Cop Cop - by Mac Muir & Greg Finch (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This groundbreaking work takes readers deep into the world of police oversight and reveals what really happens when everyday people try to hold the police accountable.

When you think about the police, who do you think of: Do you think of one officer, or the police as an institution? From movies and TV to the real world, a police presence looms over most conflict. But if there was a defining feature of the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd, it was the collective confusion about how America got to this point. Despite fragmented media coverage about police unions, militarization, and systemic racism, the average citizen's knowledge remained hazy on what exactly police officers had been doing all along. It's probably different than you would expect.

There is indeed a "Blue Wall of Silence", but for the first time, it is possible to get behind it without being the police. The authors were senior investigators at the largest police oversight agency in America, tasked with policing the police in New York City. They are our eyes on the inside, and this book takes us into their world.

Cop Cop lays bare the web of real cases investigated by the authors over nearly a decade working for the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB). As the authors combine their unique perspectives as police misconduct investigators, they provide a new way of framing the history of policing, tethering a story that begins in the fields of Ireland and the plantations of Barbados, courses along the cobblestone paths of Charleston, South Carolina, and London, England, flows through the heart of New York City, and bleeds into the present day.

As they unravel cases ranging from stops and frisks to chokeholds and shootings, they illuminate the overwhelming challenges faced by victims of police misconduct and officers alike, spurning both "Defund the Police" and "Blue Lives Matter" as they build a new argument for six concrete solutions to fix American policing.

Review Quotes

"Why is it so difficult to hold bad cops accountable? In this provocative and enlightening book, we learn about the world of civilian-led police accountability in New York City and why it rarely succeeds. Through harrowing real stories of police misconduct investigated by the authors themselves, as well as an exploration of the modern CompStat-focused system of incentives and the self-protective police bureaucracy, we are left understanding the deep-seated cynicism and hopelessness that cops and the public experience. We can do better than this, as the authors suggest at the end. Let's hope so." --Cathy O'Neil, New York Times bestselling author of Weapons of Math Destruction

About the Author

Mac Muir (Author)
Mac Muir was raised in Oakland, California. From 2016 to 2022 he rose to become a Supervising Investigator at the New York City CCRB. From 2023 to 2025, Mac served as Executive Director of Oakland's Community Police Review Agency.

Gregory Finch (Author)
Greg Finch was raised in Queens, New York. Greg was a senior investigator at the CCRB, where he worked from 2016 to 2025.