Introduction

Public Policing's Greed and Dark Money: Private Sponsorship and Funding of Police in North America sets up the book. It begins with two cases in Texas that show the troubling influence of private funding on police practices. It introduces key themes and arguments, defines main terms, identifies some conceptual and empirical contributions, and describes the design of the study on which the book is based. Specifically, it discusses the notions of dark money and a greedy institution and the fact that they relate to issues like accountability and corporatization. It then elaborates the research design involving freedom of information requests as well as interviews and document collection in more than 100 cities in North America, upon which the book is primarily based, but also other research on the UK and Australia. It provides a road map of how the seven main chapters of the book will unfold.