Walk the Walk: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture

"One of the most interesting sociologists of his generation" and a former cop, Gross followed three departments as they overcame the greatest barrier to change in law enforcement: aggressive police culture.

What should we do about the police? After the murder of George Floyd, there's no more controversial institution: only a mere 14 percent of Americans believe that "policing works pretty well as it is." We are swimming in proposals for reform, but these are all aimed at regulating or limiting police power, not changing its aggressive culture, one of the greatest barriers to achieving the fair, humane, and effective policing most people desire. Above all, that culture prioritizes locking up criminals, tactical safety, not taking flak from anyone, and loyalty to other cops.

In Walk the Walk, Neil Gross recounts two years embedded within three unusual departments--in Stockton, California; Longmont, Colorado; and LaGrange, Georgia--that have confronted the aggressive culture of policing and replaced it with something better, healthier, and more community-minded, with a code focused on equality before the law, racial reconciliation, and the preservation of life. Character-driven, by turns thoughtful, tragic, hard-charging, and inspirational, this book tells the stories of those departments and how they changed--and of the chiefs, officers, and detectives who are their lifeblood.

While every community faces its own unique challenges with police reform, Longmont, Stockton, and LaGrange provide a glimpse of what policing could be, if we took seriously the charge of building a more just America.