Description
Book SynopsisA public health approach to understanding and eliminating excessive police violence. Excessive police violence and its disproportionate targeting of minority communities has existed in the United States since police forces first formed in the colonial period. A personal tragedy for its victims, for the people who love them, and for their broader communities, excessive police violence is also a profound violation of human and civil rights. Most public discourse about excessive police violence focuses, understandably, on the horrors of civilian deaths. In From Enforcers to Guardians, Hannah L. F. Cooper and Mindy Thompson Fullilove approach the issue from a radically different angle: as a public health problem. By using a public health framing, this book challenges readers to recognize that the suffering created by excessive police violence extends far outside of death to include sexual, psychological, neglectful, and nonfatal physical violence as well. Arguing that excessive polic
Trade ReviewMany public health readers of
From Enforcers to Guardians will come away with the centrality of better data to improve transparency and accountability. This book meets a critical need that sets public health on a path to fewer lives cut short, the goal of our field. It also creates room for additional conversations to address what is still missing. That is why it is such an important book.
—Mary T. Bassett MD, MPH,
American Journal of Public HealthA thoughtful, incisive public health primer on the deeply entrenched and damaging practice of police brutality.
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World Medical & Health PolicyTable of ContentsList of Illustrations
Preface
Timeline
Chapter 1. Coming to Terms
Part I. Distorted Policing and Its Origins
Chapter 2. Peelers and Slave Patrols
Chapter 3. Community Collapse
Chapter 4. War on Drugs
Part II. Measuring Distorted Policing and Its Effects
Chapter 5. Public Health Investigations
Chapter 6. Pattern and Practice Investigations I: Distorted Policing in Urban Contexts 000
Chapter 7. Pattern and Practice Investigations II: Types of Violence Documented 000
Part III. Getting to Guardianship
Chapter 8. Interventions That Have Been Tried
Chapter 9. A Magic Strategy
Conclusion. Moving Forward
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
