Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing
Brooklyn BookBeat
Simon & Schuster’s publication of Joe Domanick’s “Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing” could not be more timely, coming at the height of a national conversation about public trust in policing. The ubiquity of video and social media has only intensified this dialogue. While the book’s subject is ostensibly the LAPD, the issues and questions it raises apply to every police department from Ferguson to Baltimore to New York.
In fact, the book contains many deep connections to New York, the most noteworthy being the hiring in 2002 of William J. Bratton to be chief of the LAPD. (In his acknowledgements, Domanick writes that Bratton is “second only to the LAPD as a character in ‘Blue.’”)
At the time Bratton became chief, the department was reeling from the fall-out from the 2000 South Central Rampart Division Corruption scandal, the failed policies of his two immediate predecessors and the deep mistrust of both the black and Latino communities. Bratton arrived with great expectations: he had been hired based on his reforming both the New York City Transit Police and the NYPD.