Thin Blue Lie: The Failure of High-Tech Policing

Written by Matt Stroud

Narrated by Matt Stroud

A sweeping and wide-ranging investigation of how supposedly transformative technologies peddled to cops have actually made policing worse—lazier, more reckless, and more discriminatory.

American law enforcement is a system in crisis. After explosive protests responding to police brutality and discrimination in Baltimore, Ferguson, and across the country, the vexing question of how to reform the police and curb misconduct stokes tempers and fears on both the right and left. In the midst of this fierce debate, however, most of us take for granted that innovative new technologies can only help.

During the early 90s, in the wake of the infamous Rodney King beating, police leaders began looking to corporations and new technologies for help. In the decades since, these technologies have—in theory—given police powerful, previously unthinkable faculties: the ability to incapacitate a suspect without firing a bullet (Tasers); the capacity to more efficiently assign officers to high-crime areas using computers (Compstat); and, with body cameras (Axon), a means of defending against accusations of misconduct.

But in this vivid, deeply-reported book, Matt Stroud shows that these tools are overhyped and ineffective. Instead of wrestling with tough fundamental questions about their work, police leaders have looked to technology as a silver bullet, and stood by as corporate interests have insinuated themselves ever deeper into the public institution of law enforcement. With a sweeping history of these changes, Thin Blue Lie is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand how policing became what it is today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Mar 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781721354771

Matt Stroud

Matt Stroud is an investigative reporter with a focus on companies that do business with police departments and prisons. Formerly on staff at the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, and The Verge, he has also written for publications such as The Atlantic, Politico, Buzzfeed, and The Intercept. He lives in Pittsburgh.

Reviews for Thin Blue Lie

[darthdeverell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In Thin Blue Lie: The Failure of High-Tech Policing, Matt Stroud argues, “Today, the fundamentals of policing have been co-opted by industry – by a corporatized approach to law enforcement that increasingly relies on weapons, software, and covert intelligence. According to this school of reform, technological solutions are always preferable to others. At the same time, community leaders, lawmakers, and some police chiefs have pushed for deeper, more old-fashioned reforms – the kind that are focused on closing the gap between police and communities. But instead law enforcement agencies have maintained a singular focus on the promise of technology” (pg. 12). Stroud builds his case by examining trends in policing from the early twentieth century through the second decade of the twenty-first, following developments in different cities throughout the United States. He stresses the development, implementation, and preference for new technologies or statistical models in favor of community outreach, pointing out times when civic leaders stressed the importance of tackling systemic issues and were ignored in favor of so-called quick-fixes to crime.Stroud traces the development of nonlethal technologies like Tasers and stun guns, linking them to the Johnson Administration’s report, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, which encouraged the development of nonlethal procedures for police without outlining what form those might take. He demonstrates the conflicts that arose, such as development issues, funding, the NRA lobbying to restrict Tasers in order to encourage gun sales (pg. 37), and increased police support amidst the rise in PCP use, leading to law enforcement support even when the technology began to show flaws. At times, the nonlethal nature of the weapons led to easy abuse, such as law enforcement using the weapons to torture confessions out of suspects (pg. 51). Later models, manufactured by Taser International, had their own issues. Stroud writes, “With no competitors [by 2003] and complete control over the training program, Taser International played an essential role in shaping how officers used Tasers in the field. The company marketed the devices to the public as a lifesaving alternative to deadly force. But, increasingly, officers came to think of them as a means of eliciting obedience” (pg. 117). Nonlethal weapons did not, in and of themselves, result in sweeping changes to police tactics nor did they alleviate systemic issues. As Stroud demonstrates, they simply became a new facet of a larger problem.Using New York City in the 1980s as a case study of the conditions that made high-tech and analytical tools seem like a quick fix as opposed to increasing community outreach and addressing systemic issues, Stroud writes, “After a corruption scandal plagued the New York Police Department in the early 1970s, a recession took hold of the city, and politicians struggled to get the municipal budget in order. That led to the NYPD cutting nearly seven thousand jobs between 1975 and 1982 – a time period when crime was already rising, and just as crack cocaine began surging onto the streets of New York City. The city’s problems became disastrous” (pgs. 65-66). The prevalence of crime occurring on the New York subway system coupled with public outrage encouraged new statistical models, such as the broken glass model, which took into account patterns of criminal activity to suggest repeated low-level offenses give rise to worse crimes, leading to a crack-down on petty crimes combined with police efforts to extract quick confessions or link low-level offenders to other crimes. Stroud writes, “Whether it was hopping over turnstiles to ride trains for free or so-called quality-of-life offenses like public urination, defacing public property, or aggressively panhandling under the guise of squeegee-cleaning drivers’ windshields, officers would have to make arrests or issue some other form of penalty” where they once simply issued a warning (pg. 77). Stroud summarizes the effect, writing, “The strategy that was so effective in lowering New York City’s crime rate in the mid-1990s was, in fact, multipronged: a combination of putting thousands more officers on the streets, policing more aggressively, weeding out corruption within the ranks, and, yes, deploying officers more efficiently to high-crime areas using computer data. But it was simpler – and frankly sexier – to say that a new era of technological policing was upon the nation” (pg. 84). Further, economic and sociological trends played just as significant a role as technology (pgs. 86, 139).Stroud concludes, “Rejecting substantial institutional reform – which can be messy and requires a tough accounting of what’s working and what isn’t in a police department – adherents of this philosophy [of technological solutionism] have looked to electroshock weapons, statistical analysis, CCTV, facial recognition, cell-site simulators, body cameras, and a host of other technologies to supposedly make policing more efficient and humane” (pg. 211). Further, “Police aren’t warriors. They are public servants hired to make communities livable and safe. Instilling and encouraging a sense of empathy and inquisitiveness and compassion among cops should therefore be the focus of police leaders’ attention, rather than which technologies they might use to make law enforcement simpler and more convenient” (pg. 217). Stroud’s extensive research and the way he constructs his case make this a must-read for all who are interested in modern law enforcement and who seek to understand how and why public policy continues to prize new gadgets over actual community involvement.