policing

In Memphis, Tyre Nichols's Killing Echoes 1866 Massacre

by Isaiah Stafford and Kathy Roberts Forde

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Memphis was a city in political upheaval in which policing became a method of reasserting white supremacy. 

Protests of Atlanta "Cop City" Show the Politics of the City's Elite Put the People Last

by Micah Herskind

A massive training facility for police to practice urban warfare reveals the decades-long abandonment of poorer Atlantans and the efforts of local business elites to use redevelopment and policing to cater to the wealthy and control the poor, as historians Dan Immergluck and Maurice Hobson help to explain. 

Julie Livingston and Andrew Ross See the Car as a Machine for Unfreedom

The automobile is an object made to symbolize freedom that actually physically embodies a host of coercive relationships to work, debt, surveillance and policing, and the basic right of free movement, according to the authors of a new study. 

The Beneficiary of Hosting the Olympics is the Police State

by Jules Boykoff

The extreme circumstances surrounding the international spectacle of the games justifies "states of exception" that remain part of law enforcement practices after the games end, stifling civil liberties and democratic dissent. 

Atlanta's HBCU Students Call on Administrators to Oppose "Cop City"

Students say that the proposed training facility in south Atlanta will prepare more police to engage in paramilitary suppression of protest and denounced statements by administrators pledging support for "Cop City." 

Family Histories where Black Power Met Police Power

by Dan Berger

Fighting back against mass incarceration today means learning from the stories of Black Power activists who fought against the expansion of police power and surveillance since the 1960s. 

Inside Riotville: How the Military and the Police Prepared for Domestic Rebellion

by Bench Ansfield

“Riotsville” was the name the Army gave to the training grounds it built, beginning in 1967, to school police departments and military personnel in the art of domestic counterinsurgency. Sierra Pettengill's new documentary tells its story. 

The Modern City was Shaped by Policing Black Women's Sexuality

by Simon Balto

In tribute to the work of Anne Gray Fischer, a historian of policing reflect on how central the goal of controlling sexuality was to the growth of police forces and the geography of urban America. 

Reasons to Defund the FBI—That Have Nothing to Do with Trump

by Alex S. Vitale

The FBI's history of repression and service to the powerful should override any fleeting satisfaction liberals feel about the search warrant the Bureau served at Mar-a-Lago. 

Teaching the History of Campus Police

by Yalile Suriel

The FBI's Law Enforcement Bulletin offers an insight into how law enforcement in the 1970s increased its presence on college campuses and redefined the function and goals of campus police forces. Here's how one professor has used this source in class. 

HBO's "We Own This City" and Baltimore's Long History of Police Brutality

by Mary Rizzo

A Baltimore historian notes that the Black community's efforts to fight police brutality are much older than the War on Drugs. 

Historian Donna Murch on the Long History that Led to BLM

"In terms of repression and resistance, it takes people and communities time to understand what is happening to them."

Why American Christians "Back the Blue" so Fervently

by Aaron Griffith

Evangelicals within police forces and in the public at large have been encouraged to understand a scriptural mandate for police authority that often short-circuits consideration of other Christian obligations for justice, argues a historian of evangelical attitudes to law and order. 

Ted Cruz is an Unwitting Publicist for Left-Leaning Books

If you have written a book about racism, policing, or other controversial issues, your best promotional strategy is to have Senator Cruz wave your book around in a televised Senate hearing. 

Don't Use Anti-Asian Violence to Throw More Money at Police

by Crystal Jing Luo

Business interests in Oakland have hijacked the safety concerns of Asian Americans to support arming police in service of real estate development that threatens low-income housing. 

The Most Revealing Moment in Former Louisville Police Officer's Trial

by Matthew Guariglia

Former officer Brett Hankison didn't hesitate to defend his actions (shooting 10 bullets through a glass door during an unannounced raid) as legitimate. Policing has shaped the law in such a way that his confidence is justified. 

Broken Homes of the Drug War

by David Helps

Rather than a mistake or an isolated instance of excess, a notoriously brutal and destructive LAPD raid on an apartment complex in 1988 should be seen as part of a political attack on the city's Black poor, enabled by cultural stereotypes of families of color. 

The Other Pentagon (We Don't Think About)

by Andrea Mazzarino

The creation of DHS in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was a profound reorganization of the government that created a prodigiously-funded "security" apparatus that views threats to Americans through the dangerous lens of "insiders" vs. "outsiders". 

Introducing “Disciplining The Nation”

by Matt Guariglia and Charlotte Rosen

"Rooted in racial slavery, settler colonialism, and U.S. empire, policing and incarceration in the United States were slowly and meticulously built over time for the purpose of subordinating, punishing, and exploiting populations –and historians have the documents to prove it."

The Rogues Gallery: The Messy Growth of Modern Policing in Gilded Age New York City

by John Oller

John Oller's new book on the rise of the NYPD combines a history of the social dynamics of the booming city, with its extremes of wealth and poverty, and a gallery of colorful rogues – in and out of uniform – whose battles shaped American law enforcement for good and ill.