This book covers the history of police brutality against black people in New York City in an educational, concise manner. A good read for anyone interested in the topic or history.

a poignant and timely look at how police target and abuse people of color while experiencing near zero consequences for doing so--this is one of several books making it clear the 'Blue lives' murder

Thanks to NetGalley and NYU Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

This book covers the history of police brutality against black people in New York City. The introduction discusses how a lot of works about this topic don’t go far enough back, missing the integral ‘40s and onward. 
An extremely relevant work to our times, Taylor’s book is a super informative and impactful book to remind us that it’s not just “bad apples” but a system long misused by police officers. It’s well-researched and thorough explanation of how we got here, and the ways many organizations of black people have tried to fix and dismantle the system we still have. 

It does occasionally feel a bit dry in tone, but as an academic work, that’s to be expected. There were some sections where I felt the sentence structure was a bit too repetitive. Several long sentences in a row made the information harder to digest, but eventually it found its rhythm. 

On the whole, I’m very glad to have read this book as it went beyond our modern cases of police brutality to explain what’s happened before now. 4 stars.

Clarence Taylor gives a very succinct overview of police brutality against African Americans in NYC from the 1940s to present; to my knowledge the only book that focuses only on NYC police brutality while covering such a large span of time. Taylor does this by examining the people, institutions, and societal factors at play during each gain and loss of addressing police brutality. The only thing I wish this book had more of, and I can't believe I'm saying this, is more detail; I think more detail would have added more insight. [Got an ARC via NetGalley.com and NYU Press}