, from fingerprinting to DNA typing. He reveals how fingerprinting ultimately won the trust of the public and the law only after a long battle against rival identification systems.

As we rush headlong into the era of genetic identification, and as fingerprint errors are being exposed, this history uncovers the fascinating interplay of our elusive individuality, police and state power, and the quest for scientific certainty. "Suspect Identities" offers a necessary corrective to blind faith in the infallibility of technology, and a compelling look at its role in defining each of us.

From The Lone Ranger to Lonesome Dove, the Texas Rangers have been celebrated in fact and fiction for their daring exploits in bringing justice to the Old West. In Lone Star Justice, best-selling author Robert M. Utley captures the first hundred years of Ranger history, in a narrative packed with adventures worthy of Zane Grey or Larry McMurtry. The Rangers began in the 1820s as loose groups of citizen soldiers, banding together to chase Indians and Mexicans on the raw Texas frontier. Utley shows how, under the leadership of men like Jack Hays and Ben McCulloch, these fiercely independent fighters were transformed into a well-trained, cohesive team. Armed with a revolutionary new weapon, Samuel Colt's repeating revolver, they became a deadly fighting force, whether battling Comanches on the plains or storming the city of Monterey in the Mexican-American War. As the Rangers evolved from part-time warriors to full-time lawmen by 1874, they learned to face new dangers, including homicidal feuds, labor strikes, and vigilantes turned mobs. They battled train robbers, cattle thieves and other outlaws--it was Rangers, for example, who captured John Wesley Hardin, the most feared gunman in the West. Based on exhaustive research in Texas archives, this is the most authoritative history of the Texas Rangers in over half a century. It will stand alongside other classics of Western history by Robert M. Utley--a vivid portrait of the Old West and of the legendary men who kept the law on the lawless frontier.

"Readable and interesting...a fine work that offers fresh insights into how the police enforce hate crime laws."
--"Law and Politics Book Review"

"This useful and timely book deals with the ethnographic basis of hate crime."
-- "Choice"

"A very well written analysis of the process of enforcing hate crimes. Policing Hatred illuminates basic matters of policing in a democratic society-balancing victimsa rights versus the rights of suspects, the role of public ignorance and political pressure on police work, and the quite striking decency of these investigators. . . . Will be a amust reada for all social scientists interested in hate crime as well as scholars in criminal justice, law, sociology, and political science in the area of police studies."
--Peter K. Manning, Brooks Chair of Policing and Criminal Justice, College of Criminal Justice, Northeastern University

Policing Hatred explores the intersection of race and law enforcement in the controversial area of hate crime. The nationas attention has recently been focused on high-profile hate crimes such as the dragging death of James Byrd and the torture-murder of Matthew Shepard. This book calls attention to the thousands of other individuals who each year are attacked because of their race, religion, or sexual orientation. The study of hate crimes challenges common assumptions regarding perpetrators and victims: most of the accused tend to be white, while most of their victims are not.

Policing Hatred is an in-depth ethnographic study of how hate crime law works in practice, from the perspective of those enforcing it. It examines the ways in which the police handle bias crimes, and the social impact of thoseefforts. Bell exposes the power that law enforcement personnel have to influence the social environment by showing how they determine whether an incident will be charged as a bias crime.

Drawing on her unprecedented access to a police hate crime unit, Bellas work brings to life the stories of female, Black, Latino, and Asian American detectives, in addition to those of their white male counterparts. Policing Hatred also explores the impact of victimas identity on each officers handling of bias crimes and addresses how the police treat defendantsa First Amendment rights. Bellas vivid evidence from the field argues persuasively for the need to have the police diligently address even low-level offenses, such as vandalism, given their devastating cumulative effects on society.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist and author of three well-received books and many essays. He is also a death-row inmate, awaiting execution in Pennsylvania for allegedly killing a police officer in 1981. For many around the world, he is an inspired leader and the centerpiece to a revived progressive movement critical of our justice system and escalating global economic inequities. For others, he is a cold-blooded killer who has duped millions, including a vast array of Hollywood celebrities, writers, intellectuals and world political leaders, into believing that he is a political prisoner falsely imprisoned. Whatever the outlook, he and his case have become a flashpoint in the ever-raging debate over capital punishment in this country and a symbol of what is wrong with our criminal justice system.

Here, for the first time, the story of Mumia Abu-Jamal's trial and his struggle to gain his freedom has been told. Executing Justice takes us inside the courtroom where a fierce and skilled prosecutor wove a damning narrative of a young black radical who brutally murdered a young white police officer in the red-light district of Philadelphia, and then later boasted about the killing. It was, the prosecutor said, the strongest murder case he's ever tried. Daniel R. Williams, defense lawyer and chief legal strategist for Mumia Abu-Jamal, invites us to ask: why has this case engendered such enormous attention and aroused the passions of people worldwide?

