Hailings hardly ever miss their man.
Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” 1971
Even if we’re innocent, our parents say:
“How come they caught you if you didn’t do anything?”
Friend of the boys who were electrocuted at Clichy-sous-Bois, 2005
December 31, 2006, 7 p.m. In a large conurbation in outer Paris,
three smartly dressed teenagers are waiting for their bus in the rain,
close to a small public housing project. They are planning to spend
New Year’s Eve with friends in the neighboring town. The older two
are 16, and are long-time friends. The third is 13, the cousin of one
of the other boys. He is visiting his uncle for the holidays. The three
adolescents have been standing under the shelter for a few minutes
when they see a group of five youths run past, jump into a car and
speed off. At that moment a riot-police van that has been patrolling
the neighborhood appears. Its occupants seem not to have noticed
any of this brief flurry of activity. As they pass, they look the boys
at the bus stop up and down, and continue on their leisurely patrol.
A while later, a police vehicle roars up and halts with a squeal of
brakes in front of the three teenagers, who are still waiting for their
transportation. Three uniformed officers jump out, call out to the
boys brusquely, ask for their papers, search them roughly and question
them about what they are doing there. Apparently satisfied with
the answers they receive, they get back into their car to radio details
back to the station.
Prologue
Interpellation
2	 Enforcing Order
At this point, the youngsters are still under the impression that this
was no more than a routine identity check. The two cousins are
Mauritanian. Their friend was born in Ecuador, and, all three living
in the banlieues, they know from experience that, for them, venturing
outside of their home means being frequently exposed to such stops
and frisks, which all follow the same humiliating routine – hands on
the door of the police car, pockets emptied of their contents on the
hood, body searched, legs apart – a ritual that is almost always performed
in public, in front of local residents, who will later pass
comment on the scene. They have already undergone many similar
checks, at different times of day and in different places, while merely
waiting for a friend at the train station or walking in the street. While
they resent the situation, they are not particularly worried. They have
nothing to feel guilty about, and, anyway, have they not shown compliance
in submitting without complaint? They are unaware at this
point that the police have just called for reinforcements.
Another car, this one unmarked because it belongs to the anticrime
squad (BAC, “brigade anti-criminalité”), arrives almost immediately,
followed by two vans of riot police (CRS, “Compagnies républicaines
de sécurité”), one of them being the one that was already cruising
the neighborhood. An officer audibly expresses his relief at this
massive support for the squad assigned to the area, which is deemed
sensitive on this New Year’s Eve, a night which has seen a number
of cars set on fire over the last several years. Five officers, two in
plain-clothes, now surround the teenagers. One of their riot police
colleagues, armed with a Flash-Ball, an impressive non-lethal handheld
weapon, stands nearby; the others have remained in the vans.
The tone has hardened. The three boys are searched again, and asked
the same questions about what they are doing at this late hour. The
uniformed law enforcement agents who checked them the first time
do not seem surprised that they have not attempted to flee, despite
the markedly conspicuous arrival of reinforcements. The riot-police
officers who passed by a few minutes earlier do not seem inclined to
inform their colleagues that they saw the youngsters waiting quietly
at the bus stop. Yet when they had recognized the officers who had
scrutinized them in the dark, the boys had felt reassured, imagining
that they would attest to their innocence. They are now disabused of
this idea. “Bring them in,” comes the curt command from one of the
officers.
Shivering in the rain, the boys offer no resistance. Nevertheless,
they are handcuffed, hands behind their backs. The officer fitting the
cuffs on the youngest remarks, laughing: “I’ve put them on backwards.”
And indeed the adolescent, who does not dare complain, has
	 Prologue – Interpellation	 3
his arms and body twisted into a painful position which he has to
endure for the duration of the trip to the precinct. Throughout this
trying ordeal, the three boys have remained silent, simply stating that
they have not done anything wrong and were only waiting for their
bus. Local residents have gathered around them in the dark, though
they keep a careful distance. They are surprised to recognize their
own children’s friends being manacled like criminals. Witnessing the
substantial police deployment and the unexpected recourse to physical
restraint, they imagine that the affair is serious.
