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Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District
When Harvard-trained sociologist Peter Moskos left the classroom to become a cop in Baltimore's Eastern District, he was thrust deep into police culture and the ways of the street--the nerve-rattling patrols, the thriving drug corners, and a world of poverty and violence that outsiders never see. In Cop in the Hood, Moskos reveals the truths he learned on the midnight shift. Through Moskos's eyes, we see police academy graduates unprepared for the realities of the street, success measured by number of arrests, and the ultimate failure of the war on drugs. In addition to telling an explosive insider's story of what it is really like to be a police officer, he makes a passionate argument for drug legalization as the only realistic way to end drug violence--and let cops once again protect and serve. In a new afterword, Moskos describes the many benefits of foot patrol--or, as he calls it, "policing green."
270 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2008
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April 5, 2021
The story is that Peter Moskos was a sociology graduate and wanted to do in-depth research into police behaviour involving extended participant observation in some major city, I guess what became known as embedding when journalists did that in the Iraq War. After some rejections Baltimore accepted the idea but then there was a change of heart. But the new commissioner asked him “Why don’t you want to be a cop for real?” and Peter said because nobody would hire him knowing he was going to resign after 18 months and write a book about the whole thing, and this guy said he would, so that’s what happened.
So the city that accepted him being good old Baltimore and him working in the most drug-ridden part of the city, this means if you saw The Wire, that was where Peter was, jacking up all those corner boys and hoppers.
This is a mixture of gritty anecdote, facts & figures, and Peter’s forceful suggestions for how things might be improved. Here’s one stat that is kind of eyebrow raising :
From 1925 to 1975…about 1 in 1000 Americans was imprisoned at any given time. In 1975 there were approximately 200,000 prisoners. Thirty-two years later there are 2.3 million behind bars – 1 in 130 Americans.
That’s the effect of the War on Drugs, kicked off by Richard Nixon. The majority of the huge increase is of course young black males. This whole book is really about drugs since all the crime these cops deal with is drug related. Cue comparisons with Prohibition and the realisation that Prohibition failed. Peter sums up his views in a very memorable phrase –
After all these years, if the war on drugs were winnable, it would already be won.
This is a very solid trustworthy book. It mostly told me things I already knew but in a good way.
So the city that accepted him being good old Baltimore and him working in the most drug-ridden part of the city, this means if you saw The Wire, that was where Peter was, jacking up all those corner boys and hoppers.
This is a mixture of gritty anecdote, facts & figures, and Peter’s forceful suggestions for how things might be improved. Here’s one stat that is kind of eyebrow raising :
From 1925 to 1975…about 1 in 1000 Americans was imprisoned at any given time. In 1975 there were approximately 200,000 prisoners. Thirty-two years later there are 2.3 million behind bars – 1 in 130 Americans.
That’s the effect of the War on Drugs, kicked off by Richard Nixon. The majority of the huge increase is of course young black males. This whole book is really about drugs since all the crime these cops deal with is drug related. Cue comparisons with Prohibition and the realisation that Prohibition failed. Peter sums up his views in a very memorable phrase –
After all these years, if the war on drugs were winnable, it would already be won.
This is a very solid trustworthy book. It mostly told me things I already knew but in a good way.
April 12, 2020
Had to read this for a policy class. It’s a really interesting book but be warned: it is VERY biased toward cops. Like, Moskos will talk about some horrible thing another cop (or even moskos himself) said and then write it off as tensions running high. He matter-of-factly told a story where he ignored a domestic assault situation and said it didn’t matter because the woman was too drunk to remember. But I guess I recommend if you want to get inside the mind of a cop.
August 3, 2008
This book was really good, but left me wanting more. Moskos is a Harvard trained sociologist that wanted to conduct research on police interaction. His request to the Baltimore PD was essentially denied unless he agreed to become an officer. He did. The book recounts his 14 months as an officer in the cities eastern district, one of the roughest in the city. For anyone who has watched The Wire, this is a bit redundant, but it extremely interesting to see how cops view the deck is stacked against them, and their responses. Some give up, some try harder. I really with this book was written by a good story teller. Moskos does a good job mixing anecdotes and interesting statistics to prove his point (which ends up being that drugs should be legalized), but I feel like this could be an extremely compelling story in the right hands. Regardless, for anyone who lives in the city, or thinks that what they see on The Wire is fake, this is a good real life account of how screwed up the system is, and why there never seems to be any progress in "the war on drugs."