Executing Justice is the story of how the death penalty really works in this country—not from the perspective of appellate judges, academics, or politicians who pontificate about the pros and cons of capital punishment, but from ground zero, within the pit of the courtroom where the war over life and death is fought. It is also a story of one of the most remarkable trials in our history. Above all, Executing Justice is an honest, at times confessional, book that seeks not to preach, but to raise questions about what we expect from our legal system and the depth of our commitment to capital punishment as a form of executing justice.

Ignited by the infamous shooting of Amadou Diallo, unarmed and innocent, at the hands of New York City police officers, journalist Jill Nelson was moved to assemble this landmark anthology on the topic of police violence and brutality: an indispensable collection of twelve "groundbreaking" (Ebony) essays by a range of contributors among them academics, historians, social critics, a congressman, and an ex-New York City police detective. This "important and valuable book" (Emerge) places a centuries-old issue in much-needed historical and intellectual context, and underscores the profound influence police brutality has had in shaping the American identity. " S]hould be read by anyone concerned about ending brutality, and should be required reading in police academies throughout America " Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Harvard Law School "Without hysteria or hyperbole, Nelson] examines the issue of police abuse in literary form." Emerge "A memorable and useful contribution to an increasingly volatile national dialogue." Publishers Weekly " N]ot only timely, but explores and exposes the sickness of this unbalanced, uncivilized Western pastime thoroughly." Chuck D of Public Enemy, author of Fight the Power: Rap, Race, and Reality"

The critically acclaimed memoirs of one female police officer’s sixteen-year odyssey, beginning with day one at the Police Academy and spanning assignments on Chicago’s West Side, one of the most dangerous areas in the city.

The notorious cops’ code of silence is broken as the author recounts incidents in the West Side projects: shoot-outs, ambushes, and what it feels like to kill a man—just four days out of the Academy.

The stories told are sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, often poignant, and always provide the reader with an on the scene feel for life behind the badge. Domestic violence, murdered spouses, abused children, and philandering CPD brass are just some of the topics addressed, topics that officer Gallo dealt with everyday.

From her work with gangs, narcotics, the gun task force, and acting as a prostitute, Gina Gallo offers a gritty account of the darker side of the city, giving readers an objective side to the cops, crooks, and victims that comprise a the police cops world.

An unforgettable journey through the daily lives of the brave men and women who have made saving lives their profession.
Dennis Smith, author of Report from Engine Co. 82, traveled across the country talking to dozens of America’s firefighters to put together this powerful collection of their own descriptions of their most dramatic and intense experiences on the job. Their stories, compiled here, are timeless testimonies to the human capacity for heroism and nobility.
Focusing on the most courageous firefighters, from those who have been decorated for heroism to those who have been seriously injured, Firefighters presents the extraordinarily rich and rugged voices of men and women who fight urban building fires, who battle sweeping forest fires, who perform emergency rescues, and who face extreme danger and risk as part of their everyday lives. Sometimes brave, sometimes funny, sometimes bittersweet or filled with anger, these voices combine to make Firefighters both a riveting adventure drama and a moving chronicle of American heroism at its finest.

Police and Crime Control in Jamaica is a valuable addition to the sparse literature on policing in developing states, and is the first study of its kind on a police force in a Caribbean territory. The work examines the extent and sources of police ineffectiveness in controlling crime. It assesses the quality of justice and declining public confidence in the criminal justice system. Police reform efforts, as well as sources of cynicism among members of the force, are analysed.

This study of policing and citizen-state relations is especially relevant to the tourism-dependent countries of the Caribbean amid growing recognition of the negative impact of high rates of violent crime on these economies.

This book will be much valued by students of criminology and criminal justice, especially those with an interest in the Caribbean, as well as the general reader who is concerned with issues of crime and policing.

Riding straight out of the pages of Western history, W.J.L. Sullivan arrives, hat firmly planted on his head, to tell in his own plain way about his time as a sergeant of the Texas Rangers.

The years were 1889 to 1901, and there was lawlessness enough on the frontiers of Texas to occupy any able-bodied man with a horse, a six-shooter, and a hard-headed sense of decency and order. Rounding up cattle poachers, hanging loquacious murderers, leaping into border skirmishes, watching the odd culprit wriggle free through the "slick scheme" of an attorney, wrestling a buffalo and losing a horse in the process: Sullivan relates the events of his career with all the earnest candor, modest wit, and occasional homespun moralizing of a man with a story that has to be told. In his straight-spoken words we see the Texas rangers of yesterday, riding out under the legendary Captain Bill McDonald, whose famous adage, "One riot, one ranger, " suggests the wild spirit and irrepressible toughness that Sullivan so amply documents. Compulsively readable, as eventful and dramatic as any novel, his book lets us watch history unfold in all its colorful, gritty detail against the raw frontier of nineteenth-century Texas.

