Overview
In recent years, nothing has blotted the American imagination so starkly as the highway beating of Rodney King, the shooting of the unarmed and innocent amadou Diallo, and the savage torture of Abner Louima in a Brooklyn precinct's bathroom. While many white Americans were shocked by these naked abuses of official police power, many more black Americans greeted news of these transgressions with an unfazed bewilderment. No one disputes the fact that police brutality is an immense problem, yet never before has it been properly examined and addressed.With Police Brutality, Jill Nelson, author of the best-selling memoir Volunteer Slavery, has pioneered a work of immense social importance. What causes police brutality? Why has opposition to it grown so suddenly intense? What does it tell us about racism in America at the turn of the century?
The contributors--academics, fiction writers, and professionals--offer unique, incisive, and occasionally iconoclastic interpretations of police brutality. Nelson includes a description of a New York race riot of 1900, placing police brutality in a desperately needed historical and intellectual context. Stanley Crouch argues it as yet another political straw man divisive of America's racial consciousness. Claude Clegg III presents a brilliant history of the FBI's sinister surveillance of the Nation of Islam. Arthur Doyle, a black detective who worked on the streets of New York City for over thirty years, describes chilling instances of hazing by his fellow white officers, allowing us to understand, as never before, the psychological roots of the problem. Flores Forbes relates how an instance of childhood degradation at the hands of San Diego police would bear grim fruit in membership in the Black Panther Party. Distinguished legal scholar Derrick Bell's passionate disquisition on the small humiliations many officers regularly visit upon young black men, interracial couples, and black professionals like himself--instances that only rarely make the front page--offers a disturbing window on the pervasiveness of police brutality in the black community. Historian Robin D. G. Kelley and Nation columnist Patricia Williams offer their characteristically incisive voices as to what, in the wake of the most recent outrages, we as a nation might do next.
A work that is destined to see wide use in classrooms across the country--whether in history, African American studies, sociology, or law enforcement courses--Police Brutality refuses merely to inflame or outrage. No wound to America's racial consciousness has festered untreated for quite so long, and never before have so many prominent voices come together to form such a crucial contribution to eradicating police brutality from American life.
Editorials
Charles J. Ogletree
[S]hould be read by anyone concerned about ending brutality, and should be required reading in police academies throughout America!Chuck D
[N]ot only timely, but explores and exposes the sickness of this unbalanced, uncivilized Western pastime thoroughly.Emerge
Without hysteria or hyperbole, [Nelson] examines the issue of police abuse in literary form.Emerge
An important and valuable book...Without hysteria or hyperbole, she examines the issue of police abuse in literary form.Publishers Weekly -
In tones ranging from soulful to provocative to didactic, these 12 fiery essays by a variety of distinguished contributors argue that there is currently a plague of police brutality, foisted upon minority communities as a result of drug war "innovations" in policing. Editor Nelson (Volunteer Slavery), who teaches journalism at CCNY, addresses in a terse introduction the "outrage," "disgust" and "sadness" she felt after the police shooting of unarmed Amadou Diallo in New York City, which drove her to assemble this volume. Most of the contributions are excellent and even startling. Most thought-provoking is journalist and critic Stanley Crouch's fusion of harsh personal recollection (of his teenage brother being pummeled after heckling a police officer) balanced by the more modulated idea that the real danger to minority communities is their alienation from the police. Columbia law professor Patricia Williams contrasts the presumption of guilt that appears to hover over black youths with the presumption of innocence that allowed Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris to amass guns, ammunition and grenades in Littleton, Colo. Gripping "secret histories" of black experience come from Claude Clegg III's fascinating reconstruction of Elijah Muhammad's nascent Nation of Islam and its alternate hostility toward and pragmatic cooperation with the FBI and with Mayor Daley's Chicago machine. Other pieces (by NYU historian Robin D.G. Kelley and novelist and poet Ishmael Reed, among others) take an overly rhetorical, separatist tone. In light of the egregious violations represented by the tragic figures of Abner Louima, Rodney King and other victims of actual and alleged police brutality, one forgives this volume its forcefulness. This is a memorable and useful contribution to an increasingly volatile national dialogue. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|KLIATT
With recent violence and accusations of racial profiling against police in Cincinnati in the news, echoing Rodney King and other incidents that might have seemed to middle America to be shocking and uncommon, these essays represent the feelings of urban blacks and other minorities that, while extreme, such police actions are not as unusual a part of daily life as one might think. While making no bones about its slant, this anthology hopes to provoke discussion about the issue of police actions that go beyond the bounds of duty to protect. They are seen as a pervasive problem that reflects important truths about racism in this country at the turn of a new century. Scholars, historians, and law enforcement professionals provide historical overview and analysis that puts a framing context on recent events in the news, and they ask important questions about the quality of justice in America, too often characterized by lip service and inequality. While not aimed at teen readers, many of the essays in the section "Politics of Police Brutality" will resonate with YAs familiar with media accounts of the shooting of Amadou Diallo in New York. For larger public and high school libraries. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, Norton, 264p. notes., $14.95. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Mary Arnold; Reg. YA Svcs. Mgr., Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Maple Heig , September 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 5)Library Journal
Currently, there are accusations of police corruption and brutality throughout America. Hate groups are accused of operating within the ranks of the Cleveland Police Department, the falsifying of information in an LAPD gang-tracking database has potentially contaminated numerous court cases, and the recent incidents of alleged police brutality in New York involving Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, and Patrick Dorismond shocked and alarmed many citizens. Unfortunately, such incidents are not rare. Nelson (journalism, CUNY), the author of Volunteer Slavery, has compiled a very timely collection of 12 original essays detailing numerous examples of police brutality perpetrated primarily against African Americans. Contributed by the likes of Derrick Bell and Stanley Crouch, the pieces in this very informative book examine the long history of abusive police behaviors and include descriptions of lynchings, racial profiling, and the hazards of "driving while black." This mostly one-sided approach in examining police brutality could have benefited tremendously from the inclusion of interviews with the police themselves, as they try to justify extreme behaviors. Recommended for academic libraries.--Tim Delaney, Canisius Coll., Buffalo Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\Booknews
Academics, fiction writers, and professionals offer interpretations of police brutality and racism in this collection of essays. They offer personal stories of police hazing of black police officers and the pervasiveness of police brutality in the black community, and examine topics such as FBI surveillance of the Nation of Islam and the school shootings in Littleton, Colorado. Essays are accessible to students and general readers. Lacks a subject index. Nelson is a regular columnist for and teaches journalism at The City College of New York. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Debra Dickerson
Given the rising agitations against police brutality in the wake of Abner Louima's sexual torture in a precinct house bathroom and this year's acquittal of the four white officers who executed Amadou Diallo on his front doorstep, this anthology is perfectly timed...illuminating and thought-provoking...—The Village Voice