Act Four: The most important book you can read about policing this week

Not living in imminent fear of the police is not the same thing as feeling that you can actively look to the police as a source of safety and comfort. Eliminating terror from communities of color is necessary. But it is not the same thing as solving crimes that occur in those communities quickly and effectively, and demonstrating that the people who live in those communities are worthy of the full protection of and respect from the law.

As Jill Leovy argues in “Ghettoside,” a book that ought to be included in every discussion of crime and policing today, it isn’t enough for police departments to stop brutalizing people of color. They also have to show that they can combat crime effectively without harassing the people they are ostensibly supposed to serve.

“White people ‘had the law,’ to quote a curious phrase that crops up in historic sources. Black people didn’t. Formal law impinged on them only for purposes of control, not protection,” Leovy writes in “Ghettoside.” “When people are stripped of legal protection and placed in desperate straits, they are more, not less, likely to turn on each other. Lawless settings are terrifying; if people can do whatever they want to each other, there are always enough bullies to make it ugly.”

In other words, the trust that Lewis says he used to reflexively grant the police is a luxury not simply because it meant he could assume he wouldn’t be harassed. It meant that he felt confident that he would be protected by the law. Ending police brutality and harassment is the beginning of the work to restore police departments to the role they’re supposed to play in America. But for all that step feels monumentally hard, it’s only the beginning.