During the journey the youngest is separated from the others. After
a moment of silence, an officer in the car carrying the older two asks:
“Do you know why you’re here? – No sir. – There’s no point pretending,
we know it’s you. – But we haven’t done nothing, sir.” Faced
with what he interprets as a refusal to cooperate, the officer switches
to intimidation: “Anyway we know it’s you. So here’s what’s going
to happen. We’re gonna hold you for twenty-four hours.” He adds
sarcastically: “Do you want to know your rights? You can ask for a
lawyer or a doctor. And since you’re minors, we’ll even call your
parents.” Minutes later, the cell phone of one of the older boys rings
in his pocket. He recognizes the ring tone: “It’s my father calling me,
sir. – So pick it up and answer him,” the police officer taunts the
handcuffed teenager, who can hardly move. At each bend in the road,
the officer sitting between the two boys in the back of the car pretends
to be thrown onto one or other, crushing them with all his weight
toward the door. The vehicles arrive in spectacular fashion at the
station, with flashing lights and sirens in virtually deserted streets.
Once inside, the interrogation resumes, this time individually, and
more roughly. The adolescents are commanded to take their hands
out of their pockets and submitted to insulting comments. An officer
passes close to them as their details are being taken, and makes a
derogatory remark about their skin color. His young colleague casts
an embarrassed glance toward the boys and laughs: “Hey, no, they’re
good-looking kids.” He tries to reassure them, telling them that if
they have not done anything they will be free to go. The older officers,
however, seem convinced of their guilt. They try to trick one of
the older two, whom they have taken aside: “Your cousin’s just
confessed. You’d do better to admit what you’ve done. – It isn’t possible,
sir. He can’t have confessed. We haven’t done anything.”
Between two interrogations, the three boys, relieved of their wallets,
watches and personal items, are led into a small room walled with
plexiglass panels, known as the “jar.” This is where suspects are held
while waiting for a decision to be made on their case, either to release
them or to keep them in custody. There are no chairs in the room,
4	 Enforcing Order
and its occupants withstand the mocking gaze of the police, amid the
fetid odor of urine from their predecessors who did not get access to
the toilets in time. The enclosure, the anxiety, the presence of other
more or less angry suspects, the taunts of the officers passing through
the adjacent room, all contribute to a psychological tension which is
supposed to encourage confessions.
After a lengthy interval, the teenagers are led into a corridor where
they are placed in front of a one-way mirror. A woman – the victim
of the crime they are accused of – is on the other side. She is there
to identify the individuals she maintains she saw from a distance, in
the dark, in the rain, running away after they committed it. Without
understanding what is expected of them, the three boys turn to show
themselves full-face and in profile in response to each order shouted
at them by an officer. Later they learn that the witness claimed to
recognize the two cousins, whom she described as “blacks dressed in
dark clothing.” But there is one troubling detail, which will prove
decisive: the third adolescent is wearing a hooded sweatshirt with
blue and white stripes, rendering it easily recognizable, whereas the
woman’s statement mentioned a similar garment in plain gray. In
these conditions it becomes difficult to confirm the teenagers’ guilt,
at least assuming that they were all three together. The boy who does
not conform to the description is therefore taken into another room
and interrogated once again by four officers. One of them puts the
deal in his hands: “Look, we know your mates messed up. The victim
recognized them. So you’ve got two choices. Either you tell us you
weren’t with them, then you can go. Or else you tell us you were
with them the whole time, and we throw you in the slammer. – But
I was with them the whole time, sir. – In that case you’re guilty, we’ll
put you in custody with your pals.” For a quarter of an hour, the
officers continue to try to persuade him to break solidarity with his
friends. Although he fears the consequences of stubbornly insisting
on what he knows to be the truth, the boy does not yield to pressure.
He is finally taken back to join the other two in the “jar.” They still
do not know what they are accused of, but remain convinced that
they will be placed in custody.