August 14, 2019
This is as great as you'd want it to be, everything you hope for when a university professor steps out of the classroom and into his "real-life lab," on the streets. It is beyond enormous to get a spot on the not only the police academy, but to actually pass it, and be a beat cop. It is frikkin hard, mentally and physically punishing to get through police training--6 months at the academy and 6 months being shadowed, before finally going it solo. We civilians don't get the full magnitude of what it takes and undervalue the import of our officers hard at work. Moskos is remarkable., his writing crystalline and pure, raw from lived experience. He lived to write about every nuance of what it's like to walk those streets, danger lurking around every corner, when he left his front door and stepped out of his patrol car, not knowing if he'd make it back alive. Damn. That's intense and then some. He humanizes everything, not that it needs it. Every civilian should read this book--nothing will cure us faster of referring to police as "pigs." Some respect, right?
August 18, 2008
For the most part this book is exactly what the title says it is. Harvard graduate and sociologist Peter Moskos wanted to study a police department and had problems finding a department willing to let him do it. Baltimore finally agreed as long as he actually became a police officer. So he went through the police academy and became a patrol officer in the Eastern District. He describes his experiences going through both and certain sociological factors about both. For the most part I felt like I pretty much knew most of what he wrote about having watched The Wire and from keeping up with the local news. I still enjoyed it though because I love books about this kind of thing. The only misstep I think was at the end he went into some weird history of prohibition trying to relate it to the current war on drugs. I understood where he was coming from, but I didn't feel like it fit really well with the rest of the book.
May 29, 2014
Cop for a Day …
As a huge fan of HBO’s “The Wire”, I picked up this book hoping to reveal more details of policing one of America’s most dangerous cities. Unfortunately, COP IN THE HOOD never materialized into anything more than a short-timer’s rather mundane overview of generic police work that suddenly gets pushed aside to make room for the author’s justification for the legalization of drugs and increased foot patrols.
As tantalizing as the book’s title is, the subtitle is more revealing: “My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District”. Writing a book about policing “the ‘hood” with only one year of experience had me thinking the author must have gone through hell in that short period of time, but that certainly wasn’t the case. Starting with his stint at the academy, Moskos wastes no time “eye rolling” the entire training process as a bureaucratic necessity and a waste of time for the Harvard-educated recruit. While some of Moskos’ criticism of the academy process makes complete sense, a negative and somewhat arrogant tone accompanies his words, hinting that his new job as a police officer is beneath him … and he has even become one yet. This tone resonates throughout the book and the more I read, the more I questioned the author’s purpose in writing the book and wondered why he really became a police officer.
While there are a few bits of interesting observations peppered throughout COP IN THE HOOD, there is nothing that sticks; no memorable experiences/stories and nothing that really depicts his personal duty as a cop … just his opinion of how his fellow officers performed, with a few quotes here and there. He paints a fairly clear picture of the hopeless misery associated with the drug trade and poverty, but that isn’t unique to Baltimore. Moskos illustrates a law enforcement system that is hampered by relatively ineffective rules and procedures that basically does nothing to resolve the drug-realated high crime rate (also not unique to Baltimore). Observations and opinions occasionally backed by quotes reads more like a thesis or dissertation on how law enforcement and the legal system is helpless in fighting crime; Moskos’ current career as a college professor certainly alludes to this.
The longest chapter in the book is dedicated to arrest rates and their impact on job performance and effective police work (an inverse relationship) … it is not particularly interesting. Following this chapter, out of nowhere, Moskos churns out a lengthy and much-detailed chapter on Prohibition and its failures as an argument for legalizing drugs. Salient points are made on the issue, but by this point readers are getting lectured rather than learning more about what police work is like “in the ‘hood”.
I find it sad that the two police ride-a-longs I’ve experienced proved to be more exciting and memorable than any part of COP IN THE HOOD. I was looking forward to the book but ultimately ended-up disappointed in that I wasn’t reading an immersive depiction of policing in a dangerous, high-crime city, but a political piece (Moskos admits to being a liberal and he even references Rush Limbaugh’s drug addiction for added measure) … as if we don’t get enough of this on a daily basis already. Moskos’ one year of policing don’t warrant, in my opinion, enough expertise to take this book where he eventually takes it and if he was that committed to fixing the problem(s), maybe he should have stayed on the force longer and worked on actually making a difference (and not just quit). For those looking for a sobering account of how dangerous, stressful and unappreciated police work truly is, try Connie Fletcher’s “What Cops Know” If you want to understand more about policing in drug-infested Baltimore, you’ll get a better understanding by simply watching all 5 seasons of “The Wire”.
