Scary policing

In Birmingham [in the early 1960s], it was held a fact of criminal science that the surest way to stop a crime wave—burglaries, rapes, whatever—was to go out and shoot a few suspects. ("This thing's getting out of hand," a lieutenant might say. "You know what we've got to do.")

Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (2001, with 2012 Afterword), p. 685 n.2.