Thread by @PatBlanchfield

sincerely begging people to read just one book about the history of US policing and its origins in slavery, ethnic cleansing, and crushing worker unrest, and then think about who they sound like the next time they call "abolition" childlike, lazy, uncivilized, divisive, etc

here's one! hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…

since people are asking for a recommendation: as a single resource - with a section on history and a bibliography of the different institutions that combined to form modern US policing - @avitale's book is superb versobooks.com/books/2426-the…

here are some other topical recommendations, just off the top of my head. if you'd like to learn more about "frontier policing" (IE ethnic cleansing and more) the Texas Rangers are an archetypal US institution. this book is excellent penguinrandomhouse.com/books/530134/c…

if you'd like to learn more about strikebreaking, private policing, and the growth of a federalized police apparatus, this history of the Pinkertons (who still exist!) is revelatory jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/inventin…

if you'd like to learn about the ways US imperial expansion inaugurated a trans-oceanic circulation of technologies, tactics, and personnel, check out this history of the US Philippines occupation uwpress.wisc.edu/books/4454.htm

if you'd like to learn about how, in the second half of the 20C, that evolved into a properly global exercise in counterinsurgency policing, and the blowback that entailed, the work of @stschrader1 is absolutely essential ucpress.edu/book/978052029…

and finally since there's a tendency to romanticize postwar liberalism WRT to policing and prisons, this book by Elizabeth Hinton is a vital corrective. cannot recommend more highly - especially for the role of Joe Biden in it

hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…

ok anyways yes get these from your local library or buy them on indiebound, have a nice day indiebound.org