As a huge fan of HBO’s “The Wire”, I picked up this book hoping to reveal more details of policing one of America’s most dangerous cities. Unfortunately, COP IN THE HOOD never materialized into anything more than a short-timer’s rather mundane overview of generic police work that suddenly gets pushed aside to make room for the author’s justification for the legalization of drugs and increased foot patrols.
As tantalizing as the book’s title is, the subtitle is more revealing: “My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District”. Writing a book about policing “the ‘hood” with only one year of experience had me thinking the author must have gone through hell in that short period of time, but that certainly wasn’t the case. Starting with his stint at the academy, Moskos wastes no time “eye rolling” the entire training process as a bureaucratic necessity and a waste of time for the Harvard-educated recruit. While some of Moskos’ criticism of the academy process makes complete sense, a negative and somewhat arrogant tone accompanies his words, hinting that his new job as a police officer is beneath him … and he has even become one yet. This tone resonates throughout the book and the more I read, the more I questioned the author’s purpose in writing the book and wondered why he really became a police officer.
While there are a few bits of interesting observations peppered throughout COP IN THE HOOD, there is nothing that sticks; no memorable experiences/stories and nothing that really depicts his personal duty as a cop … just his opinion of how his fellow officers performed, with a few quotes here and there. He paints a fairly clear picture of the hopeless misery associated with the drug trade and poverty, but that isn’t unique to Baltimore. Moskos illustrates a law enforcement system that is hampered by relatively ineffective rules and procedures that basically does nothing to resolve the drug-realated high crime rate (also not unique to Baltimore). Observations and opinions occasionally backed by quotes reads more like a thesis or dissertation on how law enforcement and the legal system is helpless in fighting crime; Moskos’ current career as a college professor certainly alludes to this.
The longest chapter in the book is dedicated to arrest rates and their impact on job performance and effective police work (an inverse relationship) … it is not particularly interesting. Following this chapter, out of nowhere, Moskos churns out a lengthy and much-detailed chapter on Prohibition and its failures as an argument for legalizing drugs. Salient points are made on the issue, but by this point readers are getting lectured rather than learning more about what police work is like “in the ‘hood”.
I find it sad that the two police ride-a-longs I’ve experienced proved to be more exciting and memorable than any part of COP IN THE HOOD. I was looking forward to the book but ultimately ended-up disappointed in that I wasn’t reading an immersive depiction of policing in a dangerous, high-crime city, but a political piece (Moskos admits to being a liberal and he even references Rush Limbaugh’s drug addiction for added measure) … as if we don’t get enough of this on a daily basis already. Moskos’ one year of policing don’t warrant, in my opinion, enough expertise to take this book where he eventually takes it and if he was that committed to fixing the problem(s), maybe he should have stayed on the force longer and worked on actually making a difference (and not just quit). For those looking for a sobering account of how dangerous, stressful and unappreciated police work truly is, try Connie Fletcher’s “What Cops Know” If you want to understand more about policing in drug-infested Baltimore, you’ll get a better understanding by simply watching all 5 seasons of “The Wire”.
December 19, 2025
As the title reflects, Peter Moskos' Cop in the Hood presents Baltimore from the perspective of a police officer. Even though Moskos is a Harvard graduate with a background in sociology, the beauty and uniqueness of this work is that it takes the perspective of a real police officer. Keep in mind the time, place, and who of the book if you're going to read. This book was written before the social justice movements that we saw of the 2010s and into the 2020s. It is also not written by an investigative journalist seeking to expose police - it's written by Peter Moskos and it is his reflections on his time having been a police officer in the city of Baltimore. This book didn't have to be set in Baltimore, Moskos makes the point that he sought to conduct this work in other cities - Baltimore just so happened to be the department that he, through a bit of luck and chance, was able to conduct his work in.
I taught in an urban school for 2 years after college, so I can't help but draw parallels. What happens when the young, idealistic, inspired, and college-educated are smashed in the face by the reality of decade-old systems that seem to be spinning in the mud? You'd hope that fresh blood and inspired minds could reinvigorate systems and do real good, but overwhelmingly this is simply not the case. (Not to say there aren't exceptions.) To my question, Moskos' response in this book would be that, at best, the status quo is maintained. It seems fitting to quote the Wire and mention that real change cannot happen until the bottom is reached. I cannot claim to have any particular real insight into conditions in the city of Baltimore, but 348 homicides in 2019, the second highest number since 1993 when the city had a population nearly 125,000 higher, would seem to suggest that bad days for Baltimore certainly continued beyond the timeframe of this book.
