Why did I choose this title and why this apparent enthusiasm for Greene’s text? First of all, because ‘lost in the flood’ is in line with the sea metaphor used by Greene. Secondly, because I think international police research has lost touch with a number of empirical realities of 24/7 policing. ‘Lost in the flood’ in this context refers to ‘normal science’ character of our field and the relative lack of academic curiosity to move into unchartered territories, both theoretical and empirically. Greene makes a worthwhile attempt to reconnect us again to the lost giants of our field on which shoulders we should stand. Unrecognizable small pieces of academic plastic are floating around at conferences, academic journals and ‘held in place by swirling underwater currents’: the eloquent construction of well written sentences by ‘lost in the flood authors’ narrowing down the function of policing into horizontal preachments of ‘community policing’ and/or other modes and fashions. We must come up for air and reconnect again with the broader historical, and moreover empirical perspectives. My argument is illustrated with references to recent Dutch emperical studies on 24/7 policing linking them to ‘the hard
won lessons of police sociology’ in our field.