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Loading... Blue : the LAPD and the battle to redeem American policing (edition 2015)by Joe Domanick
Work InformationBlue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing by Joe Domanick
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) Smokler | Jan 3, 2021 |  Award-winning investigative reporter, Joe Domanick describes the transformation in BLUE, The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing --a riveting page-turning account of the LA police Department from the LA riots, the OJ Simpson trial, to the events of 2014, which began in Missouri and New York City; with effects reverberated throughout our country. Domanick tells of a much larger bigger picture of American policing over the past quarter-century, and the challenges we still face today.The story is told through the lives of people who actually LIVED it—police officers, police chiefs, mayors, city politicians, gang members, and ex-gang members, community leaders, and citizens. Thought-provoking questions: What constitutes good and bad policing? How best to prevent crime, control police abuse, ease tensions between the police and the powerless, and partner with communities of color to enhance public safety. Joe mentions how he wanted to understand the source of the department’s extraordinary power, when he wrote his first LAPD book, a character-based historic narrative of the department called to protect and to serve, as a way to find that understanding. Then there were changes in the 1950’s up to 1991 when the tension once again began mounting when four white LAPD officers were caught on videotape beating a black motorist- Rodney King. A year later the officers were acquitted, sparking the bloody LA riots. Thereafter little changed. Why was the reform taking so long to implement? This is when he decided to revisit the LAPDs history starting with the 1992 riots and the writing of Blue. Told through lives of the people who lived through the crack-filled violence-laden nineties, and then through the reforms that finally began taking hold in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Joe highlights two cops: One a police reformer and stranger to LA, the other a chief-in-training with LAPD roots stretching back half a century. The others were LA gangsters who embodied the fraught relations between the LAPD and the communities. I enjoyed the way the Key Players are highlighted at the front of the book with a description of each, as well as sections devoted to the topics and time. • Charlie Beck • Tom Bradley • William Bratton • Andre Christian • Daryl Gates • Alfred Lomas • William H Parker • Bernard Parks • Rafael “Ray” Perez • Connie Rice • Willie Williams Meticulously researched, well-written, with impressive historical notes, references, interviews, and news reporting, as well as-- laid out in a very organized format. Much of Blue is about cops and the police leadership, officers past and present. From crime, politics, and cops—policies and reform. Filled with political intrigue, cultural and racial conflict, income and opportunity. The politics and the business of crime and guns, our reckless sentencing laws, and the disastrous state of our public schools. All of this disparate forces together send generations of young Americans into the world’s largest prison system with no end in sight. As the author notes, in 2014 both the American people and the American press began asking hard questions about the current state of American policing. We live in a violent, racist, gun-loving society. American society is in a deep crisis centered around our corrupt politics and institutions. We have to start somewhere, and have to work for change within and within and outside American policing. Depending on your age or your geographical location, some stories may ring all too familiar, if you lived through those eras. Highly recommend. Informative, Compelling, Timely. (  ) JudithDCollins | Dec 26, 2015 | no reviews | add a review
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American policing is in crisis. Here, award-winning investigative journalist Joe Domanick reveals the troubled history of American policing over the past quarter century. He begins in the early 1990s with the beating of Rodney King and the L.A. riots, when the Los Angeles Police Department was caught between a corrupt and racist past and the demands of a rapidly changing urban population. Across the country, American cities faced similar challenges to law and order. In New York, William J. Bratton was spearheading the reorganization of the New York City Transit Police and later the 35,000-strong New York Police Department. His efforts resulted in a dramatic decrease in crime, yet introduced highly controversial policing strategies. In 2002, when Bratton was named the LAPD's new chief, he implemented the lessons learned in New York to change a department that previously had been impervious to reform. Blue ends in 2015 with the LAPD on its unfinished road to reform, as events in Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore, and Ferguson, Missouri, raise alarms about the very strategies Bratton pioneered, and about aggressive racial profiling and the militarization of police departments throughout the United States. Domanick tells his story through the lives of the people who lived it. Along with Bratton, he introduces William Parker, the legendary LAPD police chief; Tom Bradley, the first black mayor of Los Angeles; and Charlie Beck, the hard-nosed ex-gang cop who replaced Bratton as LAPD chief. The result is both intimate and expansive: a gripping narrative that asks big questions about what constitutes good and bad policing and how best to prevent crime, control police abuse, and ease tensions between the police and the powerless. Blue is not only a page-turning read but an essential addition to our scholarship.--Adapted from book jacket. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)363.209794Social sciences Social problems and services; associations Other social problems and services Police Services Biography And History North America West Coast U.S.LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.88)
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