This book places in historical context the continuing push-pull dynamics between national politics and the entrenched tradition of local control over law enforcement in the U.S. Drawing on the present sense of urgency around the War on Terror and earlier national political initiatives that have sought to influence law enforcement at the local level, this multidisciplinary collection addresses key questions about how national and geopolitical developments come to shape local policing, and inform who decides how, and to what end, local police forces will maintain public order, interact with local communities, and address issues of accountability, oversight, and reform.

Introduction--Stacy K. McGoldrick * The Militarization of American Policing: Enduring Metaphor for a Shifting Context--William T. Allison * “Arriving for immoral purposes”: Women, Immigration, and the Historical Intersection of Federal and Municipal Policing--Val Marie Johnson * “For Speaking Jewish in a Jewish Neighborhood”: Civil Rights and Community Police Relations During the Post-War Red Scare, 1919-1922--Joseph J. Varga * Challenging Police Repression: Federal Activism and Local Reform in New York City--Marilynn S. Johnson * The Failure of Force: Policing Terrorism in Northern Ireland--Joanne Klein * Democracy, Citizenship, and Police Procedure in New Orleans: The Importance of the Local Context for Defining Rights--Anthony Pereira * Willie Horton to Osama Bin Laden: The New Framing of Police and Crime in the 2004 Presidential Campaign--Stacy K. McGoldrick * Policing after September 11: Federal-Local Collaboration and the Implications for Police Community Relations--Andrea McArdle * Transformation: The Emergent Growth of Cooperation Among Police Agencies--Peter K. Manning * The Scales of Justice: Federal-Local Tensions in the War on Terror--Kris Erickson, John Carr, Steve Herbert