Wake-Up Call: Policing, Privilege, and Reclaiming Our Unalienable Rights (PB) (2019)

On January 25, 2015, in Sonoma, California, Larry Bearg--white,
educated, middle-aged, and middle-class--was arrested for growing medical marijuana. Before he was even charged with a crime, the
police emptied his bank accounts, considered seizing his home, and paraded him, handcuffed, in front of his neighbors. Bearg was outraged. What about being innocent until proven guilty? What about his rights? Three months later, in North Charleston, South Carolina, Walter Scott, a black man, was shot and killed during a traffic stop while fleeing from the officer who shot him. The story made national headlines. What about his rights?

In Wake-up Call, a well-researched as well as a deeply personal book, Bearg searches to understand how his rights, Walter Scott's rights, and the rights of all Americans, no matter their race, have changed beyond recognition over the past fifty years--and how police have accumulated extraordinary new powers at our expense, selectively enforcing the law by granting us privileges rather than honoring our rights. What makes Wake-up Call unique, compelling, and timely is that Bearg concludes with concrete suggestions about what we, the citizens of the United States, can do to reclaim the freedoms granted to us in our Constitution before it's too late.