Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City

Rosa Brooks is a law professor at Georgetown University and founder of Georgetown's Innovative Policing Program. From 2016 to 2020, she served as a reserve police officer with the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department. She has worked previously at the Defense Department, the State Department, and for several international human rights organizations. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal, and she spent four years as a weekly opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times and another four as a columnist for Foreign Policy. Her most recent book, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2016; it was also shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize and named one of the five best books of the year by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Journalist and law professor Rosa Brooks goes beyond the "blue wall of silence" in this radical inside examination of American policingIn her forties, with two children, a spouse, a dog, a mortgage, and a full-time job as a tenured law professor at Georgetown University, Rosa Brooks decided to become a cop. A liberal academic and journalist with an enduring interest in law's troubled relationship with violence, against the advice of everyone she knew, Brooks applied in 2015 to become a sworn, armed reserve police officer with the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department. Then as now, police violence was constantly in the news, and each day brought more stories of corrupt cops, police violence, and the racial disparities that mar our criminal justice system. But as Brooks made her way through the police academy and began work as a patrol officer in the most crime-ridden neighborhoods of the nation's capital, she found a reality far more complex than the headlines suggested.In Tangled Up in Blue, Brooks recounts her experiences inside the usually closed world of policing. From street shootings and domestic violence calls to the behind-the-scenes police work during Donald Trump's 2016 presidential inauguration, Brooks presents a revelatory account of what it's like inside the "blue wall of silence" and issues an urgent call for a truly transformative approach to. An explosive and groundbreaking investigation, Tangled Up in Blue complicates matters rather than simplifies them, and gives pause both to those who think police can do no wrong-and those who think they can do no right.Story Locale: Washington, DC

NATIONAL MEDIA COVERAGE: Brooks was featured on NPR's Fresh Air and in the New Yorker, reviewed in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and interviewed on multiple radio shows, speaking not only about her book but to our current moment.NECESSARY CONTRIBUTION: In the wake of the police related deaths which in part sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the January 6th assault on the Capitol, this book forces us to reckon with the institution of policing and the chronic issues of the criminal justice systemRIVETING READ: Brooks' account of training to become a reserve police officer is one of the most gripping and morally complex stories of its kind. By turns a memoir, a work of journalism, and scholarly exploration, this book will change the way you view the role and mission of police in modern society.REAL IMPACT: Brooks helped to found Georgetown Law's Program on Innovative Policing, which in 2016 launched the Police for Tomorrow Fellowship Program.