An Inconvenient Cop

From the highest-ranking whistleblower in the history of the NYPD, a political memoir that exposes the brokenness of policing from both outside and inside the system

During the workday, Edwin Raymond is on the beat as a ranked lieutenant in the New York Police Department. When the uniform comes off, he takes on a very different role: the lead plaintiff in the largest-ever civil rights lawsuit against the very police force he serves.

This is the true story of one of our country’s most important whistleblowers against police injustice, told in his own words. Raised in a poverty-stricken, largely immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn and driven toward law enforcement by the hope of being a positive influence in his community, Raymond quickly learned that the problem with policing is a lot deeper than merely “a few bad apples”—the entire mechanism is set up to ensure that racial profiling is rewarded, and there are weighty consequences for cops who don’t play along. Offering a rare, often shocking view of American policing through the eyes of an insider to the system, Raymond pulls back the curtain on the many injustices woven into the NYPD’s training, data, and practices—all of which have been repackaged and repurposed by police departments across America.

At once revelatory and galvanizing, An Inconvenient Cop is a whistleblower account unlike any other—a book that courageously bears witness to and exposes institutional violence, all while presenting a vision of radical hope, making the case for a world in which the police’s responsibility is to the people, not to their arrest numbers.

Story Locale:New York, New York

About the Author

Edwin Raymond is the face of and lead plaintiff in the largest lawsuit in the history of the New York Police Department and one of the nation’s leading voices on criminal justice reform. A first-generation Haitian American, he grew up in the predominantly West Indian East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Raymond officially became a whistleblower following the explosive New York Times Magazine cover story “A Black Police Officer’s Fight against the NYPD,” and he was prominently featured in the award-winning documentary on the NYPD 12, Crime + Punishment. He has received numerous accolades, including an Exceptional Police Duty Medal, an NAACP Courage Under Fire Award, an International Documentary Association Courage Under Fire Award, and an IDA Doc Star of the Month. Raymond continues to use his voice and platform to advocate for better policing.

Jon Sternfeld is an author whose work includes the New York Times bestselling Scenes from My Life with Michael K. Williams, A Stone of Hope with Jim St. Germain, Marked for Life with Isaac Wright Jr., and Unprepared: America in the Time of Coronavirus.

Author Residence: New York City (Raymond and Sternfeld)

Author Hometown: New York City (Raymond)