Customer Reviews

Policing Space: Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police Department

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This work was insightful but it suffers from its largely anecdotal structure. Through the entire work, the author employs a "present a short scenario - analyze the short scenario" method. Though the author's analysis is commendable, his technique is rather tiring after a few chapters. However, if you are patient and seriously interested in the aspects of police patrol and territoriality, you should enjoy it... just be prepared for minor de ja vu.

All I can say is that this is a wonderful book. I had to read it for his class (A fantastic professor as well) and it ended up being a pleasure to read. I couldn't put it down. It ia facinating and truthful look at the LAPD! I would recomend it to anyone who is interested in policing!

As a police officer, this book was disgusting. Obviously written by someone who hasn't seen a metropolitan city's guts for the last 20 years.
Written by somebody safe in the halls of academia, safe behind their computer screen. Try doing it longer than a "ride along", and see how your viewpoint is then.

Herbert, Steve. (1997). Policing Space. Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police Department. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Here is a terrific book. I picked it up at Urban Center Books, started to read it on the subway home, and couldn't put it down. It is pretty rare that I feel this about any book in our field. Much of what I read seems an obligation rather than a chosen pleasure. So I am writing this e-mail "Sounding" to encourage others to get familiar with this book. This is a short, intense book, probably Steve Herbert's dissertation rewritten into this popular (but informing) version. It consists of a minimal amount of introductory material, an exposition of "six `normative orders' central to the structure of police organizations," and a brief coda titled "Making and Marking Space with the LAPD." The interesting thing is that each of the six normative orders" is elaborately played out in physical space. You can imagine where Herbert is coming from given that an early subheading is titled, "Weber, Foucault, and the Microgeopolitics of State Power." (13.) I'm not even going to attempt to summarize his theoretical position in this brief Sounding, but I will write out the following quotation (which I won't indent, because it would probably get screwed up in an e-mail): "Society, Culture, and Space" "Just as social-structural works often neglect the shaping influence of culture, they also regularly overlook the spatial embeddeness of social action...Analysis of everyday police behavior, in other words, must pay attention not only to its social and cultural construction, but also to its intractable spatiality; in working to uphold socially constructed notions of public order, officers seek to control the spaces they patrol." (20-21.) Well, isn't that something that you would want to read on about? It was so for me. The body of the book has six chapters, each describing and complexifying the six spatially expressed "normative orders." These are; [1] "...law, which by legislative fiat defines the permissible parameters of police action [rooted in, among other things, what space is public and what space is private]; [2] bureaucratic regulations, which seek to determine police procedures more finely through a set of rules that establish a chain of command [and which ascribe control of particular spaces to particular--sometimes competing--subdivisions of the bureaucracy]; [3] adventure/machismo, which constitutes the police as courageous individuals who embrace danger as a test of individual ability [and who choose to be or not be in particular places at particular times]; [4] safety, which establishes a set of practices to protect the police from undue harm [and which means that police are trained to walk close to buildings (so they may surprise whomever is inside), keep their cruiser windows rolled down (to be able to hear shots being fired) and their seat belts unfastened (to get out fast) in `dangerous' neighborhoods]; [5] competence, which suggests that police should be able to control the public areas for which they are responsible; and [6] morality, which infuses police practice with a sense of right and goodness, in essence because it helps protect society from `bad guys' [who are located in particular places]." For each of the six "normative orders," Herbert writes a multifaceted analysis based on his eight months of participant observation field notes. Herbert's work was done as a participant observer in The Wilshire Division of the LAPD. His opportunity to do this research was because of efforts to reform the "overly professionalized" LAPD, an effort resulting largely from the brutal beating of Rodney King. Thus, Herbert was in a rare historical situation where he had access that would ordinarily be denied. His challenge was to make useful sense of what he observed in a manner that would explain police behavior in ways that even the police might find enlightening. Thus, this is not an "expose" of police behavior. Reading this book makes it clearer why cops become so righteously incensed at people who try to run away from them or angry at gangs who tag neighborhoods with graffiti or even dismissive of their fellow police who choose not to go for the most arrests in the most dangerous areas. (These latter cops are called "Station Queens." How homophobic!) Over the past six years I've tried to march with ILGO (Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization) in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. (I really don't want to be associated with that awful display, but I express my right to march in a public event regardless of my sexuality.) Every year, despite the fact that the protest has been peaceful the previous year, the police bring up the most awesome array of artillery that you can imagine. There are literally blocks lined with vans and communication units and equipment of unimaginable uses. There are hundreds of police dressed up in riot gear. It has always seemed a bit of a mystery to me just why it is so important to the police that they display this kind of out of whack response to a few hundred peaceful protesters. After all, there are real problems in New York that could be attended to. This book helps me understand their need to control space and to deny my challenge to their control.