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From Busted to Better: A Former Narcotics Officer Exposes the System
Paperback
General LawGeneral Political Science
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: May 3 2026
Pages: 78
Weight: 0.26
Height: 0.16 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
From Busted to Better: A Former Narcotics Officer Exposes the System
For thirty-six years, Barry Cooper worked inside American law enforcement - first as a narcotics officer making hundreds of drug arrests, then as one of the most outspoken critics of the very system he served.
He has been on both sides of the badge. He has executed raids and been raided. He has made arrests and been arrested. He has testified in courts across the country - and been the target of prosecution himself. That rare dual perspective is what makes this book unlike anything else written about policing in America.
From Busted to Better is not a political manifesto. It is a practical, experience-driven blueprint for fixing what is broken - written by someone who helped break it.
Cooper takes on the tools officers carry, the laws they enforce, the hunts they conduct, and the cultures that produce bad outcomes for everyone - officers and civilians alike. He argues for replacing tasers with martial arts training, ending no-knock drug raids, abolishing victimless crime enforcement, creating mental health crisis response teams, doubling police salaries, and rethinking the drug war from the ground up.
He doesn't spare himself. The theft, the bad arrests, the families he damaged - it's all in here. Because honesty is the only foundation this conversation can be built on.
Whether you back the blue, want to defund the police, or have simply never trusted either side of that debate - this book will challenge what you think you know.
Short enough to read in one sitting. Impossible to forget.
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