Policing the City
An Ethno-graphic
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Adapted from the landmark essay Enforcing Order, this striking graphic novel offers an accessible inside look at policing and how it leads to discrimination and violence.
What we know about the forces of law and order often comes from tragic episodes that make the headlines, or from sensationalized versions for film and television. These gripping accounts obscure two crucial aspects of police work: the tedium of everyday patrols under constant pressure to meet quotas, and the banality of racial discrimination and ordinary violence.
Around the time of the 2005 French riots, anthropologist and sociologist Didier Fassin spent fifteen months observing up close the daily life of an anticrime squad in one of the largest precincts in the Paris region. His unprecedented study, which sparked intense discussion about policing in the largely working-class, immigrant suburbs, remains acutely relevant in light of all-too-common incidents of police brutality against minorities.
This new, powerfully illustrated adaptation clearly presents the insights of Fassin’s investigation, and draws connections to the challenges we face today in the United States as in France.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this urgent and provocative graphic interpretation of Fassin's findings from 15 months of research into police brutality in Parisian suburbs (originally published as a scholarly work), the French social scientist meticulously diagnoses issues undergirding the crisis. These include arrest quotas, which incentivize officers on otherwise uneventful patrols to target immigrant youth. Anti-crime squads are re-created in pulpy detail, with suspenseful encounters between officers and youth (including Fassin's own son) that reek of racism, xenophobia, and unwarranted antagonism. Raynal renders figures with dark shading against color-saturated background panels that veer from black and green during mundane moments to red and orange during confrontations. Tensions ignite with the accidental death by electrocution of two Muslim teens who were fleeing security forces through a power substation. A whirlwind of nationwide protests, inflammatory statements from politicians, and a police-launched tear-gas grenade landing in a mosque lead to fiery unrest. Creating comics from the academic source material is no easy task, but the animation in Raynal's artwork and creative layouts allows Fassin to expound on his theories and dramatically expose the emotional currents raging through notions of fair and equal justice.
