Brotherhood of Corruption

September 15, 2004
Juarez, a Chicago cop for seven years, offers a harrowing inside look at the corrupt practices used by police in enforcing drug laws and the blue wall of silence that insulates them. No angel as a youth, Juarez jumped at the chance to become a cop, like his father, and the opportunity for stability, job security, and maybe a chance to correct some social ills. As a member of an elite narcotics unit, what he found instead were glaring inequities--repeated busts of street-corner dealers but a blind eye toward the dealing and use of drugs in more rarefied circles. He witnessed police abuse of power, beatings of suspects, sexual abuse of female suspects, and repeated use of racial profiling in arrests and prosecutions in the war on drugs. He succumbed to temptation and joined his colleagues in abuse and corruption. Disillusionment and his own personal demons eventually led to his downfall. This is a starkly revealing look at how urban policing oversteps the bounds of the law in the so-called war on drugs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)