Police Brutality

About the Book

This book is about the culture of the US police, and what it is that allows them to be as violent as they are. It approaches the elements of police culture by analyzing how they respond to incidents called by people who need help (calls to 911) and that contain no danger, and no urgency. Such situations begin peacefully, with no need for law enforcement. Yet someone gets shot and injured or killed by the police. What does that represent? How does that happen? To answer such questions, a deep analysis of the mind of the police, listing structures by which they think, is necessary. What assumptions must they make, and how must they approach people? How do they include impunity, insularity, contempt, provocation, militarism, collective thought, obeisance, and racism in what they do? These are not trained. They are not part of a cop’s job description. Why do the police embrace them? Each represents a different facet of social hegemony. How is that continually reproduced? And what is the police final program, the political game for which they need these structures.

About the Author

Steve Martinot has lived many lives. He began as a math major in college, shifted to industrial organizing and social justice movements in the early 60s, becoming a machinist, a truck driver, a poet, a researcher into socio-political structures, and a university lecturer. As an activist, his focus was on grasping the unification of national policy and popular apathy, which he diminished through Latin American solidarity work. He has organized unions in NYC and Akron, Ohio, and led strikes there. He has edited a rank-and-file union newsletter and a neighborhood anti-war journal. He has been sentenced to prison for saying no to government demands. And he has written books, which include “The Rule of Racialization,” “The Machinery of Whiteness,” and “Forms in the Abyss” (all from Temple University Press). He also has a self-published book calling for the abolition of the prison system.