Police Corruption

Baltimore, 2015. Riots are erupting across the city as citizens demand justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year-old Black man who has died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. In this urgent book, award-winning investigative journalist Justin Fenton distills hundreds of interviews, thousands of court documents, and countless hours of video footage to present the definitive account of the entire scandal.

The 3-0 is a thrilling, cat and mouse story that’s based on the true story of the largest police corruption scandal in the history of the New York City Police Department - The Dirty Thirty - It's also a story of bringing a divided community together. The actual events led to the arrest of 33 police officers. The story is set in the 1990’s in the 30th Precinct in Harlem. But the story of “The 3-0” is not just about police corruption. It’s the story of what happens when the social order collapses under the weight of politics, race, fear, drug cartels, illegal immigration, the rights...

Selected as a Finalist for the 2022 Killer Nashville Claymore Award for Best Mystery! TROUBLE IN VALDEZ COUNTY is the first novel in the new Doc Gunther Mystery series, which is centered around a modern-day Texas Ranger assigned to the Texas border with Mexico. A rural Texas border community, mired in corruption, on a lark elects a twenty-seven-year-old woman with absolutely no law enforcement experience as the county sheriff. This throws a wrench in the plans of the local politicos and their cartel backers. When the body of a young woman is discovered during the annual Javelina Harvest, an...

No municipality has been under court oversight to reform its police department as long as the city of Oakland. It is, quite simply, the edge case in American law enforcement. Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham trace the history of Oakland from its inception through the lens of its police department, from the Palmer Raids and the Civil Rights struggle, the Black Panthers and crack eras, to Oakland’s present-day revival. The Riders Come Out at Night is the story of one city and its police department, but it’s also the story of American policing—and where it’s headed.

Justice Beth Garner (Sanaa Lathan) just landed the appointment of a lifetime—a seat on the Supreme Court. Now a mysterious company is blackmailing her for her vote on a landmark case. Caught up in the checkered past of her hero and mentor, Chief Justice Clayton Erlenborn, Beth must cunningly maneuver through a dangerous web of secrets, deception, and cold-blooded murder. Armed with only her moral compass and unflinching nerve, she’s up against a sinister world full of undercover agents, domestic terrorists, and black ops assassins—all of whom want her to comply or die.

Is Justice Finally Overcoming the Ford Valley Corruption? Judge Sherman Ford, the patriarch of the Ford family is continuing to control and corrupt Ford County. The newly elected sheriff, Todd Mercer, and friends are slowly taking control but can they actually succeed? They have managed to get election victories for one judge, mayor, and county board members. They will also soon be able to take over the position of police chief. Hopefully, this will be enough to win control of the county from the Ford family who have had it for three generations. High school counselor Trudy Roberts is a ...

When former detective Trevor “Finn” Finnegan became a PI, he adopted a new mandate: catch the LAPD’s worst in the act. While on surveillance in Venice Beach, Finn tails two potentially dirty cops: Detective Martin Riley and Finn’s ex-partner, Detective Sally Munoz. Things take a deadly turn when an unknown assailant executes Riley and wounds Munoz. In an instant, Finn goes from private eye to eyewitness. Munoz needs Finn to help find Riley’s killer, but doing so could blow his cover.

They called it Satan's Circus, a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the 20th century, murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best hotel.

The politicians of local government have been historically influenced by the hierarchy of organized crime in New York. In the past, the underworld even extended its tentacles into local law enforcement. This book explores the path taken by an anticorruption detective whose life had been handicapped by various forms of governmental misconduct and intimidated by threats to reveal the nature of his private life. In his pursuit of justice, he is haunted by thoughts that his actions may have been inspired by a subconscious feeling toward the need for revenge. He has been accused by his opponents...

Operation Greylord was the longest and most successful undercover investigation in FBI history, and the largest corruption bust ever in the US. It resulted in bribery and tax charges against 103 judges, lawyers, and other court personnel, and, eventually, more than 70 indictments. And it was led by Terrence Hake, a young assistant prosecutor in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office in Chicago, who worked undercover for nearly four years.

