Disclaimer: I received this as an eARC via NetGalley in partnership with the publisher, for a fair and unbiased review.

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If you do work in racial and social justice spheres, most of the information included will not surprise you; if you don’t, you may find yourself shocked by all of the blatant white, male privilege and finessing of the “good ol’ boys” network. Even with the progression of technology, this book will make you “wonder” why patrol officers still have tasers on their hips.

The book could’ve had a more apt title, but it still fits, given the content. When I was reading, I was glued (and becoming increasingly angry). It definitely comes off a little biased in the beginning (arguably “anti police” by some I’m sure), but becomes more nuanced as you continue. I have quite a few questions swirling around in my head to talk with my local police departments about.


*reviewed on Goodreads and Amazon*

In 1967, the Johnson Administration’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice released a report called The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society. It represented an extensive investigation into best practices and nationwide input and ideas. There were more than two hundred recommendations. And we have followed almost none of them, except those in the section on how technology can help policing. In fact, police increasingly turn to technology as the answer to every problem.

In Thin Blue Lie, Matt Stroud provides a history of technological innovations from the introduction of supposedly nonlethal weapons to statistical analysis to CCTV. The history is often full of fabulous details. One example is the source of the word taser. Jack Cover, the inventor of the first taser was heavily influenced by the Tom Swift book series in which the hero Tom Swift and his friends were saved by Tom’s inventions. One of the books was called “Tom Swift and the Electric Rifle” which gave the taser inventor TSER, or taser. I loved that detail. It is a “did you know” kind of book full of fascinating information such as how CCTV was invented by a Nazi scientist to monitor testing of a new weapon from a safe distance. The weapon blew up, but CCTV is ubiquitous today.

Stroud tells the history of the development of criminology as a discipline, the taser, statistical analysis and mapping, the rebirth of the taser, intelligence gathering, facial recognition, surveillance cameras, cell-site simulators, body cams and more. What’s fascinating is how often technologies began with good intentions but in practice failed their purpose. The addition of nonlethal (not quite) tasers, for example, has not reduced police shootings of unarmed civilians. Rather it has been deployed more for punishment and compliance. It is also not non-lethal. The story of Taser International’s lies about research, stock manipulations, and general unethical duplicity is amazing. They lied to police about their equipment, guaranteed it would not kill people, and when they found it would, they said they would stand by the weapons in court – but they didn’t, leaving police departments to pay off millions in damages.


Thin Blue Lie is a history of many sincere attempts to improve policing. The title is much more hyperbolic than the book which is rich in detail. The author recognizes the good intentions behind many of these innovations while noting that again and again, they fail because good policing is about police, not technology. The many struggles and social forces that drive crime rates are better addressed through social policy than technology, but technology seems so much easier, cleaner, less messy than dealing with people, doesn’t it?

Technology is easily abused. Even technology designed to make police more transparent quickly is diverted from its original purpose to another as police and body cam manufacturers lobby to make the footage safe from public scrutiny. It becomes a one-way weapon to be used against the public but hidden away when the police do wrong, as with the murder of Laquan McDonald.

I found Thin Blue Lie to be fascinating. In particular, again and again, technology is sought as a solution in an honest attempt to do better. Again and again, manufacturers work to subvert reforms and transparency. Sadly, again and again, there seems a kind of entropy, a regression to the mean, that makes each new effort a promising failure.

I received an e-galley of Thin Blue Lie from the publisher through NetGalley.

Thin Blue Lie at Henry Holt & Co.
Matt Stroud on Twitter