Police consistently adopt techniques and practices that infringe on the rights of Black people, and rapidly-developing policing technology has only increased this risk. This review builds on the cutting-edge scholarship offered in Devon Carbado’s book Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment (Unreasonable) ¹ Open footnote #1 1 Footnote #1 content: Devon Carbado, Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment(2022). Carbado is the Honorable Harry Pregerson and Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. close and Christopher Slobogin’s book Virtual Searches: Regulating the Covert World of Technological Policing (Virtual Searches). ² Open footnote #2 2 Footnote #2 content: Christopher Slobogin, Virtual Searches: Regulating the Covert World of Technological Policing (2022). Slobogin is the Milton Underwood Chair and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. close This review brings together the central claims of Unreasonable and Virtual Searches and broadens the conversation about the discretion Fourth Amendment law currently gives to police officers to target and engage Black people without any evidence of wrongdoing. Controversial policing technologies such as ShotSpotter, a rapid identification and response system designed to detect gunshots and dispatch police, and HunchLab, among the newest iterations of predictive policing technology, give police even more ability to surveil communities. Read together, these books make a powerful case for why Fourth Amendment jurisprudence must shift to meaningfully protect the rights of Black people. Until that shift occurs, however, this review argues that state and local governments should invest in community violence reduction and shift away from costly and ineffective police surveillance.

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