In recent years, the high-profile murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others have brought much-needed attention to the pervasiveness of police misconduct. Yet it remains nearly impossible to hold police accountable for abuses of power—the decisions of the Supreme Court, state and local governments, and policy makers have, over decades, made the police all but untouchable. In Shielded, University of California, Los Angeles, law professor Joanna Schwartz exposes the myriad ways in which our legal system protects police at all costs.

When long-time White Rock resident Mike Donnelly is found dead at his hunting camp, it appears as if the tragic death was by his own hand. But a gut feeling tells Chief of Police Sam Mason otherwise. Is it any coincidence that Mike's family farm sits smack in the middle of a parcel of land that greedy Lucas Thorne desperately needs to complete the development of his resort? Sam and Sergeant Jody Harris's line of questioning stirs up a hornet's nest.

Former Chicago police officer and Outfit associate Fred Pascente is the man who links Tony Spilotro, one of Chicago's most notorious mob figures, to William Hanhardt, chief of detectives in the Chicago Police Department. Pascente and Spilotro grew up together on Chicago's Near West Side, and as young toughs they were rousted and shaken down by Hanhardt.

In 1979, the gruesome slaying of a thirteen-year-old boy riveted the suburbs of Suffolk County, New York. As the county hustled to bring the case to a dubious resolution, a wayward local teenager emerged with a convenient story to tell. For his cooperation, Jimmy Burke was rewarded with a job as a cop. Thus began Burke’s unlikely ascent to the top of one of the country’s largest law enforcement jurisdictions. He and a crew of likeminded allies utilized vengeance, gangster tactics, and political leverage to become the most powerful and feared figures in their suburban empire.

When 14-year-old Zoe Johnson doesn't come home on a Monday night in early December, the alarm bells in Kings Lake Central police station do not ring straight away - after all, she's from the Dockmills, one of the toughest estates in the town. But for Detective Sergeant DC Smith, due to retire in just three weeks' time, there are some strange echoes of the case that has haunted him for the past 13 years. Maybe it's simply his over-developed sense of irony, or maybe, in his final days as a police officer, Smith must look once more into the eyes of a serial killer.

After killing his wife and her lover, an unhinged and heavily armed Chicago cop named Bernie Shepard barricades himself at the top of a high-rise apartment building and sends a message to the police: Meet his demands, or he'll detonate enough explosives to blow the whole block sky high. If it's a choice between chewing the fat at his brother Maish's deli or hunting down armed lunatics, world-weary veteran cop Abe Lieberman knows where he stands. But no one's giving him a choice.

In 2015 and 2016, Baltimore was reeling after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody and the protests that followed. In the midst of this unrest, the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) roamed the city, robbing people, selling drugs and guns back onto the same streets they were supposed to be policing, and dividing the loot and profit among themselves. Created to trace guns back to the criminals responsible for Baltimore's high crime rates, instead, on March 1, 2017, all members of the GTTF were arrested on federal racketeering charges.

In this vivid, deeply-reported book, Matt Stroud shows that our new policing tools are overhyped and ineffective. Instead of wrestling with tough fundamental questions about their work, police leaders have looked to technology as a silver bullet, and stood by as corporate interests have insinuated themselves ever deeper into the public institution of law enforcement. With a sweeping history of these changes, Thin Blue Lie is a must-listen for anyone seeking to understand how policing became what it is today.

"Something clearly stinks in how police handled this case." - Tony Serra, famed Civil Rights Attorney Andy Kinyon was a gifted salesman, a hustler in the best sense of the word. He became the top earner for the publisher of LOOK Magazine at the age of 22 in 1965. That same year, he befriended notable figures like Ken Kesey, Owsley Stanley, and Jerry Garcia. Andy was among the first to join the counter-culture movement in Haight-Ashbury and worked for Bill Graham and Chet Helms, conducting psychedelic light shows for performances by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and many others. ...

In 1961, 25-year-old Herbert Jay Stern, fresh from reserve duty, stood in his green army uniform in a New York County courtroom to be sworn in as an attorney. He could only guess what his life as a prosecuting lawyer would be. A dozen years later, in the wake of the national scandal of Watergate, Stern, draped in black robes now, would take the oath of office as a federal judge. In the years between, the idealistic young Stern would sharpen his skills in the realities of the criminal courts of New York City, to emerge as the lead trial attorney for the Justice Department....