Understanding Police Use of Force
Officers, Suspects, and Reciprocity

Geoffrey P. Alpert, University of South Carolina
Roger G. Dunham, University of Miami

Although most police activities do not involve the use of force, those that do reflect important patterns of interaction between officer and citizen. After a brief survey of prior research, this study presents new data and findings to examine these patterns. The force factor applied and the sequential order of incidents of force is included in the analysis. The authors also examine police use of force from the suspect's perspective, and create a new conceptual framework, the Authority Maintenance Theory, for examining and assessing police use of force.

Policing Gangs in America

Charles M. Katz, Arizona State University
Vincent J. Webb, Arizona State University

Describing the assumptions, issues, problems, and events that characterize, shape, and define the police response to gangs in America today, the primary focus of this book is on gang unit officers and the environment in which they work. The book is broadly focused on describing how gang units respond to community gang problems, and answers such questions as: Why do police agencies organize their responses to gangs in certain ways? Who are the people who elect to police gangs? What are their jobs really like? How do their responses to the gang problem compare with other policing strategies, such as community policing?

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Police Innovation
Contrasting Perspectives

Edited by David Weisburd, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Edited by Anthony A Braga, Harvard University, Massachusetts

Over the last three decades American policing has gone through a period of significant change and innovation. In what is a relatively short historical time frame the police began to reconsider their fundamental mission, the nature of the core strategies of policing, and the character of their relationships with the communities that they serve. This volume brings together leading police scholars to examine eight major innovations which emerged during this period. Including advocates and critics of the innovations, this comprehensive book assesses the impacts of police innovation on crime and public safety.

Race and Policing in America
Conflict and Reform

Ronald Weitzer, George Washington University, Washington DC
Steven Tuch, George Washington University, Washington DC

Race and Policing in America is about relations between police and citizens, with a focus on racial differences. It utilizes both the authors' own research and other studies to examine Americans' opinions, preferences, and personal experiences regarding the police. Guided by group-position theory and using both existing studies and the authors' own quantitative and qualitative data (from a nationally representative survey of whites, blacks, and Hispanics), this book examines the roles of personal experience, knowledge of others' experiences (vicarious experience), mass media reporting on the police, and neighborhood conditions (including crime and socioeconomic disadvantage) in structuring citizen views in four major areas: overall satisfaction with police in one's city and neighborhood, perceptions of several types of police misconduct, perceptions of police racial bias and discrimination, and evaluations of and support for a large number of reforms in policing.

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