However, just as the victim’s testimony is inconclusive, a search
into the infamous “STIC” the Reported Crime Processing System
(Système de Traitement des Infractions Constatées), the national
crime database which holds information on all persons who have
come into contact with the police, including suspects who have been
exonerated and those who are simply victims, offers no evidence to
support the suspicion about the three boys: they are unknown to the
police. The captain therefore decides to call the parents of the two
	 Prologue – Interpellation	 5
older boys to inform them their children are being held at the police
station and they should come and collect them. They are given no
explanation as to the reasons for the police questioning. When the
two anxious fathers arrive, they are greeted by the captain, who
explains that a vehicle was damaged (the door was scratched) by a
group of teenagers close to the spot where the three boys were waiting
for their bus, and that their description seemed to match that of the
culprits. Although he acknowledges that in winter and at this time
of night, the majority of youths are clad in dark hooded sweatshirts,
making this a minimally distinguishing feature, he concludes, in a
threatening tone addressed toward the teenagers who are now being
released, and pointing to the one dressed in the striped shirt: “They’re
lucky he wasn’t wearing grey” – as if, rather than an error having
been made on the part of his colleagues, it was just a clever trick the
boys managed to play on the police. He clearly still suspects them
and is only sorry not to have been able to establish their guilt. Neither
he nor any of the other officers offers a word of apology for their
mistake and the distress it has caused.
It is almost midnight. The adolescents have spent more than four
hours with the police, under threat of being taken into custody. For
them, the New Year’s party is over. But, more than the disappointment
of their ruined evening, they resent the injustice they have suffered
and the indignity of the situation in which they found themselves:
being arrested in front of friends’ parents, the handcuffs, the
threats, the taunts, the insults, the racist comments – all of them
vexations that they realize they have endured because they live where
they live and they are who they are. If they had not been on the
outskirts of a public housing project, and if they had not been visibly
of non-European origin, they would not have become the “usual
suspects” for a banal misdemeanor and would not have had to experience
these humiliations.
The scene I describe here resembles many others I observed during
the course of the study of the police in the Parisian outer cities I
conducted between the months of May 2005 and June 2007. Usually
going out in the evening and at night, most often with the anticrime
squad, I witnessed many stops and frisks of young men taken in for
questioning in similar circumstances, which gave occasion for like
practices. This particular episode brings together in both exemplary
and banal form many of the ingredients of law enforcement interventions
in working-class neighborhoods: ineffective repression of crime
(the riot-police van passed the car carrying the young men fleeing the
scene of the crime without the officers on board paying any attention
to it, even after the event), made up for by the identification of
6	 Enforcing Order
unlikely culprits (the arrest represents an “act” that can be included
in administrative statistics for the crew that made it, and might even
have translated into an incident that would have been credited to
them as “solved,” had it not been for the non-matching clothing);
disproportionate character of the resources deployed (four vehicles
with approximately 15 officers, the brandishing of a Flash-Ball which
in principle is reserved for riot control or situations where the police
are exposed to physical danger) given the trivial situation (three
frightened teenagers, the youngest only 13 years old, who showed no
intention of resisting); finally, recourse to harassment (putting on
handcuffs in front of the friends’ parents) and intimidation (the reiterated
threat of custody).
An everyday scene of the life in the banlieues, in short, which at
least ended well, with the release of the three boys without charge.
It falls within the normal order of things. For the police, in fact, it
was no more than an ordinary identity check and properly conducted
interrogation, both justified by a reasonable suspicion of participation
in a criminal act. For the adolescents it was no more than a brush
with law enforcement, admittedly more traumatic than previous episodes,
but which they knew was not the first and assumed would not
be the last. And for me, it would have been just another observation
in my field notebook, had one of the three boys not been my son.
*
In a famous text on ideology, Louis Althusser proposes the distinctive
concept of interpellation.1
Taking the word in its customary sense of
hailing, rather than its juridical sense of formal police questioning
(since in French the same term, “interpellation,” means both), he
imagines the following scene. In the street, a police officer hails an
individual: “Hey, you there!” The hailed individual turns round: “By
this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he
becomes a subject.” His gesture shows, indeed, that he has recognized
that he himself is the individual hailed, either because he believes
himself more or less guilty of something, or because he feels targeted
for no reason. He has understood that “it was really him who was
hailed”; in other words, he has accepted the terms of the hail which
was addressed to him. This “little theoretical theatre” presents an
allegorical model of what we might call the elementary structure of
ideology which consists, paradoxically, in forcing individuals to
submit freely to the law and hence to become subjects. Thus, freedom
does not exclude subjection, but, rather, reinforces its legitimacy.
