The Danger Imperative: Violence, Death, and the Soul of Policing
Author: Michael Sierra-Arévalo
Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2024. 368 pages.
Reviewer: Raven Lewis | September 2024
In 2014, the police killings of three unarmed Black males—43-year-old Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York; 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio—ignited a national reckoning with police violence in the United States. These deaths, along with many others, raised urgent questions about the legitimacy of policing, as officers sworn to “serve and protect” were instead wreaking devastation on Black and Brown communities, often with little to no accountability. The Black Lives Matter movement rallied in response, amplifying calls for justice and sparking widespread protests. While the majority of demonstrators peacefully voiced their frustrations, isolated incidents of violence against police, such as the murders of New York Police Department (PD) officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, fueled a counter-narrative of a “war on cops.” In turn, police departments responded with militarized tactics, deploying riot gear, armored vehicles, and aggressive crowd control measures, further straining relations between law enforcement and the public.
It was amid the unrest of 2014 that sociologist Michael Sierra-Arévalo embarked on the research that would eventually become his first book, The Danger Imperative: Violence, Death, and the Soul of Policing. As a graduate student at Yale University during this period, Sierra-Arévalo recognized the need to go beyond simply pointing out the racial disparities in policing and to investigate the deeper institutional and cultural forces that perpetuate them. His book explores how police culture, through what he terms “the danger imperative,” fosters aggressive policing practices that disproportionately impact communities of color.
Sierra-Arévalo defines the danger imperative that permeates modern U.S. policing as the “cultural preoccupation with violence and officer safety.” (p. 6). From the academy onward, officers are trained to see potential threats everywhere and respond quickly, often prioritizing their safety over fostering community relations. While deeply ingrained, this mindset does not reflect the actual statistical threat officers face. Citing findings from prior studies that analyzed national databases such as the FBI, Sierra-Arévalo underscores that violence against police has not risen since 2014, and the overall likelihood of officers being attacked remains low. Paradoxically, the danger imperative—meant to protect officers—often leads to riskier behaviors that endanger both officers and the public.
The danger imperative has a particularly harmful impact on Black and Brown communities, which are often portrayed as more dangerous than White communities. This narrative leads to aggressive policing practices that disproportionately target people of color. Sierra-Arévalo explains that the danger imperative does not have to stem from overt racial bias. Instead, incidents like the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice illustrate how the danger imperative exacerbates racial inequalities while being cloaked in a colorblind logic. Police officers often deny that race played a role in such cases of police brutality, asserting safety concerns even when victims were unarmed and race clearly influenced the tragic outcomes. This claim of officer safety often results in the officers responsible not facing criminal penalties.
In light of ongoing debates surrounding police reform and racism in the criminal justice system, Sierra-Arévalo’s work is timely and essential. By examining the structural forces driving police violence, the book offers valuable insights into how the danger imperative, while seen as necessary for officer survival, perpetuates the over-policing of minority communities and undermines trust in law enforcement. The resurgence of protests in 2020, following the police-involved deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, only underscores the relevance of this book in the broader national conversation on reform and justice.
Sierra-Arévalo developed the danger imperative framework through an ethnographic study of three urban-based police departments in the United States—Elmont, West River, and Sunshine (all pseudonyms)—conducted between 2014 and 2018. While these three departments may not represent the thousands of police departments in the U.S., the richness of the data compensates for this limitation. Each selected department was based in a different region of the country and differed in racial diversity—one predominantly White, one predominantly minority, and the last being an equal mix. This variation in region and racial composition allowed Sierra-Arévalo to assess how the danger imperative functions across different police department contexts.
Sierra-Arévalo also employed various ethnographic techniques, including over 1,000 hours of observations made during ride-alongs, attendance at the police academy and in-service training sessions, and participation in more informal events such as a retirement banquet, award ceremony, and police officer memorial service. Additionally, he conducted over 100 interviews with officers and performed in-depth content analysis of departmental policies, training documents, and local news and media reports. This multi-method approach allowed him to triangulate his findings, offering a nuanced and comprehensive view of police culture. The study’s depth is even more impressive given the traditionally insular nature of police departments, which often limit access to researchers.
With such methodological rigor, Sierra-Arévalo’s research fills essential gaps in the existing scholarship on policing. Having captured first-hand observations of officers’ daily routines, he exposes the more subtle, nonlethal forms of violence that police engage in beyond high-profile fatal incidents. His longitudinal engagement with officers challenges the common perception of police culture as a static, top-down process, where officers simply absorb the danger imperative during academy training. Instead, Sierra-Arévalo demonstrates that officers actively engage in, recreate, and reinforce this mindset throughout their careers, from their early training days to their regular interactions on patrol and as veteran officers. This dynamic view of police culture and the variety of data used contribute to a more complex and thorough understanding of how the danger imperative shapes officer behavior and the institution of policing itself.
