Shielded
How the Police Became Untouchable
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Shielded
Buy Now for $26.22
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Joanna Schwartz
-
Written by:
-
Joanna Schwartz
About this listen
An urgent and definitive examination of how the legal system prevents accountability for police misconduct, from one of the country's leading scholars on policing
In recent years, the high-profile murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others have brought much-needed attention to the pervasiveness of police misconduct. Yet it remains nearly impossible to hold police accountable for abuses of power—the decisions of the Supreme Court, state and local governments, and policy makers have, over decades, made the police all but untouchable.
In Shielded, University of California, Los Angeles, law professor Joanna Schwartz exposes the myriad ways in which our legal system protects police at all costs, with insightful analyses about subjects ranging from qualified immunity to no-knock warrants. The product of more than two decades of advocacy and research, Shielded is a timely and necessary investigation into why civil rights litigation so rarely leads to justice or prevents future police misconduct. Weaving powerful true stories of people seeking restitution for violated rights, cutting across race, gender, criminal history, tax bracket, and zip code, Schwartz paints a compelling picture of the human cost of our failing criminal justice system, bringing clarity to a problem that is widely known but little understood. Shielded is a masterful work of immediate and enduring consequence, revealing what tragically familiar calls for “justice” truly entail.
What the critics say
“A rigorous examination of why, most of the time, dirty cops get away with violating their badges. . . . [T]old with passion and eloquence . . . [E]xceptionally lucid and well-argued.”—The Washington Post
“Through deep research and gripping storytelling, Schwartz reveals a broken legal system in which justice so often remains elusive for those whose lives have been shattered by police violence. Cutting through polemics and misinformation, Shielded is both a searing indictment of our current system and a clear-eyed roadmap for change. This is a profound and indispensable work that will shape the national discussion around police accountability for years to come.”—Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
“Shielded is truly a must read for anyone who wants to understand why we lack an effective system of legal accountability for police violence and misconduct in our country. By unsparingly sharing the stories of just a few of the innocent victims whose lives have been devastated by police violence, Schwartz reveals how the civil rights legal regime designed to provide recourse to individuals subjected to unwarranted state violence has been disabled by more than a century of restrictive judicial decision-making and lawmaker inaction. Once you understand how we got here, Schwartz’s smart, pragmatic proposals for change ring clear and true.”—Sherrilyn Ifill, former president and director-counsel, NAACP Legal Defense Fund
"Schwartz maintains that while the concern that ‘public safety will be imperiled by too much oversight’ has always accompanied the desire to hold the police accountable, it is now nearly an unquestioned assumption that lawsuits against the police exact too high a price. . . . But this assumption, Schwartz contends, is a myth that has distorted the civil justice system by persuading judges of the need to insulate the police from accountability." —New York Review of Books