Broadening this proposition, we may posit that the state, through the
way it treats its citizens, “transforms individuals into subjects” who
	 Prologue – Interpellation	 7
recognize themselves in the condition imposed on them. In a democratic
space, however, this is not a simple process. Interpellation is a
complex and ambivalent phenomenon that Michel Foucault’s analysis
of power can help us to understand in more nuanced ways.2
On
the one hand, it proceeds by “subjection” (the individual submits to
domination, in this case that of the police), but, on the other, it is a
matter of “subjectification” (the individual constructs himself through
this identification, in this example on the basis of the social position
to which he is assigned). The political subject is therefore the product
of this dialectical relationship of subjection and subjectification,
through which the individual is assigned a place which he can either
recognize as his own, or reject.
Let us return to our initial scene. Playing on the two senses of the
word, the interpellation of the three youngsters can be grasped on
two levels of reading. First, in the literal, or juridical sense, interpellation
(police questioning) is the gesture in which they are stopped,
frisked, arrested, taken to the police station and finally released
without any further form of legal proceedings. Second, in the figurative,
and therefore political, sense, interpellation (ideological hailing)
is the action through which they discover that they are at the mercy
of police discretion – since they understand that it is not enough to
be innocent in order not to be deemed guilty – and above all through
which they become aware that what is happening to them is related
not to what they have done, but to what they represent. They learn
who they are to the gaze of others (“project youth” who can be
treated as they are treated, precisely because they have been constituted
as such, in social but also in racial terms). This questioning thus
represents a key moment in the experience of the three boys, different
as it is from that of teenagers of their age who live in less stigmatized
neighborhoods and do not bear such visible signs of their origin. On
one level, of course, this experience merely confirms what they already
knew – because other institutions, from primary school onwards, had
already taught it to them, because their parents or elders had warned
them about it, and ultimately because, in the more specific context
of their relations with the police, they had already, despite their young
age, been subject to identity checks and body searches on several
occasions – acts they understood were not carried out at random, but
related to what they represented in the eyes of the police. Nevertheless,
what they went through that New Year’s Eve was beyond anything
they had previously experienced. The brutality of the arrest, the
harshness of the language used, the lack of any justification for the
use of physical restraint, the powerlessness they felt in the face of
the omnipotence of law enforcement created a sort of accelerated
8	 Enforcing Order
apprenticeship, not only in a particular social order in which they had
just been assigned a place, but also in their own individual condition
of subjects with no choice but to resign themselves to accepting it.
This apprenticeship is much more than a simple coming to awareness.
It is “an experience,” in the strong, “vital” sense that Dewey
gives to this expression, in opposition to the everyday “flux” of
experiences3
– one of those moments that may not be important in
itself, but which becomes so because of what it means to the person
living through it. In short, an event that stands out from the ordinary
run of life and gains meaning after the fact. And this experience is
not merely an intellectual one. It is inscribed in the boys’ bodies – in
two distinct and complementary ways. On the one hand, they come
to understand what they embody in the eyes of society: “This is what
you are,” they are told. On the other, they internalize this representation
they are given of themselves: “Become what you are!” they are
ordered. This engagement of the body – embodiment and internalization
– is not entirely at a conscious level. It is experienced rather than
analyzed. It emerges through affects, first and foremost the fear that
certain individuals say they feel when they see the police – individuals
who not only have already had dealings with them, but also know
that, because of what they represent, they are particularly susceptible
to finding themselves once again subjected to distressing procedures
and insulting comments, and do not know how far all this might go.
At a deeper level, this humiliating and unjust experience often induces
a sense of shame and sometimes guilt which is all the harder to repress
because it is not based on any objective reality: the individual is
ashamed of the violence to which he has been subjected, and feels
guilty of a sin that he has not committed.
In the interview he granted me shortly after the riots of 2005, the
chief of police for the district in which I was then carrying out
research expressed his amusement and surprise at the attitude of
youngsters from the projects who, he said, would routinely run away
when they saw a police car. “So they’re running, but they don’t even
know why. I often have officers telling me that when they get somewhere
they see kids running away. They catch them and bring them
in to the station. And they find out they’ve done absolutely nothing.
So they ask them: ‘But why did you run off?’ It’s amazing: it must
be a Pavlovian reflex.” I refrained from replying that his description
of such a scenario seemed considerably more benign than what I had
already witnessed, but I could not hold back from suggesting that the
fact that the police officers chased after the youngsters when they saw
them run was perhaps a similar reflex. I am not sure he appreciated
the irony of my remark, but his observation seems to me illuminating.
