Horror of Police

Travis Linnemann is associate professor of sociology at Kansas State University. He is author of Meth Wars: Police, Media, Power; coauthor of Media and Crime in the U.S.; and coeditor of Ghost Criminology: The Afterlife of Crime and Punishment and the journal Crime, Media, Culture.

• Introduction: Police Story, Horror Story1. Bad Cops and True Detectives2. The Police at the End of the World, or The Political Theology of the Thin Blue Line3. RoboCop, or Modern Prometheus4. Monsters Are Real5. The Unthinkable WorldAcknowledgmentsNotesIndexNotesIndex

"We know this more clearly today than ever before: policing is monstrous, unleashing terror while cannibalistically devouring resources otherwise destined for more human things. Travis Linnemann turns our reality upside-down as he turns the horror genre inside-out, insisting that only by confronting the dreadful monsters in our midst can we build a truly different world."-Geo Maher, author of A World Without Police: How Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete"Police stories are among the most popular in American culture. In this book-equally steeped in pop culture, the latest critical theory, and the history and contemporary reality of policing-Travis Linnemann reads those stories against the grain to argue that the police represent the monstrous core of our society and to challenge us to imagine a world without them."-Adam Kotsko, author of Neoliberalism’s Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital"In this highly original take, Travis Linnemann looks beyond the flashy headlines of the grossest excesses of police violence to the monstrosity that lies beneath it: police power itself. Using the tropes and conventions of the horror literary genre, Linnemann parses not just the fear that the police inspire amongst ‘us’ but also what haunts the police: mutuality, collectivity, and solidarity."-Emma Russell, author of Queer Histories and the Politics of Policing