Sir Robert Peel is popularly credited with the formation of the first modern municipal police force. But the Thames River Police did it first.

People love the idea of a machine that tells us who to trust. But the historical analog of the online lie detector also didn't work.

At the turn of the century, Chicago police killed 307 people, one in eighteen homicides in the city—three times the body count of local gangsters.

The grainy pictures speak for themselves. Or so thought many Americans who watched the video of the March 3rd, 1991, beating of motorist Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers.

For James Baldwin (1924-1987), the fundamental premises of American society needed revisiting. How we might view #BlackLivesMatter through his lens.

We should acknowledge and absorb the pain captured in videos of police violence, just as antiracist activists bore witness in the past to lynchings.

Over the course of the nineteenth century policing became increasingly professionalized.

When we have the choice to look, we are bound ethically and politically to what we witness and what we do with what we have seen.

Olympic host cities have historically cleared away and marginalized their homeless in advance of the games.

Is there a connection between larger police forces and lower crime rates?