"Policing Urban America," by Geoffrey P. Alpert and Roger G. Dunham, is a novel explaining the many facets of police work including controversial issues that arise in the job as well as providing a new understanding of police work. The authors go into the wide variety of jobs and careers available in the field of policing as well. The book opens up with the authors stressing the presence of the community based philosophy and later in the book the focus is directed toward styles of policing and the police organization. the book does address important issues with policing like police brutality and the use of force, but it dives deeper into giving the reader a more rounded understanding of police work in general from the day to day job to police socialization. My favorite part of the book was the very last chapter. the authors delved into the may types of law enforcement careers that are possible in America today such as urban police, rural law enforcement, state police, and jobs in the federal law enforcement agencies. This chapter is my favorite because of how it relates to iQuest and my goal for this year. This chapter explored the different careers in law enforcement and helped me to understand the various careers involved and how diverse policing can be if you persist and continue to pursue more schooling. Although the book is long and at times a little boring with statistics and numbers, I would recommend this book to someone who wants to explore the possibility of a career in law enforcement. I learned a lot of valuable information from this novel and it motivated me to keep expanding my knowledge of law enforcement to find out if this is really what I want to pursue in college and as a career.