	 Prologue – Interpellation	 9
Rather than a reflex, I would see this as an embodied memory:4
before
we even have time to think, the body remembers. What is manifested
in these frantic flights is past experience of interactions with the
police, and their occasionally playful aspects should not mask the
real base of irrepressible fear. In short, a sort of immune reaction
which, unlike that produced by vaccination, allows the danger to
which one is exposed to be recognized, but does not protect one from
it.
The death of two teenagers from Clichy-sous-Bois, news of which
triggered the riots of that fall, offers a tragic reminder of the irrepressible
power of this memory, and what it allows the individual to
anticipate.5
What is known is that a small group of boys were returning
home from a soccer game when they heard police sirens, saw
youths from their neighborhood running away and caught sight of a
plain-clothes police officer brandishing a Flash-Ball. Panicking, they
took flight, three of them seeking refuge in an electricity substation
where 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna were
electrocuted, while Muhittin Altun, also 17, suffered serious burns.
Contrary to what was immediately stated by the Ministry of the
Interior, the three boys had committed no crime, but, like the youngsters
referred to by the chief of police in his interview with me, they
had run off in fear, to escape the prospect of arrest and interrogation,
which would probably have ended less happily than the case I have
recounted above, since this incident took place in a town where relations
between youngsters and the police were much more strained.
The phrase “Dead for no reason,” which became the central slogan
in demonstrations in memory of Bouna Traoré and Zyed Benna,
emphasizes the extremes to which teenagers may be driven, informed
as they are by previous contact with law enforcement and therefore
terrified of the potential consequences of police questioning, whether
these consequences consist of being held in custody at the precinct
or being punished by their parents. Lawyers subsequently explained
that the boys fled because they did not have their identity documents
with them, but as my account above indicates, even if they did, they
could not have been certain they would avoid being arrested and
detained, particularly in a context in which the officers were searching
for teenagers suspected of breaking into a construction site. Thus,
while they were not subjected to “interpellation” in the legal sense
of questioning, the three youths were certainly “interpellated” in the
political meaning of being hailed: they understood that the police
might be after them; hearing sirens and seeing the Flash-Ball, they
“recognized” themselves, ran off and found somewhere to hide.
Although innocent, they behaved as if they were guilty, realizing that
10	 Enforcing Order
if they were caught they would be treated the same way regardless.
And when the minister of the interior accused them the following day
of a break-in which they were already known not to have committed,
he confirmed that they were right to fear that things would not go
well for them if they were taken to the precinct.
Nothing like that occurred, of course, in the episode I recounted
above. Readers will, moreover, have noted that, perhaps less experienced
in these dangerous liaisons with law enforcement, the three
teenagers did not move when the riot-police van passed the bus
shelter, or when the police car halted abruptly in front of them, or
even when they saw the three other vehicles arrive. Confident of being
within their rights, they thought this was nothing more than an ordinary
stop and search (at 16, my son had already experienced several
times what his father had never been exposed to during his entire
life). The three boys would no doubt be less trusting another time.
This “interpellation” had decidedly begun to bear fruit, constituting
them as docile subjects in the face of law enforcement. For my part,
I have to confess that I had anticipated such situations. When this
event transpired, I had already been engaged in researching the police
for a year and a half. Enlightened by my observations, I had begun
a rather special kind of civic education with my son and his friend,
explaining to them – not without deep discomfort – that in contemporary
France, the color of their skin made them susceptible to frequent
stops and frisks, and that, if they were faced with this kind of
situation, they should not react in any way, however they were treated
by the police. There was nothing very original in my approach: I later
learned that parents in the neighboring housing project had the same
conversations with their sons. Having to teach one’s children that
discrimination is an everyday fact and that they should remain docile
in the face of injustice – one should certainly not underestimate the
seriousness of the question of what such an obligatory concession to
the rule of law means in a democracy.
