Blue Power

“Blue Power is a tour de force. Beautifully researched and written, this book shows how police officers transformed whining about respect into wielding political clout. Schrader tells a big, lively, harrowing story. And as the best big stories always do, the book doesn’t exhaust what can and should be known. Rather, it offers readers and strategists tools to make sense of the forces of organized violence on the make. Read it now.”—Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Abolition Geography

“Blue Power is a detailed and often interesting history of police organizing that rightly recognizes what officers have known for years: Policing is politics.”—Reason

“An erudite, frightening, and useful history that deepens our understanding of what makes organized violence organized.”—Antipode

“An impressive examination.”—The Metropole

“Very much recommended.”—Book Anon

“Stuart Schrader’s sweeping history of the political mobilization of the police makes clear just how historically distinctive the role of the police in our society is today. Blue Power chronicles the rise of the police as a political force, and the lobbying strategies, rhetorical campaigns, and legal gambits police unions and associations have deployed to protect the power and autonomy of their members. This has indelibly shaped not only American cities and criminal justice policies, but our society and politics as a whole. The book is a remarkable achievement.”—Kim Phillips-Fein, author of Fear City

“In Blue Power, Stuart Schrader tells the story of how local, state, and federal governance in the United States was diverted to the purpose of protecting and serving the police rather than the people. This is an urgent book—deeply researched and boldly argued.”—Walter Johnson, author of The Broken Heart of America

“Every thin blue line flag should come with a copy of this book. For half a century police have worked the beat that matters most to them—not the anti-crime beat but the pro-police beat, where they have lobbied and campaigned, rioted and lied, to secure their funding, build their ranks, and insulate themselves from every tedious intrusion of oversight and democratic process. By exploiting the bipartisan law-and-order consensus, police have put themselves beyond the reach of even the most powerful elites. Politicians flog and ridicule chants to ‘defund the police,’ but this book helps us to hear those chants anew as an essential first stand—no fascism, no fascism, no fascism.”—Naomi Murakawa, author of The First Civil Right