A critique of "The New Guardians" by Cedric Alexander

This is a book review of Cedric Alexander's The New Guardians: Policing in America's Communities for the Twenty-first Century. Alexander was Rochester's Interim Chief of Police in 2005 and recently became Rochester's deputy mayor.

The Good:
I appreciate the fact that one of Rochester’s former police chiefs and the current deputy mayor wrote an autobiography. It gave me some insight into his career in Rochester (and elsewhere). Some of the highlights for me were: 1) he introduced Tasers into the Rochester Police Department; 2) he crafted the Disturbed Person Emergency Response Team (now called the Emotionally Disturbed Person Response Team (EDPRT) in Rochester); 3) he offered a snap shot in time of the politics between the department and the decision-makers in Rochester; 4) he offered clear definitions of police legitimacy and community policing; and 5) he tells a good story and offers plenty of anecdotes. Honestly, his own progression through his law enforcement career was kind of interesting reading. It’s the other stuff that was disconcerting about his book.

The Bad:
I’ve selected four issues that need unpacking: Alexander’s treatment of Plato’s Republic, individual experience vs. systemic patterns and practices of abuse, trust the state, and war / no war.

1. Plato’s Republic:
I urge everyone to read the Republic before reading, or while reading, Alexander’s book. The theme of the guardians from the Republic is sprinkled throughout Alexander’s book. However, Alexander never really defines who the guardians are, except in broad and un-nuanced ways, such as on pages xii – xiii, “…as a Guardian, endowed by the community with the power and authority to heal, protect, build, and generally steward it. A leader and mentor, the Guardian is not a dictator or tyrant, but a servant of his or her neighborhood, city, and nation.”

On pages 197 and 198, he writes that, “Plato gave [them] a leadership role, entrusting them with the greatest authority in the republic because their character was worthy to ‘bear the responsibility of protecting the democracy.’ It was a ‘character’ built on the physical attributes of speed and strength as well as the intellectual qualities of ‘a spirited philosopher.’”  There was no discussion of Plato’s totalitarian ideas nor any discussion on how a totalitarian utopia leads to preserving(?) democracy.

So, as I said above, everyone should read the Republic. After I finished Alexander’s book, I picked up Plato’s book because I had an unsettled feeling that didn’t jive with my rudimentary philosophical understanding of the Republic. In short, my bullshit detector started going off. As I read through Plato, I wrote my old philosophy professor to share my reflections of both Plato’s and Alexander’s work as well as my concerns. Two central questions that emerged for me as I read Plato: 1) was the utopia constructed in the Republic a totalitarian form of governance? And, if so, 2) do we really want to model the institution of policing off of a model that called for the complete control of society? Is this really what Alexander imagines as an ideal democracy?

My former professor responded quickly and confirmed that my bullshit detector alerts were legitimate:

“Regarding Plato's Republic, you're right to raise your eyebrows at the suggestion that a police force might be viewed as similar to Plato's ‘guardians.’  Here are my thoughts on that.

“1. In certain respects the comparison is unobjectionable.
- The guardians serve the city, not their own interests.
- Their relationship to the population who they govern is not antagonistic.
- They are highly educated, and their very extensive education, culminates in many years studying philosophy (Yeah!!).

“2.  In other respects the comparison is questionable.
- The guardians govern the city in a non-democratic manner. The society Plato describes is separated into distinct classes. The guardians are not accountable to anyone below them.
- Plato explicitly justifies lying to the population in order to maintain the stability of the hierarchical society. E.g. The lower orders are fed the "noble lie" that people are born with souls of a certain kind, and that fixes where they belong in the social order.
- The defining excellence of the city--it's "justice"–in Plato's view lies in the way everyone knows their place and their function, and sticks to it. Rulers rule; workers work; etc. (just as the heart pumps blood, and the lungs breathe).
- Plato is very keen on censorship. Any kind of art, literature, or speech that might rock the boat (i.e. threaten the rigid social structure, or inflame people's emotions, or make them suspicious of what they've been taught) is banned. Only what serves what the guardians deem to be in the interest of the city is allowed.
- And one other thing. To make sure that they are not corrupted, the guardians have to live frugally and simply. They don't get big houses, or lots of money, or fancy foods."

