The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe

by Heather Mac Donald

Overview

Violent crime has been rising sharply in many American cities after two decades of decline. Homicides jumped nearly 17 percent in 2015 in the largest 50 cities, the biggest one-year increase since 1993. The reason is what Heather Mac Donald first identified nationally as the “Ferguson effect”: Since the 2014 police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, officers have been backing off of proactive policing, and criminals are becoming emboldened.

This book expands on Mac Donald’s groundbreaking and controversial reporting on the Ferguson effect and the criminal-justice system. It deconstructs the central narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement: that racist cops are the greatest threat to young black males. On the contrary, it is criminals and gangbangers who are responsible for the high black homicide death rate.

The War on Cops exposes the truth about officer use of force and explodes the conceit of “mass incarceration.” A rigorous analysis of data shows that crime, not race, drives police actions and prison rates. The growth of proactive policing in the 1990s, along with lengthened sentences for violent crime, saved thousands of minority lives. In fact, Mac Donald argues, no government agency is more dedicated to the proposition that “black lives matter” than today’s data-driven, accountable police department.

Mac Donald gives voice to the many residents of high-crime neighborhoods who want proactive policing. She warns that race-based attacks on the criminal-justice system, from the White House on down, are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk. This book is a call for a more honest and informed debate about policing, crime, and race.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594039683
Publisher:	Encounter Books
Publication date:	09/19/2017
Edition description:	First Trade Paper Edition
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	217,392
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.

A non-practicing lawyer, Mac Donald has clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, has been an attorney-adviser in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and a volunteer with the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York City.

The New Jersey State Law Enforcement Officers Association conferred its Civilian Valor Award on her in 2004. She was awarded the 2008 Integrity in Journalism award from the New York State Shields. She was also the recipient of the 2008 Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration from the Center for Immigration Studies and the 2012 Quill & Badge Award for Excellence in Communication from the International Union of Police Associations.

Her writings have also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, The New Republic, Partisan Review, The New Criterion, Public Interest, and Academic Questions.

Mac Donald received her B.A. in English from Yale University, graduating with a Mellon Fellowship to Cambridge University, where she earned her M.A. in English and studied in Italy through a Clare College study grant. Her J.D. is from Stanford UniversityLaw School.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition vii

Introduction: The Policing Revolution, Crime, and the Anti-Law-Enforcement Movement 1

Part 1 Burning Cities and the Ferguson Effect 5

1 Obama's Ferguson Sellout 7

2 Ferguson's Unasked Questions 11

3 Finding Meaning in Ferguson 15

4 Justice Is Blind 21

5 De-Policing New York 31

6 The Big Lie of the Anti-Cop Left Turns Lethal 37

7 Baltimore in Flames 43

8 The Riot Show! 47

9 The New Nationwide Crime Wave 55

10 Explaining Away the New Crime Wave 61

11 America's Legal Order Begins to Fray 65

12 The Ferguson Effect Is Real 69

13 Black and Unarmed: Behind the Numbers 73

Part 2 Handcuffing the Cops 81

14 Targeting the Police 85

15 Courts v. Cops 93

16 The Great Stop-and-Frisk Fraud 111

Part 3 The Truth About Crime 119

17 Chicago's Real Crime Story 121

18 Running with the Predators 137

Part 4 Incarceration and Its Critics 149

19 Is the Criminal-Justice System Racist? 151

20 The Jail Inferno 163

21 California's Prison-Litigation Nightmare 185

22 The Decriminalization Delusion 211

Index 235

Editorial Reviews

This is a book that can save lives.” ---Thomas Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University

From the Publisher