In his new book “The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism and Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement” (Hachette, 238 pp., ★★★ out of four), police veteran Matthew Horace attempts to speak truth to sometimes lethal power.
Horace, who’s African-American, presents a clear-eyed, often wrenching take on the tensions that exist between police and communities of color from the vantage point of a 28-year career spent patrolling the streets and supervising officers from Camden, New Jersey, to Colorado Springs.
There is frank discussion about bigoted cops, outdated procedures and fledgling signs of reform. In between, Horace offers testimonials from black law enforcement officers, many of whom entered the profession reluctantly but went on to have lauded careers. They speak of the tightrope they walk, between black citizens whose experiences with the law have left them weary and colleagues who are resistant to change.
Still, the most powerful voice in “The Black and the Blue”is Horace’s own, steady, forthright and rooted in his experiences on both sides of the blue line. (The book was written with formerLos Angeles Times reporter Ron Harris.)
Horace understands how decisions officers make can go awry in a split second. He has also been racially profiled, and once, eight years into his career, found himself splayed on the ground as a white officer pointed a gun at his head.
He notes the camaraderie he has felt among his law enforcement peers yet doesn’t downplay that the conscious and implicit bias plaguing broader society infects station houses and bureaus, as well.
Horace offers some glimpses of hope. In New Orleans, for instance, home to what was one of the most corrupt departments in the country, police superintendent Michael Harrison has implemented new initiatives and fired not only officers who use unjustified force but those who witness it and say nothing.
“The Black and the Blue” is an affirmation of the critical need for criminal justice reform, all the more urgent because it comes from an insider who respects his profession yet is willing to reveal its flaws.
Scrolling through its pages can be disheartening. It is overwhelming to contemplate how to root out bias, and stop the killings of unarmed black citizens, when even officers caught committing such acts on videotape are usually acquitted, if they are charged at all.
Yet Amy Hunter says we must try.
In “The Black and the Blue,” Horace asks Hunter, a hospital manager who lives with her family in an affluent section of St. Louis, why she went to Ferguson, Missouri, and endured tear gas to protest the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown, whose shooting by police officer Darren Wilson in 2014 proved a flash point in the movement to protect black lives.
Hunter recounted that one day, her 12-year-old son was stopped and searched by police as he walked home. The officers claimed he fit the description of a grown man wielding a machete.
Her son asked if he’d been treated that way because he was black, then, with tears in his eyes, asked how long such treatment would last.
“For the rest of your life,’’ she told him. “That’s why I went to Ferguson. I want this to stop.’’