To the last point of my professor’s email, I must point out a chilling passage from the Republic that seemed to portend the reality of the institution of policing in America today:

“’To them alone in the city it is forbidden to touch or handle silver and gold, to go under the same roof with it, to wear it or drink from it. Thus they will be preserved as they preserve the city. If they ever possess private land and houses and money, they’ll become farmers and landowners instead of guardians, despots and enemies instead of allies to the citizens, and they’ll live out their lives hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, fearing citizens within more than enemies without, and even then skirting the brink of destruction for both themselves and their city. For all of these reasons,’ I said, ‘let’s legislate that the guardians’ houses and everything else be arranged as we’ve said. Do you agree?’
“’I certainly do,’ he said.”
(page 86 of my version of the Republic)

The police in Rochester, NY do not live frugally or simply. In Rochester’s case, the majority of the members of the Rochester Police Department (RPD), 90%+, live outside of the city. They also get substantial amounts of money to buy land, houses, and all the food that’s fancy (that they want). Fear drives their need to control, here and around the nation: a fear of citizens, a fear of being plotted against, and a fear of being hated. That fear transforms into aggression and barbarity directed at vulnerable individuals and communities that they target. (Sorry, this is in some ways hyperbole and in some ways not. In Rochester’s case, you just have to compare how police treat white folks vs. Black folks.) Rochester police get virtually no cultural competency training and little if any local history, according to a member of the Rochester Police Training Advisory Committee (2018). PTAC is a group of civilians that are informed about the training that officers go through in Rochester by the department. Structural and institutional racism provide the needed foundation for officers to determine, without evidence, that a person of color is a criminal, even if it’s not the person who’s committed the crime. (Not hyperbole. There are several documented cases of police misidentifying and hurting people who are not the suspects they are seeking or have completely different appearances than the people they are seeking. The common denominator was that the people they hurt were Black.) This leads to two different kinds of law enforced by the RPD: one for Black people and one for white people. The very foundation of policing in this country comes out of slave patrols and repression of the labor movement. To presume that the uniquely American institution of policing can be reformed with a shift in perspective is, perhaps, hubris. If Plato’s words above are a warning to us about the corruptibility of guardians, then I can only imagine what he would think about the institution of policing, re-framed in the language of guardians, today.

Another aspect of Plato’s Republic that is concerning is the totalitarian nature of the “just” society he envisions. His call for absolute control of all aspects of society, down to the artistic license of chair makers, is horrifying. All human creativity and free will becomes predetermined and at the will of the state. Any deviation is grounds for immediate censorship and punishment. It sounds like an ideal command and control situation for police, under Alexander’s re-framing, transforming police into the enemies of the people (even the “good” ones), and certainly not allies. This does not bode well for Alexander’s ideal of guardians, unless of course the populace is ready to abdicate its rights. And civilians have rights (theoretically) in order to protect themselves against the tyranny of the state.

There is a certain logic that dictates why a former police officer might identify the utopia(?) outlined in the Republic is an ideal to strive for in a democratic society. I am not insinuating that Alexander is a totalitarian monster out to destroy democracy. I think he, like so many people, have a certain nostalgia for the (false) ideal of police. Alexander wants to take that ideal and pair it with an idea (police and community relations) that appears to put civilians and police (guardians) on the same footing, thereby creating/attaining/increasing respect and legitimacy of police officers. Of course, the police retain all power in the police and community relations equation and use civil society to expand their social control, sometimes through informal channels, throughout society. Obviously, this is all speculation. The ideal, perhaps, of total control of society through some kind of formal or informal democratically-driven decision-making process between police and civilians, could appeal to individuals who have led departments or who have done their jobs as police officers. But I think it's a disingenuous ideal that actually hurts democracy and civil society.  To me, it sounds like totalitarianism and it is really scary. Again, I urge you to read the Republic and make your own decision. I will say that Alexander doesn’t even consider this point in his book (even though there has been an ongoing, international debate about Plato and his totalitarianism) and that omission is certainly for me, a red flag.