That's not to say there are not a number of possible solutions presented by Moskos. At the most extreme, Moskos' quotes a fellow officer saying that they would all be better off if they were to bomb the whole area to the ground and started over. The inevitable conclusion of such clearing would be redevelopment, but then we're again presented with a dilemma. Would redevelopment be conducted with sound policy and the interest of the people in mind, or would such redevelopment be a replacement dictated and influenced at the whims of wealthy interests? Despite our best wishes, I'm more inclined to think the former. Take a look at the Northern Liberties and now into Kensington neighborhoods of Philadelphia and you'll see the eventual conclusion. The neighborhoods are left to rot, decay, and fester for decades, and finally when there's hardly any lifeblood left and the neighborhood's reputation has been utterly destroyed, that's when the vacants are torn down and the damned souls on the streets are pushed out. What's rebuilt in its place are cookie cutter "luxury" apartment buildings and lofts that your average person really can't afford. Perhaps that is the nature of progress, but it sure seems like quite the ugly process to reach progress.
Moskos does present some actual good solutions. One of those is the issue of the patrol/radio car and the necessary response of foot/bike patrols. I wholeheartedly agree with this solution. The main idea is that policing from a patrol car is a spectator sport - a cop in a car does not get to understand the area in which they are policing. From the car, a cop can't gain the trust of residents to feel the heartbeat of a neighborhood, they're simply reacting to problems as an outsider after issues have boiled over to a tipping point where they require outside intervention, i.e. police. Moskos does mention potential positives and negatives, including the Impact example from NYC. But even the NYC example notes that the problem here is a cultural one within the organization. The foot patrol is delegated to rookies and seen almost like an extension of police academy. The rookies feel they're being punished and kept out from "real police work" by not having the patrol car. Anecdotally, I full-heartedly support the idea of foot patrols in urban and, where it makes sense, suburban areas. I take this from my time spent in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the police regularly patrolled the neighborhoods in paired foot-patrols. Walking down the street alone after dark, I simply felt safer when I passed a foot patrol and greeted them as our paths crossed. This was simply a matter of vibes and feeling. Moskos' mentions the example of a woman leaving for work early in the morning before sunrise, and upon seeing him patrolling on foot with a partner said, "thank you angels in blue!" An experience Moskos recounts as one of the most fulfilling in his time as an officer. This is a stark contrast to the rookies from NYC's Impact example, who are stated as having little-to-no interaction with residents in the areas they patrol on foot. Some things you can't quantify, that's why I say my experience with the foot-patrols in Buenos Aires was purely one of vibes and feeling.
Moskos goes into a variety of other topics including Compstat and the pressure to reduce numbers that results in fudged data; 911 dispatch and pressure for police to turn out to every single call, including the 'bullshit' calls; problems with constant police surveillance through cameras; and proposals to legalize drugs. I won't go into these issues here now, but I would recommend this book highly to anyone interested in criminal justice and law. I would also recommend this book to anyone who claims to hate the police/says "all cops are bastards," because you ought to know your enemy. At the end of the day, most police are probably men and women who started out idealistic and hoping for change, yet very quickly realized that the reality of the job, more often than not, is a miserable crawl towards 20 to 25 years for the pension. If you want to change something, you should at least understand that thing. This book will increase your understanding of policing regardless of your motive.
I taught in an urban school for 2 years after college, so I can't help but draw parallels. What happens when the young, idealistic, inspired, and college-educated are smashed in the face by the reality of decade-old systems that seem to be spinning in the mud? You'd hope that fresh blood and inspired minds could reinvigorate systems and do real good, but overwhelmingly this is simply not the case. (Not to say there aren't exceptions.) To my question, Moskos' response in this book would be that, at best, the status quo is maintained. It seems fitting to quote the Wire and mention that real change cannot happen until the bottom is reached. I cannot claim to have any particular real insight into conditions in the city of Baltimore, but 348 homicides in 2019, the second highest number since 1993 when the city had a population nearly 125,000 higher, would seem to suggest that bad days for Baltimore certainly continued beyond the timeframe of this book.
