Police History

Pools of blood, scenes of carnage, signs of agonising death - who deals with the aftermath of violence once the bodies have been taken away? Judith Kepler has seen it all. She is a crime-scene specialist. She turns crime scenes back into habitable spaces. She is a cleaner. It is at the home of a woman who has been brutally murdered that she is suddenly confronted with her own past. The murder victim knew Judith's secret: as a child Judith was sent to an orphanage under mysterious circumstances - parentage unknown.

The murder of George Floyd sparked global outrage. At the center of the conflict and the controversy, Keith Ellison grappled with the means of bringing justice for Floyd and his family. Now, in this riveting account of the Derek Chauvin trial, Ellison takes the listener down the path his prosecutors took, offering different breakthroughs and revelations for a defining, generational moment of racial reckoning and social justice understanding.

Jack Dawe is an unconventional street cop. His ability to not act or look like a "Copper" enabled him to infiltrate the drug networks of the UK. This no-holds-barred, explosive, and, at times, humorous account of undercover policing takes the listener through a journey of crime, violence, and deception. This memoir is a true story of poacher turned game keeper. A veteran of 30 years’ service as a soldier and police officer, Jack reveals how he grew from a young thief into a soldier in search of danger and adventure across the world.

Since 1823, Texas Rangers have defended frontier families, stopped cattle rustlers, solved crimes, and done much more beyond the scope of even the US Army. Writer Karl Kesel once noted that the Texas Rangers would make perfect comic book characters because “They’re so larger than life.” Their skill and bravery pushed the borders of believability: they’d famously send a single ranger to control an entire riot. This brief text delves into the Rangers’ storied history - from their humble beginnings serving the Republic of Texas, to their modern role as detectives in cowboy hats.

In December 1932, as the Depression tightened its grip, the body of a woman was found in Queens Park, Sydney. It was a popular park. There were houses in plain view. Yet this woman had been violently murdered without anyone noticing. Other equally brutal and shocking murders of women in public places were to follow. Australia's first serial killer was at large.

Now a spry 94 years old, Frank Sisson looks back at his life and his service in the Third Army. Born in rural Oklahoma, Frank grew up fatherless during the Great Depression. In 1944, at age 18, he enlisted and was deployed to France where he marched with Patton, taking part in many of the key Allied movements of the war. Frank fought in the Battle of the Bulge, nearly died crossing the Rhine with Patton, and was among the first American soldiers who liberated the notorious Dachau concentration camp.

*The book that inspired the 2021 PBS American Experience documentary, The Blinding of Isaac Woodard.* This program includes an introduction read by the author. How the blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard changed the course of America’s civil rights history. Richard Gergel’s Unexampled Courage...

In an outspoken memoir that is sure to generate controversy, General Janis Karpinski tells the real story of the tragic and shameful events of 2004 from her first-hand experience.

From a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a devastating exploration of the racial disparities in violent death and injury in America and a blueprint for ending this fundamental social injustice About 170,000 black Americans have died in homicides just since the year 2000. Violence takes more years of life...

When racist curriculum "goes viral" on social media, it is typically dismissed as an isolated incident from a "bad" teacher. Educator Bree Picower, however, holds that racist curriculum isn't an anomaly. It's a systemic problem that reflects how Whiteness is embedded and reproduced in education. In Reading, Writing, and Racism, Picower argues that White teachers must reframe their understanding about race in order to advance racial justice and that this must begin in teacher education programs.

In this vivid, deeply-reported book, Matt Stroud shows that our new policing tools are overhyped and ineffective. Instead of wrestling with tough fundamental questions about their work, police leaders have looked to technology as a silver bullet, and stood by as corporate interests have insinuated themselves ever deeper into the public institution of law enforcement. With a sweeping history of these changes, Thin Blue Lie is a must-listen for anyone seeking to understand how policing became what it is today.

Welcome to Beaumont Cove, a slowly decaying tourist town at the edge of the world, and the place where Maggie James’s worst fears for her estranged twin sister, Lilly, have come true. Lilly is dead, and Maggie has arrived to identify her body. Lilly’s husband, Mike, is in custody for her murder. With the help of the local sheriff, a retired private investigator, and a strange but friendly carnival psychic, Maggie begins to uncover the truth about what really happened to her sister. But the truth comes at a price....

London, 1882. Alec Lonsdale, a young reporter on the Pall Mall Gazette, is working on a story about a fatal house fire. But the postmortem on the victim produces shocking results: Patrick Donovan's death was no accident. But why would someone murder a humble shop assistant and steal part of his brain? When a second body is discovered, its throat cut, and then a third, Lonsdale and his spirited female colleague, Hulda Friederichs, begin to uncover evidence of a conspiracy that reaches to the highest echelons of Victorian society.

While America’s biggest city constantly changes, the largest police force in the United States, the New York Police Department (NYPD), is no stranger to the limelight. Quite the contrary, the NYPD has become immutably entrenched in American culture, past and present. The acronym itself, while a mouthful, is effortlessly musical and therefore commands a certain presence.

Scotland Yard. The name itself conjures up a mental picture of old-time detectives in trench coats snooping around a crime scene with a giant magnifying glass. Indeed, over the years, the Metropolitan Police Force in London has become an inspirational icon, and the setting of countless literary masterpieces, films, television shows, music, and other works of art.

All three novellas feature Washington, D.C. Homicide Detective John "Black Jack" Morrison and his travails as he gets sent out to the super-secret spy facility known as Area 51 to solve a series of murders. Jack can't stay out of trouble with the chief of detectives back home, mostly due to his drinking, and his cockups get him sent to the Nevada desert as punishment. But it's not the murders that bother Black Jack, so much as the evidence he finds about the events from Roswell in 1947.

When the exiled Prince Okisada, the most illustrious prisoner of the penal colony on Sado Island, is poisoned, Akitada is called upon by the emperor's envoys to investigate incognito. Posing as a prisoner, he discovers a deadly conspiracy, only to fall into the hands of brutal guards and disappear. It falls to Tora, Akitada's devoted assistant, to begin his own dangerous search of the island for his lost friend and the truth.

"Read this man's book." --James Ellroy Gangster Squad presents a harrowing, edge-of-your-seat narrative of murder and secrets, revenge and heroism in the City of Angels—the real events behind the blockbuster Warner Brothers film starring Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone...

First printed in 1977, Cops and Bobbies has become "one of the two or three consensus classics in the history of police", according to Roger Lane, author of Murder in America. In this second edition, Wilbur R. Miller provides a new preface in which he discusses how police historiography changed in the 20 years after the book's initial publication.

La historia de Alemania Oriental estuvo estrechamente ligada al desarrollo de sus servicios de seguridad, concretamente de la Stasi. En una época de países totalitarios dominados por agencias estatales represivas, la Stasi se destacaba por su tamaño y por la amplitud y profundidad de su vigilancia. Películas como Das Leben der Anderen (“La vida de los otros”) encapsulaban actitudes y concepciones posteriores a la unificación, tanto de la vida en Alemania Oriental como de las actividades de la Stasi.