Matthew Horace doesn’t pull punches, and as a black man and a cop, he’s seen it all. A career law enforcement officer, he spent 28 years at the federal and local levels, ultimately becoming a senior executive at the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives and later a CNN contributor. In The Black and the Blue, his powerful, probing, unvarnished assessment of racial injustice in law enforcement today, he comes out as a “champion of wholesale police reform in the United States,” unafraid to offer prescriptive advice on how to address the racism, prejudices, biases and the lethal “cops don’t tell on cops” tradition ingrained in police culture. Using in-depth interviews and his own experiences, Horace presents the vivid on-the-ground actuality of police brutality, misconduct, malfeasance and the needless, heedless shootings that capture headlines and snuff out lives all over America. Horace narrates like a pro with both passion and control.
This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
