The following is an excerpt from Gotham's War Within a War: Policing and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in World War II–Era New York City by Emily Brooks which is available now wherever books are sold. Contemporary popular discourse in the United States understands urban policing solely through a lens of crime. This formulation fundamentally misconstrues the history of policing in U.S. cities and the relationships between police departments and municipal governments. Broader discussions about the roles that police play in American life are distorted by an expectation that when we talk about police, we...