Why do most police departments seem to never transform despite calls for increased accountability? In New York City, it is by design. In The Policing Machine Tony Cheng reveals how police departments have successfully stonewalled change, offering a close look at the deep engagement strategies that NYPD precincts have developed with only subsets of the community to counter any truly meaningful oversight. Cheng spent nearly two years in an unprecedented effort to understand the who and how of police-community relationship-building in New York City, documenting, the many ways the NYPD strategically distributed power and privilege within the community to increase their own public legitimacy without sacrificing their organizational independence. The NYPD, like police departments all over the country, cultivates political capital through strategic politics that involves distributing public resources, offering regulatory leniency, and deploying coercive force. The fundamental challenge with police-community relationships, Cheng shows, is not how to build them. It is that they already exist and are motivated by a machinery designed to stymie reform.