Policing Los Angeles

Max Felker-Kantor is associate professor of history at Ball State University.
For more information about Max Felker-Kantor, visit the Author Page.

"The attention paid in Policing Los Angeles to liberal law and order is particularly valuable to current discussions of mass incarceration, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the militarization of police . . . Felker-Kantor also demonstrates impressive archival breadth."—H-Net Reviews

"[Felker-Kantor's] coverage of major issues facing the [LAPD] between the 1960s and 1990s is fairly comprehensive, as is his exploration of community organizing around police accountability. . . . As historical scholarship on the criminal-justice system evolves, Policing Los Angeles serves as a model for police history and points to directions yet taken."—Journal of Arizona History

"A richly researched study, this book should be read by anyone hoping to understand the intensity of policing in Los Angeles since the 1965 Watts Rebellion. Using new archival finds, it is a page-turning chronicle of race, capitalism, and state violence in the heart of the city."--Kelly Lytle Hernández, author of City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles

"A deft combination of political and social history, Policing Los Angeles adds rich depth to the emerging histories of the expanding carceral state in the second half of the twentieth century. With the LAPD as subject, this book is at once a local and a national story of urgent significance."--Dan Berger, University of Washington Bothell

"Policing Los Angeles vividly captures--better than any other book on the market--both the rise of modern police power and the emergence of a social movement strong enough to challenge it."--Christopher Agee, University of Colorado Denver

Listen

Author interview on New Books Network (4/9/2019, running time: 1:18:27).