Soon after Rudolph Giuliani became mayor of New York City in 1994, he began a crackdown on petty crime and criminals that reduced the rate of serious crime to levels the city had not experienced since the 1970s. While many of the city’s residents were grateful for the increased police presence in their neighborhoods, others were less welcoming. Claims of police brutality increased 62 percent during the first two years of the crackdown. Other cities that instituted police crackdowns reported similar statistics—Cincinnati, Baltimore, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., all recorded lower crime rates but a higher number of police brutality complaints. When newspapers reported in August 1997 that New York City police were alleged to have beaten and sodomized a Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima, critics of police seemed to be vindicated in their belief that police brutality was...