That's not to say there are not a number of possible solutions presented by Moskos. At the most extreme, Moskos' quotes a fellow officer saying that they would all be better off if they were to bomb the whole area to the ground and started over. The inevitable conclusion of such clearing would be redevelopment, but then we're again presented with a dilemma. Would redevelopment be conducted with sound policy and the interest of the people in mind, or would such redevelopment be a replacement dictated and influenced at the whims of wealthy interests? Despite our best wishes, I'm more inclined to think the former. Take a look at the Northern Liberties and now into Kensington neighborhoods of Philadelphia and you'll see the eventual conclusion. The neighborhoods are left to rot, decay, and fester for decades, and finally when there's hardly any lifeblood left and the neighborhood's reputation has been utterly destroyed, that's when the vacants are torn down and the damned souls on the streets are pushed out. What's rebuilt in its place are cookie cutter "luxury" apartment buildings and lofts that your average person really can't afford. Perhaps that is the nature of progress, but it sure seems like quite the ugly process to reach progress.
Moskos does present some actual good solutions. One of those is the issue of the patrol/radio car and the necessary response of foot/bike patrols. I wholeheartedly agree with this solution. The main idea is that policing from a patrol car is a spectator sport - a cop in a car does not get to understand the area in which they are policing. From the car, a cop can't gain the trust of residents to feel the heartbeat of a neighborhood, they're simply reacting to problems as an outsider after issues have boiled over to a tipping point where they require outside intervention, i.e. police. Moskos does mention potential positives and negatives, including the Impact example from NYC. But even the NYC example notes that the problem here is a cultural one within the organization. The foot patrol is delegated to rookies and seen almost like an extension of police academy. The rookies feel they're being punished and kept out from "real police work" by not having the patrol car. Anecdotally, I full-heartedly support the idea of foot patrols in urban and, where it makes sense, suburban areas. I take this from my time spent in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the police regularly patrolled the neighborhoods in paired foot-patrols. Walking down the street alone after dark, I simply felt safer when I passed a foot patrol and greeted them as our paths crossed. This was simply a matter of vibes and feeling. Moskos' mentions the example of a woman leaving for work early in the morning before sunrise, and upon seeing him patrolling on foot with a partner said, "thank you angels in blue!" An experience Moskos recounts as one of the most fulfilling in his time as an officer. This is a stark contrast to the rookies from NYC's Impact example, who are stated as having little-to-no interaction with residents in the areas they patrol on foot. Some things you can't quantify, that's why I say my experience with the foot-patrols in Buenos Aires was purely one of vibes and feeling.
Moskos goes into a variety of other topics including Compstat and the pressure to reduce numbers that results in fudged data; 911 dispatch and pressure for police to turn out to every single call, including the 'bullshit' calls; problems with constant police surveillance through cameras; and proposals to legalize drugs. I won't go into these issues here now, but I would recommend this book highly to anyone interested in criminal justice and law. I would also recommend this book to anyone who claims to hate the police/says "all cops are bastards," because you ought to know your enemy. At the end of the day, most police are probably men and women who started out idealistic and hoping for change, yet very quickly realized that the reality of the job, more often than not, is a miserable crawl towards 20 to 25 years for the pension. If you want to change something, you should at least understand that thing. This book will increase your understanding of policing regardless of your motive.
February 27, 2009
The storytelling in this book is very lacking - it reads more like a sociology paper. That being said, it's full of real insights into the priorities of modern law enforcement and the dynamic between cops and criminals. If you're curious about those things, check it out.
December 10, 2019
Garbo, dude was a cop for a year and now he’s writing a whole book about it?
July 14, 2017
Full disclosure: this book was a required read for a sociology class. Not exactly something I'd have ever picked up on my own, but it pleasantly surprised me. Moskos is a sociologist who took a position as a police officer in the East District of Baltimore as an ethnography on both the police force and the drug trade. There are times when I felt Moskos was making excuses for and downplaying the harmful attitudes of his colleagues, but after powering through the beginning I warmed up. Moskos spends a good chunk of the book advocating for some progressive policy changes both politically and within the police force itself. As he puts it, "Drug laws don't arrest people, police do." I would recommend Cop in the Hood to anyone interested in hearing an honest and critical first-hand account of modern police work, whatever your motivations are.
March 22, 2023
Read this as my " textbook " for my policing criminology course and it was really interesting. a lot of stuff you kind of hear about cops anyway and know, especially in communities that are more anti-cop (as you should be! acab!) but i took this course not only to fulfil a piece of my crim minor but also i find the interworkings of the system and how exactly it is so flawed in so many ways interesting. it's important if you are going to have a strong stance on something to know what you are talking about and to see the perspective of an individual within the force but also technically outside of it since moskos only did it for a brief time was an intriguing read rec it if you are bored and need some not too long non-fiction to read.
