Police Technology: 21st-Century Crime-Fighting Tools

Gr 7 Up—Not your typical career selection, this series offers a retrospective view of policing in terms of the political and sociological influences and impact. Focusing on policies, methods, and practices that have developed over time, the titles address, as in Working the Case, the challenges of policing a close-knit community vs. a large city. While all volumes describe tools of the trade, Police Technology and The Spy Game detail advances in intelligence gathering, forensics, and tactics used in identifying suspects, analyzing information, and preventing crime. To Serve and Protect looks at the process of professionalizing and militarizing peace officers, who historically were thief catchers for hire, and opens a discussion of police abuse of power. Captions explain archival illustrations and images of today's officers at work. Appended resources are invaluable for further inquiry. However, don't expect to find Dictionary of Occupational Titles data (salary, training, employment outlook, etc.); rather, this is a big picture view of law enforcement.