Throughout four empirical chapters, Sierra-Arévalo identifies how the danger imperative influences officer behavior. In chapter one, “Survival School,” he examines the police academy’s role in instilling the danger imperative. Using Elmont PD as a case example, he contrasts the academy’s outward focus on community policing with the militaristic environment within. Through his observations, Sierra-Arévalo found that 90% of the training focused on using firearms and non-lethal weapons, while de-escalation, procedural justice, and implicit bias training received minimal attention. Particularly alarming were the “shoot/don’t shoot” virtual simulations, where recruits were encouraged to use lethal force in the presence of any perceived weapon—even if there was uncertainty. This mindset reflects real-world incidents where civilians, especially Black and Brown individuals, have been shot by police due to mere suspicion of having a weapon. Still, Sierra-Arévalo emphasizes that the danger imperative is shaped not only by formal training but also by socialization. The academy cultivated a “warrior mentality,” reflected in battle-themed imagery in hung murals, militaristic nicknames assigned to academy classes, and officers aligning themselves with the Punisher, a Marvel antihero known for dispensing brutal justice. Thus, from the start, officers were taught to prioritize maximizing their safety over building public trust.
While many previous studies of police culture concentrate primarily on academy training, Sierra-Arévalo extends his analysis in the following three chapters to examine how the danger imperative permeates officers’ daily routines. In chapter two, he delves into how this mindset is reinforced through memorializing fallen officers. These officers are often romanticized as soldiers who gave their lives in the battle against crime, reinforcing the perception of policing as a dangerous and heroic profession. Their commemoration extends beyond the moments of their deaths or their local jurisdictions, as officers nationwide feel a shared sense of camaraderie and loss following such tragedies. Officers in the study also had public memorials and personal tributes, such as jewelry and tattoos related to fallen officers, that reminded them of their dangers. However, as Sierra-Arévalo points out, the reality is that officers are more likely to die from accidents or suicide than from civilian violence. Officers who die by suicide are notably excluded from these tributes, as their deaths conflict with the image of the resilient, stoic officer. The ongoing exaltation of fallen officers reinforces the danger imperative and further justifies the use of aggressive policing tactics that officers believe are necessary for their survival.
Chapter three introduces the “threat network,” a concept Sierra-Arévalo uses to describe the phenomenon of police officers exchanging information about potential threats. While some threats were legitimate, Sierra-Arévalo found that many highlighted by officers were exaggerated, based on outdated information, or had occurred in entirely different jurisdictions. Significantly, the threats officers most often focused on involved crimes attributed to Black and Brown men in disadvantaged neighborhoods, reinforcing racialized stereotypes that link criminality to race and place. Even movements like Black Lives Matter, which aim to address racial inequalities and promote justice, were framed as threats due to isolated incidents of violence against law enforcement associated with the movement. The “us versus them” mentality fostered by the threat network not only heightens implicit racial bias but also legitimizes aggressive policing tactics under the pretext of officer safety, undermining coordinated efforts to combat these very practices.
In chapter four, Sierra-Arévalo shows how the danger imperative influences officers’ everyday actions through what he calls their “tactical imagination.” Officers were trained to anticipate worst-case scenarios, such as ambushes during routine traffic stops, even though data shows these incidents are rare. This constant state of hypervigilance often resulted in overreactions or mistakes—such as misinterpreting a person with mental health issues as being non-compliant. These tactics disproportionately affect minorities. For instance, Sierra-Arévalo recounted a ride-along with a White officer who stopped a group of Latino boys without cause, questioning and surveilling them while covertly pointing his firearm at them behind the door of his patrol car. This incident illustrates how officers’ readiness for violence, paired with racial biases, leads to disproportionately aggressive policing in communities of color. This constant readiness also harms officers, as their aggressive tactics can escalate confrontations with civilians.
Given the danger imperative’s deep entrenchment within police culture, Sierra-Arévalo doubts that it can be eradicated entirely. Nonetheless, he suggests several reforms can mitigate its harmful effects. These include audits by local governments and departments to remove violence- and fear-based training from police academies, subjecting training curricula to rigorous review and approval by state-level Peace Officer Standards and Training boards, and ensuring that such training is accessible for public scrutiny. While the book does not fully endorse police abolition, it acknowledges the abolitionist perspective, agreeing that reducing police reliance through community-based alternatives, such as mental health services and violence prevention programs, is critical. Ultimately, Sierra-Arévalo argues that because the danger imperative is so ingrained, reform efforts alone risk being ignored or resisted, leading to a return to the status quo. What is needed, he suggests, is a complete overhaul of the current infrastructure that positions police as the default responders to nonviolent issues. Only through such comprehensive change can meaningful progress be made toward enhancing public safety and justice.
Overall, Sierra-Arévalo offers a solid foundation for understanding U.S. police culture and why addressing racially discriminatory policing has been so resistant to change, even after reforms.
This resistance stems from the “danger imperative,” a phenomenon often observed in policing that needed articulation and a more thorough examination—a gap this book successfully fills. While some questions remain, particularly regarding the perspectives of communities most affected by the violent, fear-based practices driven by the danger imperative, these fall outside the scope of Sierra-Arévalo’s already exhaustive research. However, they offer valuable directions for future researchers drawing upon his framework.
Beyond academics, Sierra-Arévalo’s writing, free from academic jargon but rich in narrative detail, makes it engaging for a broad audience, including policymakers, law enforcement, and the general public. Law enforcement, in particular, should reflect on the book’s insights. While some officers may resist its portrayal of policing, others may see the truth behind its observations and recognize the need for change. This change requires shifting the orientation of policing from death, danger, and self-preservation to embracing equitable practices that genuinely serve and protect all communities.
Raven Lewis is a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers School of Criminal Justice.
