The Case for Police Reform From Within // NY Times Book Review

The Case for Police Reform from Within

Review by Bill Keller (The Marshall Project)

WHEN POLICE KILL
By Franklin E. Zimring
Illustrated. 305 pp. Harvard University Press. $35.

UNWARRANTED 
Policing Without Permission
By Barry Friedman
434 pp. Farrar, Straus & G

It is, to hear the new president’s posse tell it, an exceptionally dangerous and thankless time to be a police officer in the United States. In the streets, we are told, there is a “war on cops,” fired up by the activists of Black Lives Matter. In the corridors of Washington, liberals want to deny law enforcement the powers they need to keep us safe. The media runs endless video loops of a few police shootings of civilians, and the Justice Department nannies swoop in to take charge of this most local of public functions. Facing harsh scrutiny, demoralized cops hesitate to do their jobs — a phenomenon called “de-policing.” No wonder some police forces are having a hard time recruiting.

Now two legal scholars challenge that bleak portrayal with timely, book-length arguments that, in fact, police have been given more power than they need, have too frequently abused it, and are the least accountable of our public servants.

In Donald J. Trump’s law-and-order world, these assertions may be dismissed as the products of progressive academic hothouses (Franklin E. Zimring teaches law at the University of California, Berkeley; Barry Friedman at New York University), but they come from reputable scholars, armed with facts and respectful of good policing.

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