Cop Cop: Breaking the Fixed System of American Policing

Summary

This groundbreaking work takes listeners deep behind the blue wall of policing and police misconduct to expose what really happens when you try to hold the police accountable.

When you think about the police, who do you think of: Do you think of one officer, or the police as an institution? From movies and TV to everyday life, a police presence looms over most civil conflict. But if there were a defining feature of the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd and the many well-publicized police incidents since, it would be the collective confusion as to how we got to this point. Policing, it seemed, had become as convoluted as it was brutal. Despite fragmented media coverage about police unions, militarization, and systemic racism, the average citizen’s knowledge remained hazy on what exactly police officers had been doing all along.

There is indeed a Blue Wall, but for the first time, it is possible to get behind it. The authors were senior investigators in the government agency tasked with policing the police in New York City. They are our eyes on the inside, and this book takes us into their world.

Cop Cop lays bare the web of real cases investigated by the authors over several years working for the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB). As the authors probe cases from offensive language and chokeholds to stop-and-frisk and shootings, the larger narrative builds to six simple solutions to fix American policing. Combining the unique perspectives of police misconduct investigators with a synthesized history of policing, this book offers new insights into current problems and issues, and the practical steps necessary to create a criminal justice system that is truly just.