His new book, The Danger Imperative: Violence, Death, and the Soul of Policing, shows how policing’s preoccupation with danger shapes police culture and violence in the United States.
Sierra-Arévalo applied the “Page 99 Test” to The Danger Imperative and reported the following:
Half of page 99 is taken up by the image of a Dallas police car swathed in stuffed animals, flowers, balloons, and signs supporting police. The shrine was erected in the days following the July 7, 2016, ambush on Dallas police which killed 5 officers and injured an additional 9. One of those signs reads, “#BackTheBlue Because Someone I Call Dad Is on the Force!” The photograph was sent to me by an officer from West River who flew to Dallas with other WPD officers to pay their respects to the fallen officers. The remainder of the page begins to describe the days following the ambush, during which nearly a thousand officers from across the country rushed to Dallas to attend fallen officers’ memorial services. During one such service, President Barack Obama reminded every officer present of the unique danger of their work.Visit Michael Sierra-Arévalo's website.
The Page 99 Test captures a core element of The Danger Imperative — the rare but no less real violence that claims the lives of officers. But it does not articulate my broader argument about how such violence is core to the recreation of police culture and inequalities in police violence.
Ironically enough, though, that the one page a potential reader turns to is about a tragic incident of violence and its use as proof of policing’s profound danger is an eerily concise reflection of The Danger Imperative’s argument. As I describe in the book, though deadly violence is exceedingly rare in the scope of officers’ work, the preoccupation with violence and the provision of officer safety are emphasized at all levels of the police institution. Incidents like the Dallas ambush serve as dramatic proof not only for officers in Dallas, but for any officer, no matter where they work, that any shift might be one in which they are confronted with a fight for their very lives.
Through academy training, unquestioned rituals, powerful symbols, and the daily task of making sure they go home at the end of their shift, officers reconstruct their world and work as one defined by the possibility of violence and death. As I continually reiterate throughout The Danger Imperative, police face very real violence. But the intense emphasis on such violence within police culture encourages behaviors that undermine police legitimacy, harm public wellbeing, and even lead to the injury and death of officers themselves.
--Marshal Zeringue
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