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Police Violence Examined
Calvin Reid -- 5/22/00
The death of Amadou Diallo, a 22-year-old immigrant from Guinea who was shot by four New York City police officers in February 1999, shocked people of all backgrounds. But while the Diallo shooting sparked community outrage, it also moved Jill Nelson, author of the bestselling 1993 memoir Volunteer Slavery and an associate professor of journalism at City College in New York City, to pull together a book that might address the adversarial relationship between the police and the residents of the poor and minority neighborhoods they patrol.


The book is Police Brutality: An Anthology, a collection of original essays on police violence by prominent writers, academics, activists and a former police officer, edited by Nelson and out this month from W.W. Norton. The writers include prominent law professors Patricia Williams and Derrick Bell; essayist Stanley Crouch; novelist Ishmael Reed; and Arthur Doyle, a retired African-American New York City police lieutenant. Essays range from an excerpt on "persecution of Negr s by roughs and the police" taken from a 1900 report, to accounts by Reed and Crouch of personal confrontations with the police, and Doyle's reminiscences of life as a black cop on an overwhelmingly white police force.

Nelson's editor, Robert Weil, executive editor at Norton, told PW that Nelson "was so disturbed by the shooting that she felt the need for some kind of response. I asked her to commission an anthology. It's a chance to use the printed word to try and understand a serious problem. This is what book publishing is all about." Weil described it as "a positive book--it's not heckling the police."

It looks like booksellers are responding to a national issue. Norton declined to reveal its print runs, but Weil told PW the house has gone back for a second printing prior to pub date. "We're very happy with the numbers; we're getting lots of reorders" he said. "Chain-store orders are strong; Books-A-Million came through with a four-figure buy." He also mentioned high school and college adoptions: "Any piece in the book would work well in a classroom discussion."

Norton has mailed 10,000 promotional postcards and Nelson herself produced 5,000 buttons for the book. She'll also begin a series of bookstore appearances, beginning May 23 at the Barnes & Noble in the Bronx, followed by in-store events in L.A. on June 7 at the black bookstore Eso-Wan and at Nkiru Books in Brooklyn June 24. More appearances and media coverage are planned.

"The book takes different vantage points and tries to show that police brutality is not an isolated problem," said Weil. "It shows the depth of the problem. It's an essential book for both races." And there are more books to come on related topics. Also in May, look for Driving While Black: What to Do if You Are a Victim of Racial Profiling by Kenneth Meeks from Broadway Books; and in August, Holt will release NYPD: The Story of America's Most Notorious Police Force by Thomas Reppetto and James Lardner.
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