{"id":9099,"date":"2026-02-06T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/?p=9099"},"modified":"2026-02-04T19:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T00:19:07","slug":"tangled-up-in-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/tangled-up-in-blue\/","title":{"rendered":"TANGLED UP IN BLUE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A young, left-leaning law professor from a very liberal family decides to become a cop. Where\u2019s that gonna go? Why, into the\u00a0 2021 book \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/45Dzhkz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Tangled Up In Blue: Policing the American City<\/a>\u201d by Rosa Brooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When her mom learns her daughter is signing up as a reserve police officer with DC Metro, she is horrified: \u2026\u201dher memories of being tear-gassed by police at 1960s anti-war marches remained fresh. \u2018The police are the enemy,\u2019 she informed me. \u201cThey are not on our side.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following left-wing script, she hates guns but somehow manages to qualify with her issued Glock 17, \u201cBut when I got home from each patrol shift, the first thing I\u2019d do was take my gun out of its holster and put it away in its locked metal box. And each time the heavy lid snapped closed, I\u2019d feel a small wave of relief. It was like slamming the lid on a dangerous viper.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ll give her this: she at least tries to understand the Job, and in many ways succeeds. She writes, \u201cActivists critical of policing complain, with some justification, that police effectively become occupying forces in poor urban neighborhoods\u2026But over-policing is driven in part by the law of supply and demand \u2013 police go where people ask them to go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Toward the end of the book Brooks writes, \u201c\u2026in both older and more recent studies, police officers tend to rate the opportunity to help people as t he single largest factor in choosing their job; pay, power and authority are near the bottom of the list.\u201d She adds, \u201cThe vast majority of the police officers I met in my time with MPD were decent, well-intentioned men and women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Professor Brooks and I have opposing views on many things related to criminal justice, but we are in agreement on that last quote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A young, left-leaning law professor from a very liberal family decides to become a cop. Where\u2019s that gonna go? Why, into the\u00a0 2021 book \u201cTangled Up In Blue: Policing the American City\u201d by Rosa Brooks. When her mom learns her daughter is signing up as a reserve police officer with DC Metro, she is horrified: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9101,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9099\/revisions\/9101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}