Murray on Performance Artist Rafa Esparza's Work and a Legal Analysis of Police Brutality and Police Killings of People of Color

Yxta Maya Murray, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, is publishing Rafa Esparza's Red Summer in the Fordham Urban Law Journal Online. Here is the abstract.

This essay analyzes the contributions that performance artist Rafa Esparza’s 2016 action “Red Summer” offers to legal analyses of police brutality and police killings of people of color. Building on the Demosprudence jurisprudence of Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres, as well as the author’s work on “artifacts” (studying relationships between visual and performance art and law), the author considers how Esparza’s invocation of grief and anguish combats official disdain of anti-police brutality social movements and etiolated legal responses to police killings.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Police In Film and On Television

Alyssa Rosenberg on real life law enforcement and Hollywood images of the police, here, for the Washington Post. First in a five-part series.

Read more about the police and pop culture below. Selected bibliography.

US TV Shows

Frances Heidenson and Jennifer Brown, "From Juliet to Jane: Women Police in TV Cop Shows, Reality, Rank, and Careers," in Policing: Politics, Culture, and Control 111 (Bloomsbury, 2012).

Hollie McKay, "Angie Dickinson "Felt Exploited" In "Police Woman" But Says Women's Roles in Crimes (sic) Dramas Have 'Evolved'." Fox411.

Jonathan Nichols-Pethick, TV Cops: The Contemporary American Police Drama (Routledge, 2012).

Roger Sabin, Cop Shows: A Critical History of Police Shows on Television (McFarland, 2015).

UK TV Shows

Contemporary British Television Crime Drama: Cops On the Box (Routledge, 2016). Due out November 2.

"And When You Get the Choice To Sit It Out Or Dance/I Hope You Dance"

Dancing law enforcement officers always get my attention, maybe because I love to dance, and maybe because they seem unique. But as these videos show, dancing LEOS aren't that unusual, and why should they be? Police officers are human, they aren't really "flatfoots" (feet?) and they know how to have a good time. So let's encourage our cops to dance, and let's dance with them. Everybody dance!

This Greater Manchester Police Inspector dances at a Pride Parade in 2015.

This District of Columbia police officer de-escalated a tense situation by engaging in a dance-off (2015).

 A Kansas officer dances at a Black Lives Matter barbeque (2016). 

Some Denver cops dance here. 

Swedish officers dance at a Pride Parade here.

This Ottawa police officer dances on Canada Day here.

The New York Times investigates the "dancing cops" matter more fully here.