Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

Author's Preface, 2007IT IS ALWAYS A BIT UNNERVING TO REVISIT MY OWN EARLIER WORK.I find myself pacing through the text almost holding my breath, dreading embarrassmentbut still scrutinizing every detail, examining every word-hunting outthe small errors and subtle missteps. It is not possible for me merely to re-readmy work; I constantly re-write it as well, if only in my mind. The text is haunted,or I am haunted, by the side-shadowing questions of what I might have donedifferently.Surely, were I writing it today, Our Enemies in Blue would be a somewhat differentbook. It's not that there is anything in the book that I specifically regret oram tempted to recant And it is not, unfortunately, because broad social changeshave created a new context and thus demand a radical reassessment. It is just thatEnemies was my first book, and I hope that I have become a better writer in thethree years since it was completed.So I have resisted the temptation to substantially rewrite the text. Those whohave read the original 2004 edition will recognize this as very much the samebook. I've corrected some typos and similar mistakes, and made a few stylisticchanges, but the arguments and the evidence are the same as in the original. Thisis not an "updated" edition.Not that there isn't more that I could have added. I could have, for instance,included new sections on the police infiltration of the anti-war movement, on therecent use of agents provocateurs against anarchists, on the "Miami Model" ofcrowd control, or on the shifting politics of immigration enforcement. likewise, Icould have brought in new material on the aftermath of the Greensboro massacreand on the Schwerner-Goodman-Chaney murders. And I could have updated thestatistics on the use of force, workplace deaths, racial profiling, the prison population,and so on. But all of that-important though it is--really remains at thelevel of detail. In a couple of cases, I have added notes explaining that unforeseendevelopments complicate some point in the text. But overall, recent events fitneatly within the narrative I was building, and do not demand any serious reworkingof the original argument.It's disappointing, really, that so little has changed.xiii