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The Policing Machine
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Across America today, police departments are facing unprecedented pressure to implement institutional changes. How do police departments resist such intensifying public scrutiny? This book argues that thinking about police as central actors within our urban political systems—not just criminal justice—reveals a surprising reality: the police-community relationships that already exist are precisely what impede the potential for police transformation. It theorizes police as legitimacy optimizers, rather than legitimacy maximizers, since they may want public legitimacy, but not at the expense of organizational independence. Police pursue these goals by engaging in a strategic politics, which this book refers to as the “Policing Machine”: they distribute public resources, regulatory leniency, and coercive force in ways that empower constituents from the bottom up and exert control over alternative voices. This book draws on nearly two years of ethnographic data on the NYPD as America’s largest police force and analyzes novel data sources ranging from sound permits to social media posts.
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