You Can't Stop Murder: Truths About Policing in Baltimore and Beyond

by Stephen Janis, Stephen Tabeling, Taya M Graham

A murderous vigilante group named Black October guns down drug dealers – and a prominent politician. A psychopath stalks the corridors of city hall en route to a near deadly rendezvous with the mayor. A crazed sniper picks off half a dozen city police officers from the third window of an east Baltimore row home. Violent crimes in one of the country’s most violent cities, and at the center of it all a single Former Baltimore city homicide Lieutenant Stephen Tabeling. What he learned policing during the chaotic decades of 1960s and 70s are truisms about human nature, our propensity for violence, and what we can and cannot do to stop it. Wisdom he is now sharing as a literary epitaph to over six decades in law enforcement by recounting chilling tales of real cases that rocked the city of Baltimore to its core, and changed one man’s life forever. Tabeling is joined by award winning investigative reporter Stephen Janis who has covered crime and corruption in Baltimore city for both print and television. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed book Why Do We Kill?: The Pathology of Murder In Baltimore.

220 pages, Paperback

First published August 21, 2013

About the author

Stephen Janis is an award-winning investigative reporter and the founder of Investigative Voice, an online investigative journalism web site.

As a staff writer for the Baltimore Examiner (and one of only a handful who worked at the paper for its entire existence) he won a Maryland- Delaware-DC Press Association award in 2008 for investigative reporting on the high rate of unsolved murders in Baltimore. In 2009 he won a MDDC Press Association award for best series for his articles on the murders of prostitutes.

He has written two books.

This Dream Called Death, a novel which explores the cultural after shocks of mass incarceration by positing a world where people are imprisoned for the content of their dreams, and Orange, the Diary of an Urban Surrealist, which follows the descent of drug dealer pushing a substance that gives white people soul.

Reviews

[Kristen Luppino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight from a Baltimore City cop. This was a good read. His one sentence paragraphs/incomplete sentences drove me CRAZY, but otherwise a great book.

[Erika · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping for a more in-depth and academic, researched perspective on how drugs and violence get entrenched in communities and solutions that have worked. I didn't realize the book was a series of anecdotes of the police officer's time of duty during the 1950s and 1960s. The chapters were interesting, but I was annoyed with the author's surprise that women could be strong or capable, and it didn't deliver any hope for solutions.

[Taya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read quite a few books about policing so I think I'm a pretty good judge of the genre.
What makes this book interesting is that it is not a traditional cop book. In fact, it's really a pretty honest take on modern American policing from a cop who's been there. All filtered through the prism of some really fascinating cases. I think if you really like true crime and not fabricated murder mysteries and you really want to get inside the mind of a cop, this is a worthwhile book.
Also this book generates some pretty interesting implications about the effectiveness of law enforcement policy and implementation and the need for change. One of the most important conclusions I drew from this book is that our current police force is poorly educated in the constitution and law, which makes for bad arrests for the prosecutors and judges, ineffectual policing as well as the violation of citizen's civil liberties, especially important in cities with racially disparate enforcement and incarceration. Lots of hidden gems in the book for Baltimoreans in the know ;)

[Cindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book because it is about my friend's grandfather(Stephen Tabeling). I thought it would be more like a regular biography, but it came across as more of Tabeling's critique of his former profession and why he feels the way he does.