2. Individual experience vs. systemic patterns and practices of abuse:
Alexander’s narrative uses a lot–A LOT–of personal anecdotes to make his argument, while explicitly NOT focusing on the systemic violence of the departments he was a part of or oversaw. Cue the ever classy “it’s just a few bad apples” argument, while dropping the second part of that phrase “spoils the bunch”.

Kristian Williams, in his Our Enemies in Blue offers a wonderful critique of the "few bad apples" argument that focuses on individuals rather than systems and institutions:

"Given such pervasive violence, it is astonishing that discussions of police brutality so frequently focus on the behavior of individual officers. Commonly called the 'Rotten Apple' theory, the explanation of police misconduct favored by police commanders and their ideological allies holds that police abuse is exceptional, that the officers who misuse their power are a tiny minority, and that it is unfair to judge other cops (or the department as a whole) by the misbehavior of the few. This is a handy tool for diverting attention away from the institution, its structure, practices, and social role, pushing the blame, instead, onto some few of its agents. It is, in other words, a means of protecting the organization from scrutiny, and of avoiding change."

Here’s an example of how I’ve experienced the individual experience vs. systemic patterns and practices of abuse when it comes to the RPD. Enough Is Enough was invited to participate in a focus group conducted by the Center for Public Safety Initiatives (CPSI), which is a part of the Rochester Institute of Technology, regarding how people felt about the police department. The focus group was a part of a broad effort to include voices that, in the past, were generally left out of these "feel good" surveys. It was a bit nerve wracking to sit and respond because each question asked by the research assistant focused almost exclusively on our specific and individual interactions with police officers. The questions asked of the focus groups refused to acknowledge that my individual experience with a police officer (or non-experience based on my perceived race and gender as a white man) would completely skew the data and that the targeted enforcement activities in primarily poor communities that were coded racially as Black or Hispanic would be discounted or omitted because that information was systemic (not individually-based experience) and not within the scope of the survey. (It may have also been the case that the researchers weren’t able to gain access to police records, which would severely stymie their efforts at exposing systemic police violence. Of course, assuming that was their goal, which it didn't seem to be.) We raised these concerns with each question presented to us and each time the research assistant would make a note about our objection to the question, the line of questions, or the limited—even cosmetic—kinds of questions that were driving the survey.

This kind of focus, an individual’s interaction with law enforcement (rather than how violent the department is and what its goals/targets are and why—and further—who decides what those goals and targets are) becomes the litmus test for how well a police department functions and how much it is “liked” by the community (which community?) it “serves.” It is rare for systemic violence in a police department to be reported on in a longitudinal study where actual use of force complaints are tracked for one department over the course of decades. Some of that may have to do with who’s contracting with who (in the above example, the RPD contracted with the CPSI to do the study) or the barriers to getting actual information on topics, cases, and outcomes for situations that led to police violence because of transparency laws, such as New York State Civil Rights Law Section 50-a.

Alexander’s book is autobiographical. Therefore my argument that Alexander focuses entirely too little on systems may be an unfair critique. That said, I’ve chosen a few examples where Alexander is telling his personal story and then extrapolates that experience to everyone. The insidiousness of that tactic in his writing is that he’s floating assumptions past the reader, which may or may not be caught because the reader is trying to move forward with his personal narrative. Alexander’s experience and the assumptions he makes (and is asking the reader to accept) are contained within the perspective of a law enforcement officer, which brings its own set of assumptions to the table, assumptions that average civilians or targeted civilians might vehemently disagree with.