*
My aim in presenting this personal take here is not simply to offer a
“testimony.” Journalists and sociologists have gathered many of
these. Social workers and community mediators have recounted
them. Some have been published, like the moving tribute by Alain
Badiou during the riots of fall 2005.6
Returning to the events that
triggered the riots, he writes: “Of all the complaints made by the
youth of this country in revolt, the omnipresence of being checked
and arrested in their everyday lives, this harassment without respite,
is the most constant, the most widely shared. Do we really realize
	 Prologue – Interpellation	 11
what this grievance means? The dose of humiliation and violence it
implies?” In an attempt to exemplify this situation, the French philosopher
chooses to recount the experience of his “sixteen-year-old,
adopted son who is black.” Over the previous 18 months, he had
been subjected to so many checks that he had lost count; as to arrests,
there had been six, the most recent of which was reported in substantial
detail, the handcuffs and the threats, the insults and the
harshness. Finally, when nothing could be held against the boy, he
was released, and the police offered his father, who came to pick him
up, an apology. “I suppose that those from the projects don’t even
have the right to apologies,” the author observes lucidly; for the
officers I had dealt with, such a prospect was indeed unimaginable,
whatever mistakes they had made or cruelty they had inflicted. This,
then, was an edifying tale, and publishing it represented both a revelation
and an accusation. On the one hand, it testifies, from the pen of
an academic who made sure to list his titles and qualifications, to
what cannot be articulated by those who have no access to the media,
or who, even if they had, would still seem suspect to many: people
wonder, do they really have nothing to reproach themselves for, these
young people who are checked or arrested by the police? On the other
hand, it denounces practices deemed iniquitous and dangerous in
forceful terms, comparing the police to “dogs unleashed on children
of working-class people and people of foreign origin”; one may nevertheless
query whether this denunciation succeeds in doing more
than preaching to the converted. In effect, this testimony both bears
witness and moves us, but it does not enlighten.
I propose a different approach in this book, seeking less to establish
the veracity of the harassment of some young people by the police
than to reflect on the truth that this situation holds for our society. I
am interested less in the anger that may legitimately be aroused by
an account of police questioning than in how to make such an
account intelligible.
To be more specific, the truth that I am trying to grasp is the very
precariousness of the actual story of these three adolescents, that is,
the risk that its reality may elude us. It is in fact possible to live one’s
entire life in the banlieues and never encounter such situations. It is
also possible to live one’s entire life in the banlieues and be exposed
to them daily. French society is divided, and its territory is segregated,
in such a way that one may be unaware of large parts of one’s environment,
even while living alongside those who usually have little
choice but to remain there. For a large proportion of the young
people of France, violence and injustice are an everyday experience
stemming from interactions with the police about which the majority
12	 Enforcing Order
of citizens have no inkling; and if they were to find out about it, they
would be led to believe that it is simply the price to be paid for
maintaining public order. It is therefore from this point of view that
I felt the necessity to conduct my investigation.
As to the intelligibility I seek, it implies something like a shift to
the other side of the mirror: condemnation may be legitimate and
necessary, but it is not enough. Thus, rather than putting the police
on trial, it seemed essential to me to inquire into their activity in the
outer cities. Although there are some excellent studies of the profession,
the organization, the culture, and now also the history of the
police in France, there are still few investigations of the modalities of
their interventions in working-class neighborhoods that are based on
observation of their practices. By sharing their daily routine at a
police station and in an anticrime squad, I tried to grasp the logics
and constraints of their actions, at the same time attempting to resituate
these in the process of transformation of our societies. In this way
I hope to shed some light on how and why the officers come to be
what they are. Perhaps this truth and this intelligibility will, in their
turn, stimulate readers not to anger but to indignation:7
in other
words, to a moral sentiment capable of generating not impotence or
violence, but action.
When my son and his friends were arrested, I realized – in some
ways retrospectively, for I was already well into my research by that
time – that it was the search for this truth and this intelligibility that
led me to undertake this work. Quite simply, I was trying to comprehend
what made such incidents possible. And I understood over the
following days that it was no longer possible for me not to write this
book.
In 1945, presenting the fruits of 16 years of “philosophical investigations,”
Ludwig Wittgenstein concluded his preface with these
words: “I make them public with misgivings. It is not impossible that
it should fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness
of this time, to bring light into one brain or another – but, of
course, it is not likely.”8
Similarly clear-sighted as to the insufficiencies
in my own work, but also aware that we are once again passing
through dark times, I shall nevertheless venture greater hopes for the
reception of this anthropological research. If therefore, serendipitously,
reading this book was to stimulate some debate among the
police or the public, this would give some meaning to the long hours
spent on patrol with an anticrime squad and to the labor of writing
I have undertaken since then to make it accessible beyond the usual
social science readership.