num_pages: 384
description: Journalist and law professor Rosa Brooks goes beyond the blue wall of silence in this radical inside examination of American policingIn her forties with two children a spouse a dog a mortgage and a full-time job as a tenured law professor at Georgetown University Rosa Brooks decided to become a cop. A liberal academic and journalist with an enduring interest in law's troubled relationship with violence Brooks wanted the kind of insider experience that would help her understand how police officers make sense of their world--and whether that world can be changed. In 2015 against the advice of everyone she knew she applied to become a sworn armed reserve police officer with the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department.Then as now police violence was constantly in the news. The Black Lives Matter movement was gaining momentum protests wracked America's cities and each day brought more stories of cruel corrupt cops police violence and the racial disparities that mar our criminal justice system. Lines were being drawn and people were taking sides. But as Brooks made her way through the police academy and began work as a patrol officer in the poorest most crime-ridden neighborhoods of the nation's capital she found a reality far more complex than the headlines suggested.In Tangled Up in Blue Brooks recounts her experiences inside the usually closed world of policing. From street shootings and domestic violence calls to the behind-the-scenes police work during Donald Trump's 2016 presidential inauguration Brooks presents a revelatory account of what it's like inside the blue wall of silence. She issues an urgent call for new laws and institutions and argues that in a nation increasingly divided by race class ethnicity geography and ideology a truly transformative approach to policing requires us to move beyond sound bites slogans and stereotypes. An explosive and groundbreaking investigation Tangled Up in Blue complicates matters rather than simplifies them and gives pause both to those who think police can do no wrong--and those who think they can do no right.
language: English
title: Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City
publisher: Penguin Press