San Antonio College Library

Community policing, as a philosophy, supports the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues, including crime, social disorder, and fear of crime?as opposed to responding to crime after it occurs. Community policing expands the traditional police mandate. It broadens the focus of fighting crime to include solving community problems and forming...

"I can't breathe ... a haunting phrase moaned at the intersection of past and present, serving as an audible supplement to the visual evidence to yet another collision of race and policing. This phrase reflects the current state of police-community relations in the United States. But, what lies on the other side of now? This Element examines this salient question in the context of excessive use of force and through the lenses of race, policing and...

In 2014, a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. This incident, along with similar ones in Cleveland, Chicago, and other cities in the months that followed, sparked a wave of protest nationwide targeting racial disparities in criminal justice and accusing the police of using excessive force against African Americans. Are these accusations valid? Is policing racially biased? Or is it focused...

"On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an unarmed African American high school senior, was shot by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. For months afterward, protesters took to the streets demanding justice, testifying to the racist and exploitative police department and court system, and connecting the shooting of Brown with the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and other young black men at the hands of police across the country. In the...

Police use of force has been a major concern for police departments and citizens in the United States since the 1840s when police started carrying guns. Dr. Palmiotto presents the most important issues facing the police and the communities they serve in encounters that turn violent. It starts with a thorough historical introduction, covers use of force, deadly force, non-lethal weapons, militarization of policing, racism and profiling, legal cases,...

"When Police Kill is the first comprehensive analysis of police use of lethal force in the United States. The first seven chapters of this volume provide a summary and analysis of the known facts about killings by police. Who dies from police gunfire? What circumstances provoke police to shoot? Why is the death rate from shootings by police so high? Why are civilian deaths from police attacks so much higher in the United States than in other developed...

"Reflected almost daily in headlines, the enormous rift between the police and the communities they serve--especially African American communities--remains one of the major challenges facing the United States. And race-related riots continue to be a violent manifestation of that rift. Can this dismal state of affairs be changed? Can the distrust between black citizens and the police ever be transformed into mutual respect? Howard Rahtz addresses this...

"In Black Rage in New Orleans, Leonard N. Moore traces the shocking history of police corruption in the Crescent City from World War II to Hurricane Katrina and the concurrent rise of a large and energized black opposition to it. In New Orleans, crime, drug abuse, and murder were commonplace, and an underpaid, inadequately staffed, and poorly trained police force frequently resorted to brutality against African Americans. Endemic corruption among...

"Most incidents of urban unrest in recent decades - including the riots in France, Britain and other Western countries - have followed lethal interactions between the youth and the police. Usually these take place in disadvantaged neighborhoods composed of working-class families of immigrant origin or belonging to ethnic minorities. These tragic events have received a great deal of media coverage, but we know very little about the everyday activities...