Podcast
Behind the Bastards
The book covers a scandal that happened in the Oakland police department around the turn of the last century, focused on a group of officers called The Writers, who were involved in misconduct, such as planting drugs and beating detainees.
It's a pretty shocking and bleak story, though.
— Episode: It Could Happen Here Weekly 83
Episode: It Could Happen Here Weekly 83
The book covers a scandal that happened in the Oakland police department around the turn of the last century, focused on a group of officers called The Writers, who were involved in misconduct, such as planting drugs and beating detainees.
It's a pretty shocking and bleak story, though.
It's a dense book in a way that's still intensely readable.
And it's interesting. There's a degree to which I guess it hasn't changed. And there's a degree to which I'm kind of worried that the sort of nature of social media means that we're a lot more open about the kind of violence we're willing to accept for people who are, yeah.
This is a history. They do exist. They have existed. This is what it has looked like to date, right?
I would say that we didn't make an explicit attempt to make the city the main character. So to draw people into Oakland and kind of cast it in the same way that Mike Davis cast Los Angeles in City of Courts, may he rest in peace.