November 29, 2022
I was expecting more from this book to learn about the Eastern District. His two big takeaways are increase foot patrol and end the drug way. The GREAT majority of this book talked about crime in the macro viewpoint, but I didn't get the feeling as to what the Eastern District was like as a cop or citizen. Thus, the title is misleading, it wasn't about his year as a cop but just views on crime and police. Also, I thought he was very sympathetic to cops. It seemed like he didn't want to say anything negative about them. As if his experience as a cop was very positive.
March 15, 2025
Really interesting book from an academic turned cop. For me, the strongest parts were the limitations of rapid response policing, served by a central dispatch system, his commentary on the failed war on drugs, and just the various stories and data related to life on the streets in Baltimore. A valuable insight.
February 23, 2024
i loved this book. even though i don’t agree with everything moskos has to say, but i think that he presents his arguments in an accessible way. it was interesting the whole time and had some good ideas for bettering the police.
February 26, 2025
Had to read for a class and book report. I struggled through some of it, but learned a lot. I enjoyed the stories and officer quotations, however struggled to get through the background and history/author’s thoughts on why things are the way they are.
April 16, 2020
Was a very interesting book in terms of sharing what it is like to work in the Baltimore police department. Moral grey area as for the method of research, however.
December 8, 2020
A good book for those who just started the job.
September 23, 2021
* was read for my criminal justice class. Overall, pretty good for an assigned reading
October 18, 2023
I think it was an interesting look into policing from the perspective of an officer.
September 30, 2025
Read for CRJ 451
January 3, 2021
He spends just as much time as he thinks he needs to on some - very generic - recollections of his time policing the streets. And then launches into rambling policy suggestions. He's a pub bore.
November 21, 2010
Perfect for "The Wire" fan on your holiday shopping list. Sociologist Pete Moskos became a cop and policed East Baltimore as the field work for his dissertation. The book is fast-paced and often funny.
Moskos is a harsh critic of the war on drugs. He argues that drug-related violence is a symptom of prohibition, not a justification for harsher prohibition. The drug trade is violent because all debts have to be settled by force, or the threat of force. Drug dealer can't sue each other for territory, or call the police when they get stiffed by a supplier.
Moskos also identifies the paradox of rapid response vs. crime prevention. Modern police departments set up to ensure rapid response to all 911 calls, which means that cops have to be sitting in their cars waiting to take calls, rather than walking their beats and preventing crime. In his view, it's a very poor trade off because it isolates police from the communities they serve.
Interesting discussions on police education (or lack thereof), the nature of probable cause, police discretion, how police departments manipulate CompStat, the slang of cops and citizens in East Baltimore. The lure of court overtime in driving high-arrest policing. Interesting discussions of race and urban policing, from the perspectives of black and white officers. Moskos explains that the Baltimore PD used to be a force-based police culture where officers meted out "street justice"--beating suspected wife beaters, smacking juvenile delinquents around and letting them go. Nowadays, the BPD is an arrest culture. Police are hyper-aware that any excessive use of force could cost them their jobs and pensions. So, they focus on arresting as many people as possible to prove that they're doing their jobs. Of course, most of these arrests turn out to be completely pointless because the system is too overburdened to process them. Moskos thinks that police need to be given greater discretion for dealing with misbehavior on the streets. Automatically arresting everyone isn't a practical solution. However, he acknowledges that discretion got a deservedly bad name during the Civil Rights movement when it was pointed out that police who were allowed to use discretion favored white suspects over black ones. Moskos hopes that better training with more emphasis on independent thought and problem solving could restore the good aspects of discretion while mitigating the potential for abuse.
One of my favorite passages concerns the etiquette of assessing a potential incident of domestic violence. ("You two ever hit it?" was Moskos's favorite way of asking the critical question, which he had to ask to ascertain if the call was domestic abuse or just assault.)
Good practical advice: Cops can't afford to be seen to back down from a confrontation. So, if a police officer says she'll arrest you if you don't do X, she's going to follow through on it. Cops like to let on that they have vast discretion to arrest whoever they want, but in practice, they've hyper-attuned to minor technical violations of the law that they can selectively invoke to arrest people thereby making it look the person was arrested for mouthing off to a cop, when they were trespassing by perching on the stoop of a vacant building, or something.
Moskos is a harsh critic of the war on drugs. He argues that drug-related violence is a symptom of prohibition, not a justification for harsher prohibition. The drug trade is violent because all debts have to be settled by force, or the threat of force. Drug dealer can't sue each other for territory, or call the police when they get stiffed by a supplier.
