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Blue Power

How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves

Blue Power Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Stuart Schrader

Formats and Prices

On Sale
Apr 14, 2026
Page Count
432 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9781541608030

Price

$35.00

Price

$46.00 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. Hardcover $35.00 $46.00 CAD
  2. ebook $19.99 $25.99 CAD

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A history of police unions that reveals how American law enforcement built a political movement that made cops untouchable

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 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. 

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Stuart Schrader

About the Author

Stuart Schrader is an associate professor of history and the director of the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism at Johns Hopkins University. He is also the author of Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. He lives in Brooklyn and Baltimore.

Learn more about this author