Book Review: Hands up, don’t shoot: Why the protests in Ferguson and Baltimore matter, and how they changed America
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0734016820912321 |
| Author | Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
of Criminology at Berkeley to take on what had been a seemingly impossible task through the years,
reforming a corrupt and ineffective Chicago Police Department. O. W. Wilson at the time was a
leading authority on policing. Balto (p. 155) points out that Wilson’s administration “was arguably
the most significant in the department’s history,”in terms of reform and implementing professional
and “sophisticated”police practices. Balto (p. 155) writes, “It is no exaggeration to say that Wilson
changed policing in Chicago—fundamentally and permanently.”
While Chapter 5 begins with praise of Wilson in Chicago, the author takes an abrupt turn and
devotes the majority of the chapter making the case that many of Wilson’s reforms, especially his
crime fighting reforms through aggressive preventive patrol, were to the detriment to Black
Chicagoans. He posits that Wilson’s strategy of crime repression in Black neighborhoods was to
assign omnipresent uniformed police patrols in constellation with plainclothes officers, to engage
in stop, frisks, and enforcement of the smallest of miscellaneous crimes. Of course, Wilson
himself believed this strategy could have an impact on crime, in constellation with crime preve ntion
programs at the neighborhood level with full community support.
If Wilson’s policing strategy in high crime areas in Chicago was what we now label hot spot polic-
ing, he might have been on to something. There is a growing body of contemporary research finding
that specific hot spot policing strategies have the potential of reducing crime. Is it possible that this is
what Wilson was attempting to do with his deployment strategies? If so, and the question remains, to
what extent was affected neighborhoods engaged before, during, and after the heavy police patrols?
Perhaps the book and specifically Chapter 5 is an invitation for other scholars to examine Wilson’s
strategy in Chicago from varying methodological lenses. With that said, Balto effectively makes the
case that Wilson’s strategy further exacerbated police relations with Chicago’s Black community.
Balto’s work is seminal and a must read for any serious student of the police or for that matter those
interested in the intersectionality of policing and race. Reader s will definitely come away with a deeper
understanding of policing and Black Chicago, and the brutal and discriminatory police tactics that many
Black citizens experienced from the 1920s through the post–civil rights era in Chicago, and for that
matter continue to experience today. A key strength of this book is its accessibility to a wide-ranging
audience including students; scholars from varying disciplines who study race, policing, and/or criminal
justice; and others outside of the academic community who just have an interest in learning more about
this important issue, and how both implicit and explicit bias is interweaved through the fabric of justice.
Police officers may alsofind the book insightful, and they may come away with a more informed under-
standing of the experiences of many Black Chicagoans. Moreover, it may offer police officers a lens that
they are most likely not accustomed to viewing this issue through.
ORCID iD
Michael Birzer https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3936-5528
Cobbina, J. E. (2019).
Hands up, don’t shoot: Why the protests in Ferguson and Baltimore matter, and how they changed America. New York
University Press. 161 pp. $25, ISBN 9781479874415.
Reviewed by: Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill ,City University of New York Graduate Center, NY, USA
DOI: 10.1177/0734016820912321
In the American system of government, we have given local police awesome power. Like soldiers at
war, everyday officers here carry death-dealing implements and deadly training. Unlike soldiers
404 Criminal Justice Review 48(3)
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