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Tag: cop in the hood

  • Much less scintillating that Whitey Bulger’s right-hand man

    So says Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) about me and my book in his Freakonomics blog in the New York Times. And for that, I can only thank God. But I’m pleased that Levitt liked my book.

    Much less scintillating than a book by Whitey Bulger’s right-hand man? I should hope so. I was just a poor beat cop in Baltimore. I never killed anybody. But my book, Cop in the Hood, isn’t just a memoir, it has a point: end the war on drugs!

    My book also helps explain why so many poor black American men are in prison. And it’s not the reason you think it is, because it has nothing to do with being poor, black, young, or male. It has everything to do with police wanting overtime pay.

    I wish Levitt had liked my book a bit more, because I respect him deeply. Still, he read my book. He liked my book. And he’s happy he read my book. And you will be, too.

  • Never lose sight…

    I received this email today. It’s worth reading. I wish all police officers wrote so well. I wish all my students wrote so well. Too bad he’s not my student.

    Some small police department’s gain was surely Baltimore’s loss.

    I recently finished the first chapter of your book, Cop in the Hood and found it to be completely on point with my experiences as a Baltimore City police officer. I ordered it online and cannot wait to read it cover to cover. I also read your work, “Two Shades of Blue.” As for me, I am a white […] conservative male […] hired by the Baltimore City Police after graduating college with a Bachelor’s in criminal justice. As of 2007, I am enrolled in graduate school while working full-time in a small police department in Pennsylvania.
    […]
    Baltimore City left an indelible mark on my personal and professional opinion of urban life and policing. I will treasure the time I worked in the city for I will never experience it again. You have put to paper what I have so inadequately attempted to express to people about life as a Baltimore City police officer and life in the “ghetto.” Unless experienced firsthand, no one can fathom what it is like to be an officer there.

    Over the course of my time in the city, I was involved in over 550 drug arrests, mainly crack cocaine and heroin. […] I laugh sometimes when I contrast the massive amount of arrests I made in Baltimore […] with the incidents I deal with now. Working in a small area, I am perpetually bored with the “crime” (underage drinking, broken windows, and loud music) I encounter. […] Needless to say, I miss being “a real cop.”

    Aside from being a fellow officer, there is a particular reason why you have my gained my respect. […] I have a great deal of respect for academia (I myself am working towards my Master’s), but after going through college and spending 4 years in Baltimore, I realize those professors, outside of their office, are limited in their knowledge of actual police work. I learned this as soon as I hit the streets. Among the topics I once was taught and naively believed to be true include community policing and the drug war. I believe, as so many others, community policing is ineffective and the drug war will never be won.

    I have particular respect for you because you lived what you researched. You teach and write from experience. I believe if you are to teach on a subject, you must have real world experience and a good knowledge base. Obviously this is my opinion and I mean no disrespect to any colleagues of yours or to any other person in academia. But I believe this to be true, especially since so few venture into police work. Even though you were on the street a little over a year, one year spent in the city is a career anywhere else.

    I appreciate the candor in your work and I look forward to reading more of your literature. Keep up the good work and please never lose sight of what those officers, and all police for that matter, do on a daily basis. Thank you for your time.

    No, sir, thank you!

  • Community Policing query

    Dear Prof. Moskos

    First off, let me say that I enjoyed your book. As someone who has recently moved to Baltimore and now finds themselves living on the edge of the Eastern I found it a fascinating read. Your discussion of 911 helped to explain the very big difference in reaction between the community meetings.

    Commanders (not a direct quote) “We won’t know something is happening unless you call 911 and tell us. We can’t do anything about it if you don’t tell us.”—911 operators “You’ve got transvestite hookers working in the park across the street? We can’t do anything about it unless you call when one of them is getting into a car.”

    Even without my new context, “Cop in the Hood” would have been an interesting book. I appreciate how you are able to speak with two voices; both the police and the sociologist.

    That out of the way, I have a question I would appreciate your opinion on: are citizen’s patrols actually effective? I’ve made some minor forays into the literature and searched for opinions. Although community policing generally seems to have a positive effect in some studies, I can’t find anything pointing to which aspect(s) is effective.

    At a gut level I have a cynical reaction to the overall effect of having a random group of neighbors walking around the area in green vests and waving the occasional flashlight at a dark corner. Keep in mind that I live in Greenmount West straddling the border between the Eastern and Central, so we have to communicate with 2 separate districts. This seems to reduce the level of direct contact with anyone who we have direct contact with.

