What’s it About?:
Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko is a book that attempts to tell the history of police militarization in the United States. The author begins with Rome and how they did policing back then and makes his way to colonial America and eventually to America in the 60’s were the narrative really begins to pick up, I read the expanded version so the book ends with the authors telling of the George Floyd riots/protests and Jan 6th.
Who is the Author?:
Radley Balko is a journalist who covers police and crime for the Washington Post. He has published pieces in CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and other news organizations. He previously worked for the Huffington Post, Reason Magazine, and the Cato Institute. He is a advocate for demilitarizing America’s police and has worked to achieve that goal.
What’s in the Book?:
The book is mostly about the history of police militarization in America from the beginning of its founding to the modern day. Sprinkled into the book are stories from ex-police and victims of bad police conduct. The ending of the book features recommendations from the author about what should be done to neuter the power of the police.
My Impression of the Book?:
While I was reading the book, I was thinking about how much praise I was going to give it when I wrote up the review, then I got to the new stuff. There are two versions of the book, the original one and a revised and updated version, I read the updated version. The new version adds the authors telling of things like Jan 6th, George Floyd, and other recent events. I was open minded at first, I had never heard anyone speak of the events like that. Then, the author began to go on a rant about how President Trump was a fascist and how he had orchestrated Jan 6th to coup the government, plus his take on the whole Whitmer kidnapping plot hasn’t aged well. He lost me as a reader, how can I trust anything that this author has said when he wrote something as absurd as all of that. Another example of absurdity is when he talks about the “mostly peaceful” joke. He says that of course the protests were mostly peaceful, there were so many and if they were as destructive as conservatives said they were, the media would have covered it. Of course that is not what the joke means, the joke is supposed to poke fun at the media when they are standing in front of a burning building and saying that its “mostly peaceful”. I can only recommend this book to people who are interested in the broad topic of police militarization. I rate it 6 out of 10.