Rosa Brooks

I found out Rosa Brooks is the daughter of Barbara Ehrenreich. Brooks is a law professor at Georgetown University, an international consultant on foreign policy, and a journalist. In her spare time, she decided the best way to understand what is going wrong with policing in America was to join the force, so she became a reserve officer in Washington DC (against her mother's wishes). She talks about the difficulties of police training and the emphasis on officer safety. The emphasis is on the fact that every situation and every person could pose a threat to the officer, so the officer should treat every situation and people they encounter accordingly. We see the results of that training. She talks about the mounds of paperwork for everything they do which results in their often ignoring situations they could help. She talks about the damage done by well-meaning mandatory sentencing. And she emphasizes how many actions have become criminalized and how the overabundance of very detailed laws affects regular people.… (més)