Moskos also identifies the paradox of rapid response vs. crime prevention. Modern police departments set up to ensure rapid response to all 911 calls, which means that cops have to be sitting in their cars waiting to take calls, rather than walking their beats and preventing crime. In his view, it's a very poor trade off because it isolates police from the communities they serve.
Interesting discussions on police education (or lack thereof), the nature of probable cause, police discretion, how police departments manipulate CompStat, the slang of cops and citizens in East Baltimore. The lure of court overtime in driving high-arrest policing. Interesting discussions of race and urban policing, from the perspectives of black and white officers. Moskos explains that the Baltimore PD used to be a force-based police culture where officers meted out "street justice"--beating suspected wife beaters, smacking juvenile delinquents around and letting them go. Nowadays, the BPD is an arrest culture. Police are hyper-aware that any excessive use of force could cost them their jobs and pensions. So, they focus on arresting as many people as possible to prove that they're doing their jobs. Of course, most of these arrests turn out to be completely pointless because the system is too overburdened to process them. Moskos thinks that police need to be given greater discretion for dealing with misbehavior on the streets. Automatically arresting everyone isn't a practical solution. However, he acknowledges that discretion got a deservedly bad name during the Civil Rights movement when it was pointed out that police who were allowed to use discretion favored white suspects over black ones. Moskos hopes that better training with more emphasis on independent thought and problem solving could restore the good aspects of discretion while mitigating the potential for abuse.
One of my favorite passages concerns the etiquette of assessing a potential incident of domestic violence. ("You two ever hit it?" was Moskos's favorite way of asking the critical question, which he had to ask to ascertain if the call was domestic abuse or just assault.)
Good practical advice: Cops can't afford to be seen to back down from a confrontation. So, if a police officer says she'll arrest you if you don't do X, she's going to follow through on it. Cops like to let on that they have vast discretion to arrest whoever they want, but in practice, they've hyper-attuned to minor technical violations of the law that they can selectively invoke to arrest people thereby making it look the person was arrested for mouthing off to a cop, when they were trespassing by perching on the stoop of a vacant building, or something.
June 25, 2008
OK, I have to say, what the hell happened to Princeton UP? This is worst proofreading job I've seen on a book maybe ever, and worse than a good many research papers from high-school students I've graded. Geez.
Anyway, after The Wire, a lot of this just feels like confirmation: you say "PO-lice" in Bawlmer, and "jack up" means one thing to NYC cops and another to Bawlmer PO-lice. There are some really good things in the sociology--the structure of staffing and paperwork means that there are actual incentives to NOT arrest people (even assuming that arrests are a useful measurement of how good a job cops are doing); drug wars just mean rounding up lots of people on the street, to no purpose whatsoever, and running them briefly through the system (the only time he noticed a real decline, for a day or two, was when police and FBI sweeps followed hard upon each other, resulting in crackheads stealing a lot of sugar from the corner laundromat's coffee spot); there are all sorts of ways of manifesting your authority, from driving slow to eyeballing to stopping to actually getting out of the car. Moskos says he never fired his gun in 20 months on the job and that he would have died for his fellow cops, whereas not so much for his colleagues at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Cool blog for the book, too. Some stuff that was neat to learn, but not revelatory.
Anyway, after The Wire, a lot of this just feels like confirmation: you say "PO-lice" in Bawlmer, and "jack up" means one thing to NYC cops and another to Bawlmer PO-lice. There are some really good things in the sociology--the structure of staffing and paperwork means that there are actual incentives to NOT arrest people (even assuming that arrests are a useful measurement of how good a job cops are doing); drug wars just mean rounding up lots of people on the street, to no purpose whatsoever, and running them briefly through the system (the only time he noticed a real decline, for a day or two, was when police and FBI sweeps followed hard upon each other, resulting in crackheads stealing a lot of sugar from the corner laundromat's coffee spot); there are all sorts of ways of manifesting your authority, from driving slow to eyeballing to stopping to actually getting out of the car. Moskos says he never fired his gun in 20 months on the job and that he would have died for his fellow cops, whereas not so much for his colleagues at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Cool blog for the book, too. Some stuff that was neat to learn, but not revelatory.
August 11, 2008
This book is necessary for any fan of "The Wire" and highly recommended for anyone interested in the slums, crime, organizational bureaucratic messes, or policing. Peter Moskos, an Ivy League sociologist, has an excellent eye and an open mind as he spends a year patrolling the crime-ridden Eastern District of Baltimore.
The lessons in this book are applicable from American ghettos to third-world slums, and the problems Moskos documents are common across all efforts to instill order in these poverty traps.