    I’m very interested in your viewpoint…

    I answer:

    Living between two police districts really does make things worse. And having to deal with a different set of officers on two different blocks is a pain. There is a natural tendency for police officers to push problems (such as prostitution) “away.” I certainly pushed some people away from the Eastern and back into the Southeast. Counterproductive, when you consider I lived in the Southeast.

    Community policing, by and large, doesn’t exist and never has. It was supposed to mark a move away from reactive policing. But despite lip service to the contrary (I mean, nobody will ever come out againstcommunity policing), I don’t think any police department has every implemented a real long-term community policing program. Quite simply, you can’t have community policing if patrol officers are sitting in cars waiting for radio calls.

    About citizen patrols… I don’t know. My thought is that they can be effective (both directly and indirectly). It really is community policing. That’s good, right? But for all the effort put in, the gain is probably very very small.

    I’m a big fan of the Guardian Angels, for instance. But that’s more from the perspective of being a young guy very happy to see them on the Chicago L than from any actually academic proof that they prevent crime. Buy my guess is that they dohelp prevent crime from a Broken Windows perspective. And even if the Guardian Angels (or other citizen groups) don’t prevent crime, at least they made me feel safer. That’s worth something.

    District Commanders in Baltimore tended not to be the most enlightened bunch. (At least from my experience back in 2000. I’m sure they’re all much better now.) Getting police to move away from rapid response and toward foot patrol in not in their genetic DNA. They’re right that they won’t know until you call 911. So the question they and you should be asking them is why don’t they know and what can theydo to know better.

    And that 911 operator is an idiot. Just call for disorderly then, to get police to respond. But even better would be to talk to your post officer (on any of the three shifts, but the midnight is probably the best because we had more time) and talk to him or her about ways to solve the problem. As a police officer, I would much prefer to help a real person than just respond to another anonymous 911 call for prostitution. What the cops can do is arrest. And some arresting is probably part of the solution here. But probably just one piece of the solution.

    Interestingly, there weren’t many street-walking prostitutes in the Eastern when I was there. My guess is it was too dangerous for prostitutes and Johns alike.

  • Save the date, Tuesday, May 13, 4:15pm

    I’ll be on WBAL’s Ron Smith Show, Tuesday, May 13, at 4:15pm (EDT). You can listen to a live stream of the broadcast. I used to listen to WBAL a lot, because they used to broadcast the Orioles games. I particularly liked the local ads for crabcakes and the steamfitters and stevedores local. That’s keeping it real.

  • Blog people…

    If you have a link to my book on Amazon.com, take note:

    Because of the coming re-release of my book, the amazon link has changed. The old link is dead.

    The new link is: http://www.amazon.com/Cop-Hood-Policing-Baltimores-District/dp/0691140081/
    But you should search for it yourself with whatever link/referral service you use.

    Sorry for the trouble.

  • I am enjoying your book

    This came to me today:

    I came across your book at baltimorecrime.blogspot.com, so far I am 50 pages in to it and I have to say that you have an excellent way of speaking the truth. I am a Baltimore police officer […] and I have a B.S. in Criminal Justice from […] (I am debating whether or not to attend Grad School). Thus far, from both my personal experience and academic background everything that you have written seems to be spot on. As I get further into the book, I will keep you posted.

    If you are planning on lecturing anywhere in the greater Baltimore-Philly-D.C. area please let me know, I would like to attend.

    I’m sure at some point I’ll be speaking in Baltimore. No plans yet, though. I’ll keep you posted.

  • The Chronicle

    Well, ifany publicity is good publicity, I’ve sure been getting a lot of good publicity.

    The latest is by Jennifer Howard at The Chronicle of Higher Education.

    May 2, 2008
    Princeton U. Press Recalls Typo-Filled Book and Says It Will Reprint

    Princeton University Press has recalled all copies of one of its spring titles after discovering more than 90 spelling and grammar errors in the 245-page work. The book, Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District, by Peter Moskos, was published on Thursday in an initial press run of 4,000 copies.

    In what appears to be a first, the press plans to reprint the book and have it back in stores later this month, after the errors have been corrected.
    […]
    No one alleges any wrongdoing by Mr. Moskos, nor has the book’s factual substance been impugned. The errors came to light when the author’s friends and family members began sending him lists of the numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes they had noticed.

