Walk the Walk: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture

“Walk the Walk” is a book about police reform and why it will fail if it does not address “cop culture,” which are the ways police officers view their work and their relations with others. It focuses on three police chiefs, including one in Georgia, who changed their departments’ culture and made other reforms. Gross is a sociology professor and former police officer.

The “big ideas” for Urban Atlanta:

• “Cop culture” is a major obstacle to police reform. And because it consists of attitudes and instincts, it will be difficult to change.
• When police reform comes, it should borrow heavily from a set of ideas known as “procedural justice,” which outlines the way police officers should interact with citizens.
• Reform will take place inside police departments, but there are roles for outside institutions to play. Among them, they could support studies of police reform in Urban Atlanta and sponsor discussions among police officials about reform. They could also bring police officers and citizens into respectful conversations about what citizens want and how officers work.
• We need advocacy groups that show citizens and police officials how law enforcement in Urban Atlanta could be fairer and more effective and identify the practices—and departments—that are leading the way.
• As the book makes clear, pairing police officers with other professionals—particularly in dealing with mental health or family distress situations—can help de-escalate dangerous incidents and may relieve police officers of tasks they are not well suited for.