Rethinking the Police

A former police officer tells the story of how his eyes were opened to the hard truth that dehumanization, systemic racism, and brutality are endemic to the policing culture of the U.S. He then offers a hopeful new model not based in dominance and control with concrete suggestions for procedural justice and community policing.

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"For decades, I refused to accept what was painfully obvious for so many: police brutality against minorities is not an issue of a few isolated and disconnected incidents but a systemic condition of a compromised institution."
Daniel Reinhardt spent twenty-four years as a police officer near Cleveland, Ohio. He was long unaware of the ways the culture of the police department was shaping him, but gradually, through his own experiences as a police officer and through the mentorship of Black Christians in his life, his eyes were opened to a difficult truth: police brutality against racial minorities was endemic to the culture of the system itself.
In Rethinking the Police, Reinhardt lays out a history of policing in the United States, showing how it developed a culture of dehumanization, systemic racism, and brutality. But Reinhardt doesn't stop there: he offers a new model of policing based not in dominance and control but in a culture of servant leadership, with concrete suggestions for procedural justice and community policing.
Our society has long been stuck in cultural and ideological battles about police brutality and the police force's broken relationship with our communities. Rethinking the Police promises to start a more hopeful conversation.