Page 12 is one example. Alexander is discussing his entry into law enforcement and how his whole career was held in the balance by a presumably racist, white, southern sheriff. (Alexander is Black). He writes, “Whatever else he did for me that day—and just by signing his name in green ink, he did everything—Sheriff Raymond Hamlin taught me that people are just people, and most people have a surprisingly powerful and resilient need to do the right thing, especially if you give them a good reason to.” It’s an emotional hook meant to lay the groundwork for Alexander’s storied career. It’s simply people being people, one individual to another. Institutions and cultures play no role. There are simply too many variables that Alexander sets aside in his narrative. He may have just got lucky. I’m speculating. There’s a similar instance of this on page 17. Here Alexander talks about there being a lot of distrust between him and other officers because of his race and his co-workers’ “redneck ways.” But this, Alexander tells us, was overcome overtime as they started to see each other as “brother officers.” That terms evokes for me the “thin blue line,” the line that demarcates the boundary between the public sphere and the police sphere; the line that establishes opacity to patterns and practices of abuse; it’s a line not to be crossed. I met a retired RPD officer a few years back. He was also Black. Until he and several other officers of color brought a suit against the department for racial discrimination, he had been treated like a second class officer. He could not arrest white people, he was forced to sit in the back of the police car, where arrested suspects would sit, on route to crime scenes. If he spoke up, he would be retaliated against by the super majority white police department. (Mind you, this was the late 1960s and 1970s, not today). However, at the same meeting, there were two current Black police officers as well (2014) and they spoke about how their union represented white officers and not Black ones, at least that’s how it felt to them. They also talked about the ongoing racism within the department and how negative the environment could get. These examples are a tiny piece of the systemic and institutional factors that are not addressed by Alexander in his writing. It seemed to me that, whenever he could, Alexander would talk about a personal experience and then quickly extrapolate that experience into something societal.

One last example: on page 205 Alexander writes, “…crime in the Scott Projects, the kind of subsidized public housing that became infamous in the 1980s as incubators of gang violence, drugs, and what we would today properly call domestic terror.” In this section of the book, he’s talking about how community policing positively impacted the residents of low-income public housing but lumps them and their sometimes desperate situations (with utter government mismanagement, racial discrimination, displacement, and corruption) with domestic terrorism. It’s not the white kids in the suburbs with guns who are the focus and potential domestic terrorists, but the poor and working people of color who are the targets. In this section, Alexander isn’t so much talking about personal experience, but rather trying to make an abstract point about community policing and inadvertently(?) calls vulnerable populations of Americans domestic terrorists. The assumptions he’s been floating by the reader throughout the book go part and parcel with the assumptions he makes about the people in the Scott Projects. It’s an example of his personal experience (and success?) with community policing being used to paint whole populations of people as terrorists. The residents become a foil to his policing.

3: Trust the state:
“We all need to do the simple but harsh math: either a community supports law enforcement or accepts lawlessness,” (p. 89) writes Alexander. And a few pages earlier, he reminds us that “The police are not going away.” Trust is built upon mutual respect, consent, communication, and action. It is not something that can simply be imposed on people. The very idea of a former law enforcement officer is telling folks that there is no alternative (TINA! Thanks Margaret Thatcher!), the police are here, accept this or declare chaos, means that trust was never the intention, but rather compliance. In fact, Alexander’s writing throughout his book gives me the creeps. There is absolutely no consent at all in his plea for community police relations. It is simply, you’re with us or against us. You love us or hate us. There is no nuance, no complexity, and no choice. Civilians are expected to fall in line and trust the police… or else. And it’s the latent threat he deploys (along with false equivalencies) that paint Americans as either with the good guys, the poli—I mean, guardians—or the bad guys, the terrorists.

Folks, we have rights. Those (theoretical) rights were established at the founding of this country. Those rights have expanded and remain flexible to some degree. We can use these rights to protect ourselves from the tyranny of the state. (All the absolute goddamned injustice scrolled out in the original document, accepted, of course.)  By the word “state” I mean the territory of the US (or any country) and it’s culture, politics, economics, and decision-making and law enforcement apparatuses. The state has vast resources and when it targets an individual, it can be a terrifying and life changing situation. The rights established in the Bill of Rights, give us some protection (theoretically) from the tyranny of the government. It’s good to have and exercise rights (when one can within the specific racial, cultural, political, and economic spheres of life around the individual). Police are bureaucrats (with guns) who represent the state and they happen to have the most exposure to civilians. We, as civilians, can be civil (or not), cordial (or not), kind (or not), but there is no law or provision that calls for us, as civilians, to allow the state (e.g. police) into our homes or compels us to trust them (or be civil, cordial, or kind). In fact, based on the last 200+ years of this country, a good case can be made for why, say, Black Americans might have no interest in trusting a state that enslaved their bodies for free labor and once freed from bondage created other oppressive systems (Black Codes, Convict-Lease, Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration, etc.) to condtinue the legacies of slavery as well as hinder their advancement.

