“A rigorous examination of why, most of the time, dirty cops get away with violating their badges. . . . [T]old with passion and eloquence . . . [E]xceptionally lucid and well-argued.”—The Washington Post

“Through deep research and gripping storytelling, Schwartz reveals a broken legal system in which justice so often remains elusive for those whose lives have been shattered by police violence. Cutting through polemics and misinformation, Shielded is both a searing indictment of our current system and a clear-eyed roadmap for change. This is a profound and indispensable work that will shape the national discussion around police accountability for years to come.”—Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

“Shielded is truly a must read for anyone who wants to understand why we lack an effective system of legal accountability for police violence and misconduct in our country. By unsparingly sharing the stories of just a few of the innocent victims whose lives have been devastated by police violence, Schwartz reveals how the civil rights legal regime designed to provide recourse to individuals subjected to unwarranted state violence has been disabled by more than a century of restrictive judicial decision-making and lawmaker inaction. Once you understand how we got here, Schwartz’s smart, pragmatic proposals for change ring clear and true.”—Sherrilyn Ifill, former president and director-counsel, NAACP Legal Defense Fund

"Schwartz maintains that while the concern that ‘public safety will be imperiled by too much oversight’ has always accompanied the desire to hold the police accountable, it is now nearly an unquestioned assumption that lawsuits against the police exact too high a price. . . . But this assumption, Schwartz contends, is a myth that has distorted the civil justice system by persuading judges of the need to insulate the police from accountability." —New York Review of Books