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Above the Law. Police and the Excessive Use of Force, by Jerome H. Skolnick and James J. Fyfe. New York: Free Press, 1994 313 pp. $12.95 paper. ISBN: 0-02-929153-4.
Many issues in urban American policing could command our attention, including crime, corruption, and the cost of modern police services, but the most explosive is excessive use of force. Skolnick and Fyfe show that the excessive use of force by police can be traced far back into its history as a social institution in America. But only since the urban riots of the 1960s, which were precipitated by community perceptions of excessive force, has police brutality been seen as a potential cause of social upheaval on the scale of national disasters.
Above the Law answers three major questions: What are the occasions for police brutality? How can it be explained? How can it be remedied? Underlying these questions they see another: What makes a good cop a good cop? Skolnick and Fyfe round up for interrogation all the major works of police scholarship of the past three decades. Their answers to the...