About this Event
Description
A history of police unions that reveals how American law enforcement built a political movement that made cops untouchable.
“A tour de force … Read it now.” —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Abolition Geography
In America today, police enjoy unmatched power. On the streets, officers employ violence at their own discretion. Behind closed doors, they are even more powerful. In city halls, police strong-arm local leaders and nullify attempts at public oversight. And in state legislatures and Washington, DC, police lobbyists and union leaders zealously uphold a bipartisan consensus against even mild reform. Yet as recently as fifty years ago, police still served at the pleasure of democratically elected politicians, not the other way around. In Blue Power, Stuart Schrader narrates the rise of a bottom-up movement of rank-and-file officers who lifted policing above the law.
Organizers launched their campaign in the 1960s, courting a public backlash to urban uprisings and civil rights. City by city, county by county, they formed unions and other organizations and won control over working conditions, impunity from oversight, and insulation from lean budgets. By the 2000s, this movement had triumphed nationally, shoring up the power of the police to overrule the public interest in the name of law and order.
Through deep archival detective work, Blue Power reveals how police forced American democracy to back the blue.
ABOUT AUTHOR: Dr. Stuart Schrader is an Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and Director of the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism. His research examines policing, race, empire, and the global history of U.S. law enforcement. He is the author of , published by Basic Books in 2026, and (University of California Press, 2019). At Johns Hopkins, Schrader teaches courses on policing and prisons, war and empire, Black social movements, and social theory. In 2023, he received the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award from the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences. He is also affiliated with the Department of Sociology, Center for Africana Studies, and Arrighi Center for Global Studies.
DISCUSSANT: Dr. Brotherton’s scholarship on gangs, deportation and social resistance spans more than three decades, co-founding the fields of critical gang and post-deportation studies. He is Director of the Social Change and Transgressive Studies Project and the Social Anatomy of Deportation Project at John Jay College, Co-Editor of Critical Criminology: An International Journal and a Fulbright Specialist in Sociology and Criminology. Brotherton has published 14 books and more than sixty articles and chapters and is the founding book editor of “Studies in Transgression” at Temple University Press. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Division of Critical Criminology in 2023 while receiving its Praxis Award in 2015, Critical Criminologist award in 2011 and the Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar Award in 2015. His most recent book is titled "Real Recognizes Real: The Credible Messenger Mentoring Movement"(Temple 2026).
This event is sponsored by the Office for the Advancement of Research and Future of Public Safety at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Event venue & nearby stays
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 524 W 59th St, New York, United States
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