American Police

From a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a devastating exploration of the racial disparities in violent death and injury in America and a blueprint for ending this fundamental social injustice. Compelling and accessible, drawing on a rich array of both classic and contemporary research, A Peculiar Indifference describes the dimensions and consequences of this enduring emergency, explains its causes, and offers an urgent plea for long-overdue social action to end it.

By May 1963, African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama, had had enough of segregation and police brutality. But with their lives and jobs at stake, most adults were hesitant to protest the city’s racist culture. Instead, children and teenagers marched to jail to secure their freedom. At a time when the civil rights movement was struggling, Birmingham’s black youth answered Dr. Martin Luther King’s call to “fill the jails” of their city. In doing so, they drew national attention to the cause, helped bring about the repeal of segregation laws, and inspired thousands of other young people to demand their rights.

Sixteen years after Richard Hill testified in court that he crouched under the tablecloth and saw Henry Clayton rape his white momma and murder her and his black poppa, a DNA swab earns the prisoner a pardon and his freedom. Returning to Red River Falls, Clayton claims that he has been reborn and offers to help Hill, now a patrol officer, identify who really killed his parents. Hill, who relives the family horrors every day, doesn't believe him. But how can he prove DNA evidence wrong?

Crime in America features selections from a series of six books Paul Brakke wrote on what's wrong with the criminal justice system and how to fix it. These books deal with the police, courts, and prisons, and consider of some of the crises now facing America due to illegal immigration, the opioid crisis, and the growing divide between racial, ethnic, rural-urban, and income groups. This book summarizes the critical insights of these other books in order to reach the widest possible audience, because one of Brakke's reasons for writing this book is to inspire real change.

Presumed Guilty reveals how the Supreme Court allows the perpetuation of racist policing by presuming that suspects, especially people of color, are guilty.

Contrary to competing popular beliefs, police violence against African Americans has neither remained unchanged since the era of slavery nor is it a recent phenomenon disconnected from the past. In Bluecoated Terror, Jeffrey S. Adler draws on rich archival accounts to show how racialized police brutality is part of a larger system of state oppression with roots in the early twentieth-century South, particularly New Orleans.

The recent killings in Dallas, Baton Rouge, Ferguson, and elsewhere are just the latest examples of the longstanding rift between law enforcement and people of color. In this revealing journey to the heart of a growing crisis, CBS News justice and homeland security correspondent Jeff Pegues provides unbiased facts, statistics, and perspectives from both sides of the community-police divide.

No Justice is the harrowing story of Robbie Tolan, who early on one New Year's Eve morning, found himself being rushed to the hospital. A White police officer had shot him in the chest after mistakenly accusing him of stealing his own car...while in his own driveway.

This brand-new series introduces Lee Nez, a New Mexico State police officer who is a nightwalker, a Navajo vampire. When a complicated case goes bad, Lee draws the attention of FBI agent Diane Lopez. Together, they are soon on the hunt for three vampires - including the one who created Lee. Take his current cases. Lee suspects that the vampire who created him during World War II is back in the US, searching for a cache of stolen plutonium. And Lee's being stalked.

At 15, Victor Rios found himself a human target - flat on his ass amid a hail of shotgun fire, desperate for money and a place on the street. Faced with the choice of escalating a drug turf war or eking out a living elsewhere, he turned to a teacher, who mentored him and helped him find a job at an auto shop. That job would alter the course of his whole life - putting him on the road to college and eventually a PhD.

On the last Friday evening of the summer of 2013, five shots rang out in the parking lot of a new Boys & Girls Club in a part of northeast Denver known as the Holly. Long a destination for African American families fleeing the Jim Crow South, the Holly had become an “invisible city” within a historically white metropolis. While shootings weren’t uncommon, the identity of the shooter that night came as a shock.

Why is there so much uncertainty about how to reduce crime and fix what’s wrong with the criminal justice system? How can we make these fixes and lower the high costs of incarceration? Uncertain Justice discusses recent problems and suggests some fixes. The chapters in each section highlight what’s wrong in response to recent developments in legislation, in the news, and in research reports. Then, each chapter concludes with some suggestions for reforming the system.

Petrus first published and performed this poem after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. With every subsequent police shooting, it has taken on new urgency, culminating in the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, blocks from Junauda's home.