A dozen years ago, City Journal, the quarterly magazine of The Manhattan Institute, published "The Black Cops You Never Hear About" by Heather Mac Donald, one of the sharpest, most eloquent, and zealous defenders of New York City's police department. As the ACLU and various media outlets claimed racial bias in policing, "minority officers, who might be considered ideal commentators on these matters," are ignored, she wrote. "So I set out to talk to black cops and commanders from eight police departments across the country about why they became policemen and how they view today’s policing controversies. What I found was a bracing commitment to law and order, a resounding rejection of anti-cop propaganda, and a conviction that racial politics are a tragic drag on black progress."
All these years later, it's clear that the conclusions she took from her 2002 reporting don't fully capture the beliefs of many black and Hispanic NYPD officers, as evidenced by many more recent assessments from "ideal commentators."
[For more of this story, written by Conor Friedersdorf, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/nat...-in-the-nypd/384106/]
Comments (0)