That all said, Alexander would like us to consider the virtues of professional accountability. He writes, “Non-punitive peer reviews are not intended to take the place of legal and administrative inquiries and investigations. But such reviews do introduce another level of accountability. Call it professional accountability. It requires everyone participating to have a commitment to improving the systems within which they work.” (p. 207) Alexander suggests we allow the department to conduct these non-punitive peer reviews in order to improve the department. The problem of course is that over 15 years (in Rochester), internally, the department has failed to hold its officers accountable administratively or otherwise. Why, with such a horrible track record, would civilians accept their terms of accountability through the adding of another layer of bureaucracy that is in no way transparent or accountable to the public? Why would civilians desire to allow the department to do this? There’s little trust. Unless of course it’s one of those compelled trust ideas that doesn’t really mean trust but is rather a way of securing some kind of compliance. At this point, any attempt at "professional accountability" that cuts out actual transparency and accountability is just a public relations stunt.

4. War / no war:
Throughout the book Alexander does this obnoxious thing where on the one hand he claims that the police and community must work together to become some kind of ideal society. At the same time he seems to dismiss the idea of systemic violence (poverty, racism, red lining, lack of affordable housing, lack of quality education, lack of jobs, police violence, etc.) in favor of police/military solutions to crime. And beyond that, he defines the people who struggle daily with systemic violence as domestic or international terrorists.

On page 118, Alexander writes, “On October 1, 2015, a six-month old girl was shot on Cleveland’s East Side. She was being driven by her grandmother, strapped safely in an infant car seat. She was the youngest of three children shot and killed in that neighborhood within a month’s time, collateral damage in a perpetual gang war. This is domestic terrorism. [his emphasis]”

There are requirements for a federal domestic terrorism charge. It can't only mean the act of ending life or attempting to end life. It must also:

(i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping. (see: https://www.aclu.org/other/how-usa-pa...)

If the crime doesn’t meet the elements of the charge, then it isn’t domestic terrorism. This is why there are murder and manslaughter charges. If Alexander means terror in the dictionary sense of causing extreme fear and distress, then he might have a case. Based on other references he makes for the necessity of militarized police, my guess is he is trying to tie his argument to a legal standard, in which case he fails. (Mind you I’m not lawyer, just a critical reader.)

Further, look at Alexander's use of language in the above example. He calls the infant who was killed, "collateral damage" in a "perpetual gang war." He then calls this act domestic terrorism. This is the muddying of terms and communities I've been discussing. The language he uses implies warfare. "Collateral damage" is what happens to civilians when states engage in their own kind of terrorism: war. Mass casualties are collateral damage. "Perpetual gang war" is language that very closely mirrors the language used by many U.S. administrations when discussing the current Global War On Terror. Instead of a perpetual war on terror, Alexander refashions the phrase to suit his purposes, transposing the language of war and terror onto some of the most desperate communities in the country and then labels them domestic terrorists. This is horribly offensive and again asks readers to take a side: the cops or the terrorists. There. Is. No. Alternative.

On page 123, Alexander writes, “Communities cannot do this alone [creating a strong and secure community], police agencies cannot do this alone, even working together, they cannot achieve the level of solidarity, security, and value that will trump the hollow, lethal, and fraudulent value propositions of the local street gang or the global terrorist organization.”

Quotes like the above, with their false equivalences and muddying of terms and communities, is why I feel like Alexander is trying to make a legal argument when he talks about the shooting of the infant and how that is domestic terrorism with the insinuation that street gangs in America are somehow the same as international terrorist organizations like ISIS. Alexander wants to have his cake and eat it to. Or perhaps, he wants to be so inconsistent that anyone can draw any conclusion from his writing, And since he’s a former Chief of Police and now a deputy mayor, his writing has the imprimatur of the state. It’s official. Whatever it is he’s trying to convey.

