A harrowing study in true crime, most of it committed by men with badges.
When police officers are the criminals, they serve and protect themselves.
When Freddie Gray died while in Baltimore Police custody in 2015, protests broke out in the streets, and Baltimore Sun crime reporter Fenton—who shared a Pulitzer for coverage of the events—was on the scene. Strangely, he fell under the protection of both Crips and Bloods, who worked under a truce that overlooked red and blue gang garb and instead focused on the Black of the victim. Certainly, according to the author’s tenacious reporting, the Baltimore officers focused on Blackness, in a very negative way: Their Gun Trace Task Force broke into homes without warrants, searched Black people without probable cause, stole guns and money, and sold confiscated drugs. “While the police department leadership begged citizens to cooperate,” writes Fenton, “some of its elite officers were running roughshod on Black men in poor neighborhoods, creating a free-fire zone for anyone seeking to exploit them.” The worst of the bunch was a sergeant who devolved from model Marine to utterly corrupt cop. He partnered with a cocaine dealer to identify other dealers, seize their wares, and sell them; reportedly, that sergeant had squirreled away at least half a million dollars, having done things like broken into a dealer’s car and “stolen between $12,000 and $19,000.” Before getting greedy, a core group of officers—most now serving prison terms thanks to an FBI investigation that Fenton tracks almost in real time—preferred to skim money off the top during seizures. Meanwhile, the GTTF was lauded for its results, which were murky at best. “Despite police and prosecutors’ stated priority of holding people caught carrying guns accountable,” writes the author, “officials would later acknowledge that no one was circling back to check or improve the outcomes.” Fenton’s fast-paced narrative, perfect for fans of The Wire, delivers a satisfying resolution, though it remains to be seen whether the department will truly clean up under new management, for which readers must stay tuned.
A harrowing study in true crime, most of it committed by men with badges.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13366-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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