Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US [Paperback]

InPolicing Empires, Julian Go offers a postcolonial historical sociology of police militarization in Britain and the United States. He tracks when, why, and how British and US police departments have adopted military tactics, tools, and technologies for domestic use. Using both secondary and primary archival sources, Go reveals that police militarization has occurred since the very founding of modern policing. This book thereby unlocks the dirty secret of police militarization: Police have brought the imperial boomerang home to militarize themselves in response to perceived racialized threats from minority and immigrant populations.The police response to protests erupting on America's streets in recent years has made the militarization of policing painfully transparent. Yet, properly demilitarizing the police requires a deeper understanding of its historical development, causes, and social logics.Policing Empiresoffers a postcolonial historical sociology of police militarization in Britain and the United States to aid that effort. Julian Go tracks when, why, and how British and US police departments have adopted military tactics, tools, and technologies for domestic use. Go reveals that police militarization has occurred since the very founding of modern policing in the nineteenth century into the present, and that it is an effect of the imperial boomerang. Policing Empiresthereby unlocks the dirty secret of police militarization: Police have brought imperial practices home to militarize themselves in response to perceived racialized threats from minority and immigrant populations.AcknowledgementsPrefaceIntroduction: A Civil Police?The Coloniality of Policing1. The Birth of the Civil Police in London, 18292. Cotton Colonialism and the New Police in the US and England, 1830s-1850sThe New Imperialism at Home3. Police Reform and the Colonial Boomerang in the US, 1890s-1930s4. Our Problems...are not so DiflÃ/