A Conversation With Rosa Brooks
Prospect co-founder Robert Kuttner interviews the author of the new book âTangled Up in Blue,â on police reform.
Robert Kuttner: Congratulations on the publication of
Tangled Up in Blue. Your day job is a law professor at Georgetown. Among other things, you study the criminal justice system. You spent a couple of years as a reserve officer with the Metropolitan Police Department in D.C., which is one of the few police departments, as you explained, which allows people to do that part-time. Why did you do this?
Rosa Brooks: I think it was curiosity more than anything else. When I found out that D.C. had a program where anyone can volunteer to be a part-time police officer and go through the police academy and get a badge and gun, I was flabbergasted. I immediately thought, that would be fascinating. Policing is such an opaque world. It seemed like an incredible opportunity to see what it looks like from the inside.