Beaten Black And Blue

“Defund the police!” is shouted in the streets. A.C.A.B. is spray painted on precinct buildings. Countless citizens believe all police are racists. In this era of civil unrest and political divide, how do Black cops—or any cops—maintain the motivation and commitment to do their job? Former police officer, co-founder of BLEXIT, and Founder and CEO of The Officer Tatum—Brandon Tatum shares his story and the stories of other police officers in the pages of his new book, Beaten Black and Blue. Read why they joined the force, what it’s really like on the streets, and how they continue to fight the good fight. Forget what you think you know and learn the truth!

The hallucinogenic roller coaster of a ride, one man trying to discover his place in this enigmatic labyrinth called life. Upsetting, challenging on the senses, somewhat irrational with a dark sense of humour. An abandoned baby thrown to the wolves, a child beaten black & blue, forced to hide from domestic violence and neglect. The agonizing journey of a tortured soul trying to find his place in the world. Determination and sheer will to overcome all odds, battling drug & alcohol addiction, mental health and all its side dishes, I had no other place to go. To see the light I had to die, after several failed attempts at suicide and a near death experience the cold dark blanket still wouldn’t let me in. I suppose I had to live, at the end of line with nothing to lose, battered and broken, I finally spoke, a victim, a survivor with something to say to the world, “I’m not alone, we are not alone”.

What’s it really like to be a Black police officer in today’s America? “Defund the police!” is shouted in the streets. A.C.A.B. is spray painted on precinct buildings. Countless citizens believe all police are racists. In this era of civil unrest and political divide, how do Black cops—or any cops—maintain the motivation and commitment to do their job? Former Tucson police officer—and current host of The Brandon Tatum Show—Brandon Tatum, shares his story and the stories of other police officers in the pages of his new book, Beaten Black and Blue. Read why they joined the force, what it’s really like on the streets, and how they continue to fight the good fight. Forget what you think you know and learn the truth!

A 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor book, and recipient of the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature. In this New York Times bestselling novel, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension. A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the concrete pavement? There were witnesses: Quinn Collins—a varsity basketball player and Rashad’s classmate who has been raised by Paul since his own father died in Afghanistan—and a video camera. Soon the beating is all over the news and Paul is getting threatened with accusations of prejudice and racial brutality. Quinn refuses to believe that the man who has basically been his savior could possibly be guilty. But then Rashad is absent. And absent again. And again. And the basketball team—half of whom are Rashad’s best friends—start to take sides. As does the school. And the town. Simmering tensions threaten to explode as Rashad and Quinn are forced to face decisions and consequences they had never considered before. Written in tandem by two award-winning authors, this four-starred reviewed tour de force shares the alternating perspectives of Rashad and Quinn as the complications from that single violent moment, the type taken directly from today’s headlines, unfold and reverberate to highlight an unwelcome truth.

Whatever your position is on Black Lives Matter, defunding the police, and equity in law enforcement, former police chief Carmen Best shares the leadership lessons she learned as the first Black woman to lead the Seattle Police Department—a personal insider story that will challenge your assumptions on how to move the country forward. Chief Carmen Best has spent the last 28 years as a member of a big-city police force, an institution where minorities and women have historically found it especially difficult to succeed. She defied the odds and became the first Black woman to lead the Seattle Police Department. During her tenure, she was successful in bringing significantly more diversity to the force. However, when the city council cut her budget amid months of protests against police violence, she had no choice but to step aside. Without the city’s support, she felt she wouldn’t be able to continue changing the status quo of the police force from within. Throughout her career, Chief Best has learned lessons that those coming up behind her can benefit from. In this book, she will use her story to share those urgent lessons. Readers will read about: How Chief Best grew up to believe in the change she set out to create. Her early days in the police force, including lessons from the academy and her time on patrol. How she progressed in her career within a primarily white law enforcement culture and the events that led to her becoming Chief. How she built her team and overcame the politics involved in her high-level position until the call for defunding came. Carmen Best teaches readers the core qualities and mindset to persevere and rise through the ranks, even within a workplace whose culture and leadership must be challenged, and policies changed on the way to achieving that vision. Her motivating story serves as a master class in guiding principles for anyone striving to serve their community and rise to the highest echelon of success.

Let me first state, without any equivocation, I DO NOT condone the senseless murders. However, I do UNDERSTAND. It is my hope that this book will help to make sense out of the nonsense that was instrumental in the creation of a manifesto and the wrong thinking of one individual who challenged the LAPD machine. I pray for the families affected by the violence that God will grant you a peace that will surpass all understanding. I, too, was betrayed and beaten down by the LAPD system. I was wrongly charged with giving false and misleading statements and ordered to an arbitrary and capricious Board of Rights (BOR). The BOR members are LAPD command staff officers and have a vested interest in adjudicating personnel complaints in a manner which protects the department and the City of LA, by any means necessary. These biased BOR decisions have resulted in numerous civil suits by officers, BOR termination reversals, and officer reinstatements. LAPD's problems and internal struggles, which precipitated the creation of the Christopher Commission in 1991, are the same issues facing the department in 2013; they're cultural and systemic. The department crafts an image of any officer who complains in such a way that makes that officer appear distasteful, and therefore anything that they say or do is rejected. However, I am an honorably retired police sergeant who's willing to expose the department's two-tiered system of discipline and the manner in which the LAPD condones acts of sexism, racism, and reverse racism. I could have created a manifesto-I chose a different path.

Contains author's "afterthoughts" and a reading group guide.

Let's begin with the basics: violence is an inherent part of policing. The police represent the most direct means by which the state imposes its will on the citizenry. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent. Using media reports alone, the Cato Institute's last annual study listed nearly seven thousand victims of police "misconduct" in the United States. But such stories of police brutality only scratch the surface of a national epidemic. Every year, tens of thousands are framed, blackmailed, beaten, sexually assaulted, or killed by cops. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on civil judgments and settlements annually. Individual lives, families, and communities are destroyed. In this extensively revised and updated edition of his seminal study of policing in the United States, Kristian Williams shows that police brutality isn't an anomaly, but is built into the very meaning of law enforcement in the United States. From antebellum slave patrols to today's unarmed youth being gunned down in the streets, "peace keepers" have always used force to shape behavior, repress dissent, and defend the powerful. Our Enemies in Blue is a well-researched page-turner that both makes historical sense of this legalized social pathology and maps out possible alternatives.