Portside

With the mass outcry over the cop murders of George Floyd and so many other African Americans, it's worth reprising the review of a key 2017 book that sees even beyond defunding police to challenging the actual role of law enforcement in society.

The author argues convincingly and in graphic detail that the problem with police in civil society is not just the lack of adequate training, police diversity, increased militarization or even police methods such as the routine brutalization of many people of color, but the dramatic and unprecedented expansion in the last four decades of the too-accepted social role of police. The problem, the sociologist-author insists, is policing itself.