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Who is this book for?
- Readers who care about police, justice, and community safety
- People interested in the relationship between race, poverty, and crime
- Students in policing, criminology, and sociology programs
- People who want to read an in-depth investigative work centered on a real homicide
Who is the author?
- Jill Leovy is a Los Angeles Times reporter who spent ten years closely reporting on homicides in Los Angeles's inner-city Black neighborhoods
- The book was published in 2015 and is built around a real homicide investigation
- It made The New York Times bestseller list, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named a best book of the year by many outlets
Book notes
The Death of a Teenager
The book's main thread is the homicide of an eighteen-year-old Black teenager, Bryant Tennelle. He was shot in the back of the head on a Los Angeles street, and the killer fled in an SUV. This case could easily have become, like the thousands of homicides each year in Los Angeles County, a statistic nobody cared about.
But this case had one difference: the victim's father was a police officer. Still, the author points out that the killer very likely did not know this, which only highlights how accidental the arrival of justice is in these neighborhoods.
What the author wants readers to see are the cases that don't have this kind of "luck."
A Detective Who Wouldn't Give Up
Forgotten Homicides
The Problem Is Not Too Much Policing but Too Little
The Roots in History
Gangs Are a Result, Not a Cause
Why Black Communities Are Especially Affected
Criticism of "Preventive Policing"
Ten Years of Reporting
The Way Forward: Seriously Solving Cases
Bottles that drifted to this book
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Shang
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Voyager's Guide
The world
The Sea of Books has 24 real islands, one for each subject. Every building on an island is a book.
What you can do now
- Tap an island on the chart to go ashore
- Tap a building to read the notes on that book
- Meet Shang, the Navigator
Coming soon
- Chapter 2: register as a voyager, sail your ship, collect building badges, send bottles
- Chapter 4: private chats with other voyagers
Symbols
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