Police & Policing

Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020. Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa reconstruct the course of his life in His Name is George Floyd.

Yale professor Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff co-founded the Center for Policing Equity, which collects data on police behavior from 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country.

Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr.'s "Resistance" podcast explores different aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement. The podcast has been mostly devoted to the protests that started last summer after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but it also chronicles Tejan-Thomas Jr.'s personal history.

Law professor and human rights activist Rosa Brooks wanted to better understand police violence and the racial disparities in America's criminal justice system, so she decided to join the police force as a volunteer.

Deidre Fishel's new PBS documentary Women in Blue, on the Independent Lens series, focuses on four women who worked for the Minneapolis Police Department. It begins 3 years ago and ends with the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.

Author Doug Swanson chronicles centuries of abuse within the famed Texas law enforcement agency, including burning villages, hunting runaway slaves and murdering Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.

At 15, Eric Adams was beaten by police. He later joined the force and worked to reform NYC policing by co-founding 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. He retired from the force after 22 years.

Eric Garner was the 47 year old man who died at the hands of police in 2014 after he was pushed to the ground and put into an illegal choke hold. Garner repeated the words "I can't breath" eleven times before he died. His death was captured on a cell phone and went viral. And latter spurred on the Black Lives Matter movement. Matt Taibbi set out to find out who Garner was, and how he died.

Eric Adams joined the police department intent on reforming it. "If I was not a voice for change it would bother me," he says. He was on the force for 22 years. Now he is Brooklyn's borough president.

Tom Gibbons had to retire from the police force after being shot three times during a traffic stop in 1970. He then became a reporter and covered the police for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

In her new book, journalist Jill Leovy studies the epidemic of unsolved murders in African-American neighborhoods and the relationships between police and victims' relatives, witnesses and suspects.

The cable network premieres a new drama series tonight. It's called Fargo, and has the same title as the 1996 Coen Brothers movie. Critic David Bianculli says it's very definitely a wonderful show in that same wacky spirit – but it's just as important to note what this new Fargo is not. It's not a remake — and it's not a sequel.

TV critic David Bianculli points to Brooklyn Nine-Nine, starring Andy Samberg, and The Blacklist, starring James Spader, as shows to watch this season. Other debuts, like The Michael J. Fox Show and The Crazy Ones, show plenty of potential.

Reporter-turned-novelist Gene Kerrigan sets his story in Ireland after the 2008 financial crisis. The Rage is a boundlessly readable portrait of a country in which ordinary citizens have been hit the hardest and all the old certainties have vanished.

Wolfe tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies that what makes Miami exceptional is the story of how an immigrant community rose to dominate its political landscape in just over a generation. His new novel deals with racial and ethnic conflict among the city's diverse inhabitants.

Actor and writer Sacha Baron Cohen is famous for taking his characters — Ali G., Borat, Bruno — into the real world, interacting with people who have no idea that they're dealing with a fictional character. But his new movie, The Dictator, is a scripted comedy about a tyrant on the loose in New York.

If you want to know anything about America's greatest city, you've got to be willing to get grimy, says critic Maureen Corrigan. Two new books about New York -- a novel and a narrative history -- do more than put up with filth, they positively wallow in it.

In his book Glock: The Rise of America's Gun, Paul Barrett traces how the sleek, high-capacity Austrian weapon found its way into Hollywood films and rap lyrics, not to mention two-thirds of all U.S. police departments.

Criminologist David M. Kennedy's strategy for reducing gang violence has dramatically reduced youth homicide rates nationwide. In his new memoir, Don't Shoot, Kennedy outlines his community meetings and interventions have worked to curb youth violence in more than 70 cities.

The Irish actor plays a cynical, small-town cop who is thrust out of his comfort zone in the black comedy The Guard. "I've met men like [my character] quite a lot," Gleeson says. "People who are underused a little bit and have terribly sharp wit, but pretend to be a little bit stupid."