Moskos' only mistake is the final quarter of the book, which devolves from an engaging firsthand account to a lecture on the history of prohibition and anti-drug political movements of the recent past. I don't necessarily disagree with Moskos' historical account, but it fits awkwardly following his impressive inductive reasoning of the practical problems with law enforcement in the slums.
Otherwise, terrific book, and even the end isn't too bad -- always nice to get a refresher on prohibition politics!
The lessons in this book are applicable from American ghettos to third-world slums, and the problems Moskos documents are common across all efforts to instill order in these poverty traps.
Moskos' only mistake is the final quarter of the book, which devolves from an engaging firsthand account to a lecture on the history of prohibition and anti-drug political movements of the recent past. I don't necessarily disagree with Moskos' historical account, but it fits awkwardly following his impressive inductive reasoning of the practical problems with law enforcement in the slums.
Otherwise, terrific book, and even the end isn't too bad -- always nice to get a refresher on prohibition politics!
August 28, 2015
Coincidentally well-timed. I read this without knowing that Baltimore was going to become a flash-point in American domestic politics, and this book is about a cop in Baltimore. The author is an academic who decided to become a police officer to better understand all that went into it. I don't know what it's like to be a person of color or live in poverty, and I don't know what it's like to be a police officer. I suspect that anyone who has taken strong sides in our debates over law enforcement and the treatment of lots of Americans by police officers will find this book not to their liking. The author, from my disconnected perspective, strikes me as fair and open-minded about lots of issues that have been rubbed raw. He has lots of respect for what police have to do, recognizes that some of them don't do it well, and that policies that citizens of Baltimore and the police think are silly still guide a lot of everyone's interactions. For me, this was interesting.
April 21, 2010
Honestly, I was pretty disappointed with this book. The premise was so cool- a sociologist who joined the Maryland police department to gain inside information. The problem was that I felt like most of this book could have been written WITHOUT Moskos' unique insider perspective. It was a lot of statistics thrown together with a few quotes from police officers, usually out of context. Moskos made some interesting arguments in favor of changing protocol for arresting (non-violent) drug users, but all in all it just felt dry and distant to me when his personal insights could have been so valuable. Moskos cited Venkatesh and Jacobs, sociologists known for writing personal accounts of ethnographic studies, as his inspirations, but "Cop in the Hood" is startlingly scattered and dull when compared to others of its genre.
May 30, 2015
The idea of becoming a PO to better understand police behavior was fascinating and in many ways admirable. The first half of the book where he details his daily experiences as a cop was refreshing for me because it reveals (in contrast to news media portrayals) police are not involved in brutality on a day to day basis. In fact an officer's shift may be pretty mundane just going from one small job to the next. Moskos also argues that we should switch over to foot patrol again, but I wonder how many civilians and POs actually support that idea, especially since it seems like high impact areas in NYC where there are foot patrol officers have not improved police-community relations. People may not want to see police ALL time because such visible police presence may exacerbate the feeling of constant surveillance.
June 17, 2019
Cop in the Hood is a book that many may see as controversial, but I see as a very important read. The book follows author Peter Moskos as he spends a year with the Baltimore City Police as a real officer. Moskos' real life dive into the police force exposes many of the flaws in the modern system. Such as the racial fueled and ineffective War on Drugs, demanding and dangerous working conditions of officers, the broken system of arrests and paper work, and the ineffectiveness of response based policing. Moskos' book is a refreshing take on actual problems in the police system that causes institutional racism and problems throughout our country. In light of recent events and tragedies this book is a must read for anyone who cares about the policing of American and wants to see what it really means to be a police officer.
August 27, 2008
Absolutely excellent and spot-on. I'm a crime lab rat -- I've never been nor wanted to be a police officer -- but I have worked for police departments outside of Baltimore for the past nine years. The frustration and bureaucracy that wear down officers until they throw their hands up in disgust is captured perfectly.
Moskos, a graduate student in sociology in New York, came down to Baltimore in the late 90's to enroll in the police academy and spend a year plus working Baltimore's poorest district. More than anything else, this is a illustration of how the utter failure of the "war on drugs" has helped turn entire neighborhoods into wastelands -- with the police and the citizens in a futile holding pattern, equally disgusted with each other.
Moskos, a graduate student in sociology in New York, came down to Baltimore in the late 90's to enroll in the police academy and spend a year plus working Baltimore's poorest district. More than anything else, this is a illustration of how the utter failure of the "war on drugs" has helped turn entire neighborhoods into wastelands -- with the police and the citizens in a futile holding pattern, equally disgusted with each other.
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