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A revelatory look at how the NYPD has resisted change through strategic and selective community engagement. The past few years have seen Americans express passionate demands for police transformation. But even as discussion of no-knock warrants, chokeholds, and body cameras has exploded, any changes to police procedures have only led to the same outcomes. Despite calls for increased accountability, police departments have successfully stonewalled change. In The Policing Machine, Tony Cheng reveals the stages of that resistance, offering a close look at the deep engagement strategies that NYPD precincts have developed with only subsets of the community in order to counter any truly meaningful, democratic oversight. Cheng spent nearly two years in an unprecedented effort to understand the who and how of police-community relationship building in New York City, documenting the many ways the police strategically distributed power and privilege within the community to increase their own public legitimacy without sacrificing their organizational independence. By setting up community councils that are conveniently run by police allies, handing out favors to local churches that will promote the police to their parishioners, and offering additional support to institutions friendly to the police, the NYPD, like police departments all over the country, cultivates political capital through a strategic politics that involves distributing public resources, offering regulatory leniency, and deploying coercive force. The fundamental challenge with police-community relationships, Cheng shows, is not to build them. It is that they already exist and are motivated by a machinery designed to stymie reform.

Drugs, bribes, falsifying evidence, unjustified force and kickbacks:there are many opportunities for cops to act like criminals. Jammed Up is the definitive study of the nature and causes of police misconduct. While police departments are notoriously protective of their own—especially personnel and disciplinary information—Michael White and Robert Kane gained unprecedented, complete access to the confidential files of NYPD officers who committed serious offenses, examining the cases of more than 1,500 NYPD officers over a twenty year period that includes a fairly complete cycle of scandal and reform, in the largest, most visible police department in the United States. They explore both the factors that predict officer misconduct, and the police department's responsesto that misconduct, providing a comprehensive framework for understanding the issues. The conclusions they draw are important not just for what they can tell us about the NYPD but for how we are to understand the very nature of police misconduct. ACTUAL MISCONDUCT CASES»» An off-duty officer driving his private vehicle stops at a convenience store on Long Island, after having just worked a 10 hour shift in Brooklyn, to steal a six pack of beer at gun point. Is this police misconduct?»» A police officer is disciplined no less than six times in three years for failing to comply with administrative standards and is finally dismissed from employment for losing his NYPD shield (badge). Is this police misconduct?»» An officer was fired for abusing his sick time, but then further investigation showed that the officer was found not guilty in a criminal trial during which he was accused of using his position as a police officer to protect drug and prostitution enterprises. Which is the example of police misconduct?

At a time when police abuses and errors make the headlines, it is important to understand just what goes into the decisions that police make when they are confronted with various crime scenarios in the line of duty. Required to respond within the law, many officers are able to respond in a legal manner to crime situations in which court decisions are written clearly and with easily applied guidelines. But what happens when those decisions and laws are written in a way that invites interpretation and varies from situation to situation? Based on a case study of New York City police officers, this important volume analyzes how officers contend with often-ambiguous laws in the face of specific crime scenarios. In addition, the author explores other influences on police decision making, including officer characteristics and attitudes, and makes policy recommendations in an effort to encourage the reinforcement of legal guidelines so that the rights of individuals are appropriately balanced with the duty to control crime.Based on a survey of nearly 1,300 officers'responses to specially designed hypothetical crime scenarios, this study illustrates how police officers are likely to react with regard to the law in these situations. While officers tend to act legally where the laws are clear, less clearly articulated laws leave the police with a variety of different options for action in ambiguous situations. For instance, in weapons scenarios, the survey showed that officers would often take advantage of ambiguity in the law with regard to how they may respond. In drug scenarios, officers will increase their tendency to do a search if the situation is slightly ambiguous, though they will decrease their search responses when the situation appears to be highly ambiguous. Eterno carefully examines the various responses and the laws that are meant to guide what police may or may not do in given situations, concluding that better laws and bright-line rules will help to check and balance the need to fight crime aggressively while preventing the abuse of authority that may arise in questionable circumstances.

Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Anthony Baez, Patrick Dorismond. New York City has been rocked in recent years by the fate of these four men at the hands of the police. But police brutality in New York City is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that refers not only to the hyperviolent response of white male police officers as in these cases, but to an entire set of practices that target homeless people, vendors, and sexual minorities. The complexity of the problem requires a commensurate response, which Zero Tolerance fulfills with a range of scholarship and activism. Offering perspectives from law and society, women's studies, urban and cultural studies, labor history, and the visual arts, the essays assembled here complement, and provide a counterpoint, to the work of police scholars on this subject. Framed as both a response and a challenge to official claims that intensified law enforcement has produced New York City's declining crime rates, Zero Tolerance instead posits a definition of police brutality more encompassing than the use of excessive physical force. Further, it develops the connections between the most visible and familiar forms of police brutality that have sparked a new era of grassroots community activism, and the day-to-day violence that accompanies the city's campaign to police the'quality of life.'Contributors include: Heather Barr, Paul G. Chevigny, Derrick Bell, Tanya Erzen, Dayo F. Gore, Amy S. Green, Paul Hoffman, Andrew Hsiao, Tamara Jones, Joo-Hyun Kang, Andrea McArdle, Bradley McCallum, Andrew Ross, Eric Tang, Jacqueline Tarry, Sasha Torres, and Jennifer R. Wynn.

The emergence and functioning of two competing and sometimes conflicting cultures within police departments demonstrates how competition between street cops and'bosses'is at the heart of the organizational dilemma of modern urban policing. Unlike other works in this field that focus on the monolithic culture or familial quality of policing, this study demonstrates that which might look cohesive from the point of view of outsiders has its own internal dynamics and conflicts. The book shows that police departments are not immune to the conflict inherent in any large-scale bureaucracy, when externally imposed management schemes for increasing efficiency and effectiveness are imposed on an existing social organization.Based upon two years of extensive field work, in which the author covered every major aspect of policing at the precinct level in the New York City police department from manning the complaint desk to riding in squad cars. Ianni shows how the organized structure of the police department is disintegrating. The new'Management Cop Culture'is bureaucratically juxtaposed to the precinct level'Street Cop Culture,'and bosses'loyalties to the social and political networks of management cops rather than to the men on the street causes a sharp division with grave consequences for the departments.The study concentrates on a series of dramatic events, such as the suicide of a police officer charged with corruption, a major riot, and the trial of an officer accused of killing a prisoner while in police custody. Ianni traces how these events affected relationships among fellow officers and between officers and'bosses.'

When Bill Bratton was sworn in as New York City's police commissioner in 1994, he made what many considered a bold promise: The NYPD would fight crime in every borough...and win. It seemed foolhardy; even everybody knows you can't win the war on crime. But Bratton delivered. In an extraordinary twenty-seven months, serious crime in New York City went down by 33 percent, the murder rate was cut in half--and Bill Bratton was heralded as the most charismatic and respected law enforcement official in America.. In this outspoken account of his news-making career, Bratton reveals how his cutting-edge policing strategies brought about the historic reduction in crime.Bratton's success made national news and landed him on the cover of Time. It also landed him in political hot water. Bratton earned such positive press that before he'd completed his first week on the job, the administration of New York's media-hungry mayor Rudolph Giuliani, threatened to fire him. Bratton gives a vivid, behind-the-scenes look at the sizzle and substance, and he pulls no punches describing the personalities who really run the city.Bratton grew up in a working-class Boston neighborhood, always dreaming of being a cop. As a young officer under Robert di Grazia, Boston's progressive police commissioner, he got a ground-level view of real police reform and also saw what happens when an outspoken, dynamic, reform-minded police commissioner starts to outshine an ambitious mayor. He was soon in the forefront of the community policing movement and a rising star in the profession. Bratton had turned around four major police departments when he accepted the number one police job in America.When Bratton arrived at the NYPD, New York's Finest were almost hiding; they had given up on preventing crime and were trying only to respond to it. Narcotics, Vice, Auto Theft, and the Gun Squads all worked banker's hours while the competition--the bad guys--worked around the clock. Bratton changed that. He brought talent to the top and instilled pride in the force; he listened to the people in the neighborhoods and to the cops on the street. Bratton and his'dream team'created Compstat, a combination of computer statistics analysis and an unwavering demand for accountability. Cops were called on the carpet, and crime began to drop. With Bratton on the job, New York City was turned around.Today, New York's plummeting crime rate and improved quality of life remain a national success story. Bratton is directly responsible, and his strategies are being studied and implemented by police forces across the country and around the world. In Turnaround, Bratton shows how the war on crime can be won once and for all.