Books in the Policing Perspectives and Challenges in the Twenty-First Century series

Tom Barker examines police homicide and the different behavior patterns that lead to it, ranging from misadventure to intent. This book includes a variety of cases from accidental deaths involving careless, reckless or negligent law enforcement officers to murders committed by LEOs engaged in organized crime or serial sexual homicides.

Robertson and Chaney examine how the early antecedents of police brutality like plantation overseers, the lynching of African American males, early race riots, the Rodney King incident, and the Los Angeles Rampart Scandal have directly impacted the current relationship between communities of color and police.

Twentieth-Century Influences on Twenty-First-Century Policing argues that to fully understand contemporary American policing, we must first understand its historical origins in the 1950s, `60s, and `70s. Such a historical grounding is further employed to consider where policing is heading now in the twenty-first century.

This book explores the impact that training has on officer decision-making during calls for service where an individual has a mental health disorder, from both an empirical and historical perspective.

In Everyone a Sheriff, the word sheriff serves as a metaphor for programs involving citizens in social control initiatives. Partnership between community members and their local police force is at the heart of any effective strategy aimed at reducing urban crime and insecurity. Ordinary community residents represent a vast, untapped resource in the fight against crime, disorder, and fear. The real story of citizens long association with the policing function is revealed. The book highlights include: an in-depth examination of volunteerism primarily at the law enforcement level; the importance of preparing youth and minorities for careers in policing and homeland security; the need for transitioning police and citizen volunteers from serving not only as peacekeepers, but becoming peacemakers; a realistic view of various pitfalls when regular and volunteer police are thrust into patterns of co-existence when fighting crime out on the street or seeking solutions to crime; numerous examples of current police-sponsored citizen academies, police cadet and junior deputy programs; histories of the invention of police and citizen-supported neighborhood crime watch programs. The only way to successfully cross the divide between the police and public is to give meaning to the phrase: the police are the people, and the people are the police.