Arthur G. Worthy was raised in Marengo County, Alabama, had served in the military, and was a student at then-Alabama State College when he had a chance opportunity to become one of the first black police officers in Montgomery. He consulted his wife Mildred and decided to take the job. The year was 1954, one year before Montgomery would make civil rights history in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Worthy found police work to be interesting and challenging. Though he later left the police department to teach school for a few years, he remained interested in law enforcement. By 1964, the United States Marshals Service was seeking to desegregate its ranks, and Worthy was nominated for a deputy marshal position in the Middle District of Alabama. He served with distinction in that job for twenty years. Among his memorable experiences were serving papers related to the Selma-to-Montgomery March, supervising the transport of deadly nerve gas, guarding foreign dignitaries and witnesses in federal trials, and investigating EEOC complaints.

Tracey Meares and Dan Kahan have performed a great public service....[They have] opened up a major debate on a promising idea about how to keep streets safe without throwing out essential legal safeguards. If you live where I live, you know that's a life-and-death issue. --The Reverend Eugene F. Rivers, 3d, from the Foreword
Through a searching examination of the constitutional and moral issues of community policing, Tracey Meares and Dan Kahan challenge us to reconsider our ideas about how to fight urban crime and about the role of rights in a democracy. Activists and legal scholars-including Alan Dershowitz and Jean Bethke Elshtain-offer spirited responses.
"The New Democracy Forum series is a civic treasure....A truly good idea, carried out with intelligence and panache." --Robert Pinsky
The New Democracy Forum is a series of short paperback originals exploring creative solutions to our most urgent national concerns.

Former NYPD Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple was a man in a bow tie and homburg--he was also on a mission to revolutionize the way crime is fought: how cops go after crooks, and how they prevent crime in the first place. And he succeeded.

But Maple is not satisfied. In The Crime Fighter, he shows how crime can be attacked all across America. Laced with fascinating, incredible, and often very funny tales of Maple's adventures as a cop, the book is as entertaining as it is informative. Anyone interested in how criminals think and act, and how the police should do their jobs, will devour this absorbing book.

In the Spring of 1992 five days of rioting laid waste to South Central Los Angeles, took scores of lives, cost the city more than $900 million in property damages and captured the attention of horrified people worldwide. Lou Cannon, veteran journalist, combines extensive research with interviews from hundreds of survivors, offering the only definitive story behind what happened and why."Official Negligence" takes a hard look at the circumstances leading up to the riots. Cannon reveals how the videotape of the brutal beating of Rodney King had been sensationally edited by a local TV station, how political leaders required LAPD officers to carry metal batons despite evidence linking them to the rising toll of serious injury in the community, and how poorly prepared the city was for the violence that erupted.

In the most understandable and comprehensive text to date on the subject of community policing, the authors trace the historical development of American policing through the community era of present day. They introduce readers to the concept of community in modern society and explore changes in the function and legitimacy of police organizations. The text offers numerous highlighted commentaries in every chapter from police officers, deputy sheriffs, chiefs, and other practitioners as well as noted police scholars. These real-world examples illustrate themes and issues to students. Community Policing in a Community Era emphasizes agency leadership, problem-solving, community engagement, coactive policing, organizational change, and strategic planning.
Key topics include:
* A history of American policing
* Policing at a time of change
* Why police organizations change
* Community policing in action
* The role of leaders and managers
* Community engagement
* Selecting and training employees for community policing
* Implementing community policing
* Evaluating community policing
* The future of community policin

Much has been written about peace officers, including a host of stories about Texas Rangers, U.S. marshals, and many town marshals from years past. The history and exploits of constables, another large group of peace officers, have remained largely untold. This book traces in some detail the history of Texas constables, from January 1823, when the first law enforcement officers, two constables, were appointed in Stephen F. Austin's Colony, to the present day. In addition, a brief history of the origin of the office in medieval France and England and its role in colonial America is given in an appendix. The book examines the changing duties of the office of constable, compares the role of urban and rural constables, and documents the position the office has in local government as well as law enforcement. The careers of a number of constables are highlighted, among them Gus Krempkau, who in 1881 was one of four people killed in that many minutes in a dusty El Paso street; John Selman, a one-time cattle thief and a party to the Lincoln County (New Mexico) Wars, who in 1892 was elected constable in El Paso and went on to become the most active lawman in the area; and Thomas R. Hickman, who began his law enforcement career as a deputy constable and ended it more than fifty years later as Chairman of the Texas Public Safety Commission. A second appendix provides brief career summaries of a number of well known gunfighters and lawmen outside of Texas, among them James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, Virgil and Wyatt Earp, and Buford "Walking Tall" Pusser, who served as constables at one time or another in their lives.