Occupied territory Policing black Chicago from Red Summer to black power

Using Chicago as a quintessential case study of black versus police relationships, Balto (Univ. of Iowa) unfolds the grisly saga of police repression, one that the author uniquely dates back to the early 20th century. Focused on Chicago's Police Department (CPD), Balto's well-written, highly convincing, and richly documented monograph (his first book) shows how an endemically racist, politically compromised, and corrupt CPD gratuitously employed "stop and frisk," torture and even "shoot to kill" tactics between 1919 and 1970 to systematically occupy and punitively repress Chicago's impoverished black community. Following the FBI-abetted 1969 assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton, according to Balto, the Panthers joined with the Afro-American Patrolmen's League and the Urban League, to aggressively, but vainly, push for community control in Chicago. Several historians have investigated America's carceral society; however, Balto's rigid focus on Chicago's police department is unique. Heather Thompson's excellent Whose Detroit: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern City (CH, Sep'02, 40-0505) covers similar terrain. This book appeals to a general audience and would prove very useful in urban and black studies classes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --John F. Bauman, emeritus, University of Southern Maine