Table Of ContentPerilous Policing
Policing and police practices have changed dramatically since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and
those changes have accelerated since the summer of 2014 and the death of Michael Brown at
the hands of then- police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Since the November 2016
election of Donald Trump as president, many law enforcement practitioners, policy makers, and
those concerned with issues of social justice have had concerns that there would be seismic
shifts in policing priorities and practices at the federal, state, county, and local and tribal levels
that will have significant implications for constitutional rights and civil liberties protections,
particularly for people of color. Perilous Policing: Criminal Justice in Marginalized Com-
munities provides a much-n eeded interrogatory to law enforcement practices and policies as
they continue to evolve during this era of uncertainty and anxiety. Key topics include the police
and marginalized populations, the use of technology to surveil individuals and groups, the emer-
gence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the erosion of the police narrative, the use of
force (particularly deadly force) against people of color, the role of the police in immigration
enforcement, the “war on cops,” and police militarization.
Thomas Nolan’s critique of current practice and his preliminary conclusions as to how to
navigate contemporary policing away from the pitfalls of discredited and counterproductive
practices will be of interest to advanced undergraduates and graduate students in Policing,
Criminology, Justice Studies, and Criminal Justice programs, as well as to researchers, law
enforcement professionals, and police policy makers.
Thomas Nolan has been an Associate Professor in Criminal Justice at Boston University, the
State University of New York at Plattsburgh, and Merrimack College. He was a Senior Policy
Advisor at the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the Department of Homeland
Security in Washington, D.C., and a 27-year veteran (and former lieutenant) with the Boston
Police Department. His doctoral work focused on moral probity among police officers, and his
recent publications deal with such topics as civil rights and civil liberties in policing and con-
stitutional issues of surveillance.
A solid academic book tackling some of policing’s most important issues—written by a police
practitioner/scholar. The topics are timely, and there couldn’t be a better time in our field for a
policing book of this nature than now.
Peter Kraska, Professor, School of Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University, USA
Tom Nolan has produced this scholarly scrutiny that supplements his thirty-plus years of policing
experience. It’s an important book that should be widely read. Use it in your courses. The “nar-
rative” of U.S. law enforcement’s too often violent interaction with the public it serves has rightly
given way to a national conversation in the marketplace of ideas.
William Peters, Coordinator for Legal Studies and Associate Professor of Criminal Justice,
State University of New York College at Plattsburgh
The human race faces immense challenges: climate collapse, economic inequality, racism and
nativism, mass migration, and crises in democratic governance. Cutting across all of these issues
are the problems of police and policing. This timely book examines policing’s role in upholding
the status quo, and the failures of ostensibly free societies to rise to the challenge of adequately
policing the police.
Kade Crockford, Director, Technology for Liberty Program American Civil Liberties Union
of Massachusetts
Perilous Policing is provocative and well-written. It gives fresh insights into the service practices
and patterns of policing. Tom Nolan utilizes his insider perspective to illuminate the modern
issues that face police departments today. Unlike many other books on policing, Perilous Policing
could be used in an upper-level undergraduate course, a graduate-level seminar, or by practitioners
in the field.
Alexa D. Sardina Ph.D., Assistant Professor, California State University, Sacramento,
Division of Criminal Justice
This book is very timely with its focus on immigration, militarization and Black Lives Matter.
While the book is based on American policing, these issues resonate globally and policing has
become increasingly contested and perilous (for citizens and for the police themselves).
Monique Marks, Research Professor, Urban Futures Centre, Durban University of
Technology, South Africa
Perilous
Policing
Criminal Justice in
Marginalized Communities
Thomas Nolan
First published 2019
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Thomas Nolan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted
by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data
Names: Nolan, Thomas William, author.
Title: Perilous policing : criminal justice in marginalized communities /
Thomas Nolan.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018048190 (print) | LCCN 2018051056 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780429398414 (Ebook) | ISBN 9780367026691 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780367026707 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Police–United States. | Police-community relations–United
States. | Ethnic neighborhoods–United States. | Discrimination in
criminal justice administration–United States. | United States–Ethnic relations.
Classification: LCC HV8139 (ebook) | LCC HV8139 .N65 2019 (print) |
DDC 363.2/30973–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018048190
ISBN: 978-0-367-02669-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-02670-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-39841-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
For Chloe Nolan, Rory Nolan, and Martha Gaisford
Contents
Introduction 1
1 The Police, the Constitution, and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties 4
2 Technology and Privacy in the Era of Homeland Security 23
3 Deadly Force: Compliance, Confrontation, and Consequences for
African Americans 43
4 Black Lives Matter: Interrogating and Challenging the Law
Enforcement Narrative 59
5 The “War Against the Police”: The Fictive Response to the New
Accountability 75
6 The “Immigration Police”: The Demonization of the “Other” 90
7 “Soldier Up”: The Consequences of Militarization for
Communities of Color 108
8 “Taking Off the Cuffs”: Police Retrenchment and Resurgence 126
9 Fusion Centers: An Unholy Alliance of Federal, State, and Local
Law Enforcement 143
10 Perilous Policing: “That’s the Signpost Up Ahead” 165
Index 183
Introduction
T
he first beating that I was exposed to as a rookie police officer in 1978 occurred, ironically,
outside of the church where I and my five sisters had been baptized, my parents married, and my
grandparents buried. I was an altar boy in that church not ten years earlier; the Catholic school
where the Sisters of Charity had reared me during the 1960s was directly across the street. I had
never seen so much blood as that which pooled around the man who had been beaten and lay
sprawled on the sidewalk. Nor had I ever seen anyone subjected to such a savage thumping at
the hands of one very imposing police officer, one of the two officers who I was riding with that
night. I was half afraid that the nuns who lived in the convent next door to where the man lay
bleeding would peer through the curtains and see me, still one of their charges, standing in the
uniform of a Boston police officer, over the unconscious body of the badly mangled man. The
man’s crime is long forgotten, but I still remember the guffaw of the police officer who admin-
istered the beating, welcoming me into the netherworld of policing.
When I began my career in law enforcement over four decades ago, policing was in many
ways much more violent, primitive, and dangerous than it is today. Technology was practically
non- existent: we had hand- held radios, a novelty in 1970s-era policing, but they rarely func-
tioned and were effectively useless. We were issued vintage six-s hot revolvers and 12 rounds of
ammunition. In the 1970s the average year saw three times the number of police officers killed
in the line of duty than we see in contemporary policing, where the numbers remain fairly con-
sistent at approximately 50 police officers killed feloniously per year. As today, violence was an
ever- present component part of the way that policing was enacted on the streets of our cities,
and I was a willing and often eager participant in this brand of policing.
I had just turned 22 years old and was six months out of college. Most of my fellow recruits
in the January 1978 recruit class in the Boston Police Department (BPD) were Vietnam era war
veterans, the war having ended only three years earlier. Owing to an historical anomaly in the
BPD dating back to the Boston police strike of 1919, when essentially the entire police force
had been fired, the BPD needed to hire almost an entirely new police force every generation.
When I joined, the generation of police officers who were hired after World War II were in the
twilight of their careers—the average age of a Boston police officer then was 53 years, my
father’s age at the time.
Physical violence and beatings were routinely administered to those on the street who
challenged our police authority, an affront that we saw as a most egregious violation of an
unspoken moral code that privileged the rule of law and the unquestioned role of the police in