Now, when I say Alexander wants to have his cake and eat it too, there’s a great example of this on page 135:

“When police act like the Redcoats at the Boston Massacre, citizens have both the right and the responsibility to hold them accountable to the same laws to which they themselves are held accountable. They are justifiably enraged even by the appearance that brutal officers are being unfairly shielded or when attempts are made to justify a militaristic response by claiming that ‘it’s a war out there.’ Make no mistake, the level of violence in some of our most troubled communities does at times approach a level resembling warfare. It is also true that, post-9/11, police departments do have to be prepared to handle potential terrorist situations, battles in a ‘war on terror’ that can break out on any street corner, any building, any neighborhood any time. But it is a catastrophic error to confuse either of these warlike scenarios with an actual state of war in our communities. To do so, transforms the metaphor of war into something very like the reality of war. Treating a community as enemy territory creates a community of enemies.”

The first section of this paragraph appeals to American sensibilities of fairness, justice, and accountability. On the face of it, I agree. Of course, the caveat is that while Americans have a sense of justice and fairness, make no mistake that there is a level of violence in some “troubled communities” that pales in comparison to whatever the Redcoats did during the Boston Massacre. Now, spinning this doubt, Alexander takes us down the rabbit hole and equates the violence he mentions in those “troubled communities” with that of the events from 9/11/01. And then to rub in the fear, he tells us that at any moment, anywhere, terrorism could happen. AND then he back peddles and begs us not to confuse these war-like scenarios with actual war and that treating communities (perhaps “troubled communities”) as enemy territory creates enemies.

This fear mongering and intentional conflating of international terrorism with the everyday struggle to survive in America is disgusting. Alexander doesn’t consider alternatives to reducing systemic violence or inequality. He makes justifications for militarized police. He also refuses to give any kind of analysis of terrorism or why it happens. He simply shoves fear in our faces and asks readers to use their imaginations as to what that random terror event could be. It’s such base and hollow writing. It preys upon the prejudices, fears, and assumptions of people without offering any kind of actual, critical analysis. In short, it’s enraging.

On page 139, Alexander assures us that militarized police and police using military tactics is nothing to be feared because there is appropriate use and inappropriate use: “[Radley] Balko’s book [Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces] is perhaps most valuable not so much for criticizing the militarization of the police, but for exposing and exploring the inappropriate militarization and the inappropriate use of military-grade tactics, weapons, and force.”

There are other pages beyond this one where he states that 21st century policing must use community policing strategies and military SWAT-style weapons and tactics simultaneously (page 179). And then on page 188, to muddy the waters some more, he claims that a “good officer must be both local and global in focus. The fight against local crime is, in the broadest sense, part of the fight against terrorism (page 188).” What does “in the broadest sense” mean? He elucidates this farther down on the page: “It takes an educated, curious, disciplined imagination to see such links between ‘common’ criminality and terrorism.” If the fight against local crime is also the fight against terrorism, then a special group of people (guardians?) who are “educated” and “curious” with a “disciplined imagination” (doesn’t that sound like any oxymoron?) are the only people who can see the “common” links between criminality on a daily level and terrorism. Those special people? Law enforcement. And he suggests all law enforcement go to college to discipline their imaginations so they too can see the “common” linkages. Ugh. This book. And his use of language. It's all so problematic.

The Ugly:
There's lots of ugly here too. For instance, Alexander tries to float a lot of underlying assumptions by readers that I’ve outlined above. One of my favorites is the presumption that people want the police. Alex Vitale in his book The End of Policing critiques the mission creep of police into civil society. So instead of communities being given resources and using their collective consciousness to find solutions to problems that actually addresses the day to day struggles of individuals, these communities are told horrible things that could happen to them and thus they need the police. Vitale’s argument is that over the last 40 years, police have moved into all facets of civil society. Officers will never get enough training to handle every issue. They will never be everything to everyone. And at worst, they resort to force and hurt people. Vitale argues instead that the mission of police should be severely scaled back and those saved resources be poured back into targeted communities. He also calls for resources to be allocated toward people in professional capacities who have expertise and knowledge on childhood development, mental health, and social work, etc. He suggests that dumping resources on a crime-fighting institution that is then expected to solve societal problems with those resources is unrealistic and has not happened.

