Fortune — Author Article
David Harris’s interview about the book launch event on Pittsburgh's NPR
An article about the A City Divided book launch event on 14 January 2020 published in Pittsburgh Post Gazette
“Telling real stories about justice and fairness is essential to creating a better and more just society for everyone. In A City Divided, David Harris tells the story of an incident of police/citizen violence that shows us how things go wrong on the street, and how racial bias fear poison our investigations and legal process. This book demands the attention of police, of government officials, and of every citizen who believes that justice is something our country can't do without.” —Lynn Novick, Emmy and Peabody Award-Winning Documentary Filmmaker; Director of College Behind Bars; and Co-director of The Vietnam War (with Ken Burns)
“A City Divided helps us understand how race and fear have poisoned the vital relationship between police and the communities they serve. This story of a violent clash between an African American high school student and three police officers makes a compelling case for policing that respects all people while reducing crime. David Harris lays out not just what’s wrong, but how to fix it.” —Matthew Horace, CNN and WSJ Contributor, 28-Year Law Enforcement Veteran, and Author of The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism and Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement
“A City Divided shows us what happens when police and those they serve lose sight of each other, and fear takes over.” —Miriam Aroni Krinsky, Former Prosecutor and Executive Director, Fair and Just Prosecution
“The story of Jordan Miles’s arrest in Pittsburgh is a microcosm of our ongoing national dilemma of race and policing, and Harris tells it to great effect.” —Jack Glaser, Professor, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, USA, and Author of Suspect Race: Causes and Consequences of Racial Profiling
A City Divided is an important look into one of the main issues facing criminal justice today. The author does an excellent job of walking the tightrope between blanket criticism of police as being uncompromisingly racist, but instead, takes a dispassionate approach to explore the issues that shape how police officers do their job, how they are trained, and how things like the “warrior mentality” create problems. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in a better understanding of the complicated issues related to race, crime, and policing today. - Brandon T. Jett, Professor of History, Florida SouthWestern State College.
07/17/2020
Legal scholar Harris (chair, Univ. of Pittsburgh Sch. of Law; Failed Evidence) offers a timely and compelling close read of a single, and thankfully nonfatal, incident of police brutality that took place in Pittsburgh on January 12, 2010, when three police officers assaulted and arrested an 18-year-old Black high school senior as he walked to his grandmother's house. While criminal charges against the teenager were quickly thrown out, government investigations into police conduct and civil lawsuits against the officers extended into 2016. Harris methodically analyzes how racial prejudice and institutional racism, Black citizens' justified fear of police encounters, and the disturbingly central role fear has come to play in the training and culture of American law enforcement shaped the event itself, public reaction, and the legal proceedings that followed. Harris ends with 10 recommendations for preventing police brutality through reform, ranging from the demilitarization of the police and racial reconciliation to laws circumscribing police use of force and stronger commitments to accountability. VERDICT Dense with legal detail, this work is legible to general readers with a strong interest in thinking critically about the violent intersection of racism and policing in American life.—Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc., Boston
