Description
Book SynopsisThis book armed activists on the streets-as well as the many who have become concerned about police abuse-with a critical analysis and ultimately a redefinition of the very idea of policing. The book contends that when we talk about police and police reform, we speak the language of police legitimation through the art of euphemism. So state sexual assault become "body-cavity search," and ruthless beatings become "non-compliance deterrence."
A Field Guide to the Police is a study of the indirect and taken-for granted language of policing, a language we're all forced to speak when we talk about law enforcement. In entries like "Police dog," "Stop and frisk," and "Rough ride," the authors expose the way "copspeak" suppresses the true meaning and history of policing. Like any other field guide, it reveals a world that is hidden in plain view. The book argues that a redefined language of policing might help chart a future free society.
Now in an expanded and updated edition, including explanations of newsmaking new terms, like "dead names", "kettling", and "qualified immunity", as well as a new foreword by leading criminal justice advocate Craig Gilmore
Trade Review“Seeing through police bluewashing at every turn, Correia and Wall have put together a comprehensive, rigorous and highly useful guide to understanding ‘copspeak.’ Unpacking the structural violence and racism of the police, and their functional role in capitalism, as well as in the historical continuity of slavery,
Police: A Field Guide is a resolutely practical guide to thinking of a world beyond the police. Of value to activists and theorists alike, this text is a careful analysis of core concepts in policing of use to everyone committed to ending racist state violence and the tyranny of cops everywhere.”
—Nina Power, author of One-Dimensional Woman “
Police: A Field Guide is a dictionary of liberation, an antidote to the ‘copspeak’ that’s everywhere, even in our own heads. By dissecting and analyzing a vocabulary of power that has become dangerously ubiquitous, this book can help us dispel and loosen its grip.”
—Astra Taylor, author of The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age “One of the angriest and saddest indictments of American policing I have ever read. The exposure of ‘copspeak’ is masterly and the analysis of the relationships between law and order, racism and capitalism, are explained with surgical precision.”
—Clive Bloom, author of Riot City: Protest and Rebellion in the Capital
