Tag: cop in the hood

There are probably hundreds of police blogs out there. Too much chaff and not enough wheat. The only police blog I actually read is Pepper Spray Me. Each post is interesting and it’s all very well written and professionally presented. I hope and assume a book is on the way. Remember the equation: police book = movie-rights staring Denzel Washington = $$$ (except of course, like in my case, when it doesn’t).

I’m sure there are some other gems of law enforcement blogging out there, but I don’t have the patience to find them. If youknow other good police blogs–not too many posts, not too few, not predictable, tells me something I don’t already know–let me know!

Anyway, the author of pepper spray is a bit like Bat Man to me. We run into each other every now and then in the comments section, but I don’t know who he is or where he works. But I know he’s on the side of good.

He wrote an excellent (dare I say even touching) review of my book. Thanks, One Time! I’m glad you liked it. Keep up the good writing and stay safe.

In 1999, Peter Moskos was a graduate student at Harvard University. He wanted to study cops, and figured the best way to do that was to cross the Thin Blue Line.
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Moskos proclaims the War on Drugs a messy failure. He tells why, from his front line experience as a grunt in the war, we’re losing the fight.

Cops and sociologists alike can be difficult people to understand. This might lead you to believe that Cop in the Hood will be twice as hard to follow. Not so. Moskos strips away hard to decipher copspeak and sociological mumbo jumbo and presents something easily digestible by the average reader.

Whether you agree or disagree with Moskos’ views on the War on Drugs, he cannot be dismissed as your average know-nothing academic. Moskos is a veteran of a war he disagrees with. But he has walked the walk, respects the brotherhood and, as far as I’m concerned, still bleeds blue.

Read the whole review here.

Drug War Chronicle reviewed Cop in the Hood a while back and somehow I missed it.

Here it is:

I would imagine that most Drug War Chronicle readers… have little knowledge of or empathy for the men in blue.
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Moskos really shines at getting his comrades to speak openly and honestly about their attitudes, and in that sense, “Cop in the Hood” is as revelatory as it is sometimes disturbing. Such attitudes may be deplorable, but they are also understandable. When all you see is the worst of humanity, it’s easy to get alienated. As one officer put it, “You don’t get 911 calls to tell you how well things are going.”
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While Moskos by no means sugarcoats the behavior or attitudes of his coworkers, his reporting will undoubtedly help readers attain some understanding of how they got that way. Cop in the Hood is also useful for understanding the bureaucratic grinder facing police officers in large urban departments, where they are caught between pressures from above for more arrests, from Internal Affairs to do it by the book, from the neighborhoods to clean out the riff-raff and from the same neighborhoods to respect the civil rights of residents.

Moskos brings the added advantage of not writing like an academic. Cop in the Hood is engaging, even riveting, and makes its points straightforwardly. Yes, Moskos references policing theory, but he does so in ways that make it provocative instead of off-putting.
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People interested in the nitty-gritty of street-level drug law enforcement need to read this book. Criminal justice students and anyone thinking about becoming a police officer need to read this book, too. And the politicians who pass the laws police have to enforce (or not), need to read this book as well, although they probably won’t.