Ghetto Cops: On the Streets of the Most Dangerous City in America

by Bruce Henderson

GHETTO COPS is a journalistic account of the day-to-day activities of the police officers of Compton, Calif. A full decade before the popular TV show "Cops", Bruce Henderson, then a young newspaper reporter destined to become a #1 New York Times bestselling author (And the Sea Will Tell), spent the summer of 1974 riding with the Compton police. The first-person account of what he witnessed is not a mild story; Compton then had the highest per capita crime rate in the nation. The city and its cops were unmasked by a discerning, honest eye, and by a journalist unafraid to tell the truth.

GHETTO COPS is like a wild wide in a police car down the wrong side of the street with the siren wailing and the gas pedal jammed down to the floorboard. It is a montage of street crime that most citizens never see, through incidents packed with drama, pathos, violence, even humor, and illustrated with award-winning photographer Phil Nelson's action photos.

Editorial Reviews

"They bust a lot of ass in Compton. It's a tough city that is a virtual powder keg...For the police, the streets are a battlefield and working on any shift is like going to war." - LOS ANGELES FREE PRESS

"You don't put down GHETTO COPS once you pick it up. Bruce Henderson puts flesh and blood on policemen with all teh drama of fiction, yet this is a true story and thus carries a special realness." - LIVERMORE (CA) INDEPENDENT

"A personalized account of how the author felt riding in a black-and-white in a high-crime area...There's always something happening--always somebody with a story to tell." -LOS ANGELES TIMES

Genres: Nonfiction, History

226 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 18, 2014

About the author

Bruce Henderson is the author of more than twenty nonfiction books, including a #1 New York Times that was made into a highly-rated network miniseries. His books have been published in more than two dozen countries. His latest book is Midnight Flyboys: The American Bomber Crews and Allied Secret Agents Who Aided the French Resistance in World War II. He is also the author of Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler, the NYT bestseller about "The Ritchie Boys" being developed for a feature film. He won the coveted 2023 Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize in recognition of the best English language book published in the field of American military history for Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II. Henderson has taught reporting at USC School of Journalism and nonfiction writing at Stanford University. He lives in Menlo Park, California.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Bruce-Henderson...

Reviews

[MM Suarez · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author recounts a summer in 1974 when he rode along with multiple police officers in the very dangerous city of Compton, California. I normally like books like this, however I did not like this one and struggled to finish it, fortunately it was short. I struggled with the writing style 😴, and could not connect with anything or anyone in the book, including the author.