There is also the assumption that “Police are not going away (page 84).” Now, with what Vitale argues in his book and with what contemporary abolitionists have been saying for decades–that if priorities in society were changed and resources went to places of need, then the assumption that we need police might in fact evaporate. What if we start from the assumption that we as a community get to decide if we need or want police and in what capacity? That’s a different approach but it might actually lead to some honest conversation and problem solving rather than to immediately take that possibility off the table.

“The prevailing anonymity is incompatible with trust. And if residents and police do not feel they have a mutual stake in the community whose very space they share, trust will never develop (page 85).” Here again is the insistence that we need the police and that there must be trust. In Rochester, NY, over 90% of our police force does not live in our city. They are not people of our community. They are outsiders who come into the city to police neighborhoods, some more aggressively than others. They have a limited stake in the community: they get paid by the tax payers of Rochester (the lowest paid officer got over $50k, not counting benefits or overtime), they over and aggressively police the most vulnerable people in our city (those that tend to be poor and people of color); they use force if their aggressive demeanor doesn’t immediately get compliance, and then they go back home to the suburbs or outside of the metro area entirely and get zero discipline for their misconduct.

Another ugly thing about this book is Alexander’s self-aggrandizement. He can talk to anyone. (Doesn’t necessarily change the system, though.) He’s improved Rochester’s department and moved onto bigger and better opportunities in his career. (No looking back, no reflection, no doubt. He can do it and we just need to try harder.) I know it’s a partial auto-biography, but still. Good autobiographies usually include some doubt and reflection from the author. Not Alexander.

Along with the underlying assumptions and self-aggrandizement, I must have ticked off several places in the book where I was asked to accept Alexander’s personal knowledge of an incident or issue with no corroborating information or evidence. That was really frustrating. Here’s one example: “Moreover, many years of law enforcement experience, bolstered by research, demonstrates that informal social control, inculcated within the community, is often more effective than formal punishment, at the hands of the justice system, at reducing crime in a neighborhood.” What research is my first question. There is no footnote telling me where to look. I’m expected to believe his statement because he has experience. I have no doubt about his experiences, and he’s free to share them, but I want to know what research specifically he is thinking of when he writes that. A second, telling statement is that informal social control, presumably inculcated in the community BY THE POLICE, offers a more effective way of dealing with crime than by just using police directly. This is a great expression of the failure of what’s called police-community relations. The police have an agenda, they hold a community meeting, listen to neighbors, the neighbors listen to the cops, and the cops have the power to implement their agenda, hopefully after inculcating some support via neighborhood leaders. It’s really quite insidious. Williams talks specifically about third-party policing. Basically, the police put pressure on, say, a neighborhood association because the police see an issue with a business. The neighborhood association then writes to the zoning board, the liquor authority, the neighbors, etc. telling them all about this problem place as well as informing them of what the police think. Perhaps then neighbors get upset at the business or the neighborhood association starts putting pressure on the business to change its behavior. It’s not the police doing it directly, but it is the police working civil levers for their own agenda.

In Rochester, the strategy of police-community relations has been bandied about for over a half century. It hasn’t led to constitutional policing. It hasn’t led to an end of police brutality or murder. It hasn’t ended what’s called crime. It is a failed strategy that needs to be replaced with a strategy of actual police accountability. This strategy would give the community the power to hold officers accountable for their misconduct and the institution for its policies. Concurrently, the community could articulate how political and economic priorities within the municipality could change to work for people and help lift them up rather than have those same resources be use to further pound them into the ground.

There are plenty of issues with Alexander's book. Some of them are outlined above. It's important to keep these issues in mind and critically listen when we hear him on the media, lecture to groups of people, and deploy policy from the Warren administration. But don't take my word for it. Read Alexander's book. Read the Republic. Don't buy the hype (or the book, unless you can get it from a local used bookstore or the library.) Anything less is a threat to democracy.

Related: Community Forum: Police Accountability Board Update & Action | Panel on the overhaul of bail, speedy trial & discovery laws in New York State | Community demands Police Accountability Board with discipline | The Intersection of Black Lives Matter and Palestine