    “I was flabbergasted and embarrassed,” said Peter Dougherty, the press’s director. “This is a terribly embarrassing matter for Princeton University Press.”

    He added, “We’re very proud of the book, which makes the embarrassment all the greater.”

    He said that Mr. Moskos’s manuscript had been given to an inexperienced copy editor who failed to do the job properly. “We take a lot of pride in the quality of our copy editing,” he said, citing the publisher’s 103-year track record. “In this case, we messed up very, very badly.”

    Asked how much the recall would cost, Mr. Dougherty replied, “a lot.”

  • The Great(,) Humiliation Column

    I got a call from Laura Vozzella of the Baltimore Sunthe other day.

    I thought maybe she was a reviewer asking about a press release from Princeton Press telling reviewers to hold off until the new edition is out.

    But I got worried when I started talking about the errors and heard the tapity-tap-type of note taking in the background.

    It’s certainly not like the Sunhas been particularly good to me. Yes, they’ve published two op-eds of mine. But since then, I’ve been misquotedin the Sun. They hadn’t (yet) mentioned my work or book. They generally don’t call me about Baltimore police issues (they always call Eugene O’Donnell, one of my esteemed colleagues. Gene is a great guy, knowledgeable and smart, but hewasn’t a Baltimore cop!). And yet for some reason, unlike every other cop I worked with, I don’t hate the Sun.

    Cops hate newspapers with even more venom than they hate Hillary Clinton. Reporters screw up crime stories. Or break scandals that shouldn’t be. Or insist on getting “both” sides of the story when there is only one side.

    Sometimes, the truth is exactly like the cops say. Say a thieving, violent, robbing, drug-dealing young thug goes on a rampage, pulls a gun on cops, and gets killed. Nothing is worse than quoting her mother insisting that her baby never did nothing wrong and was just killed by police in cold blood while coming back from volunteer work at the HIV orphanage. Readers are left to assume that the truth lies somewhere in between the two versions. That’s not right, fair, or true.

    Probably half of all police stories show cops in a negative light. A reader may be left to assume that half of everything police do is bad. Of course this isn’t the case. But police need to understand that newspapers will never write column after column of “Another cop goes to work, does a damn good job, and comes home safely.”

    No matter, I like newspapers. I like reporters. Maybe it’s because there’s a bit of journalism in my blood. I loved writing for and editing my high-school newspaper, the Evanstonian. And my uncle was a big-shot editor-in-chief for many fine papers.

    So Ms. Vozzella is typing away and I’m telling her everything that’s bad about my book. What can you do? All publicity is good publicity, they say… as long as they spell your name right. Well Laura not only spelled my name right, but she wrote a damn good column:

    First, don’t kill all the editors
    by Laura Vozzell
    May 2, 2008

    First, Princeton University Press issued the book, Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District. Then it issued the news release recalling the book.

    “Turns out I wasn’t a cop at all, and I made it all up,” joked Peter Moskos, the author and an assistant professor of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

    Moskos really was a city officer from Dec. 6, 1999, to April 1, 2002, Baltimore police spokesman Sterling Clifford confirmed. (Clifford wasn’t otherwise vouching for the book, which he hadn’t read. “It’s not like the CIA where even if you’re gone, if you write something about it, they have to approve it,” Clifford said. “We’re stuck with what they write.”)

    The real reason the book has been pulled off shelves, according to Moskos and Princeton: more than 90 grammar and spelling mistakes. After the book was issued two weeks ago, Moskos’ mother and friends spotted what copy editors at the esteemed publisher apparently overlooked.

    “A lot of errors for a 200-page book,” said Moskos, who quipped that he should not have gone with a “fly-by-night organization” like Princeton. “The director of the press called it ‘unprecedented.’”

    Said Princeton publicist Lisa Fortunato: “For us, this is very unusual.”

    Don’t those Ivy League-types have Spellcheck?

    “You know what? We asked the same question,” Fortunato said. “I don’t know the full story.”

    The book is expected to be back on shelves in four to five weeks. Not a huge delay, but one that’s upsetting to Moskos, since he has already begun promoting the book.

    “It’s just frustrating because I was on the radio today, and you can’t buy it this instant on Amazon,” he said.

    At least he has a sense of humor about some of the errors.

    “Somewhere in the book, ‘Baltimore’ is spelled wrong,” Moskos said. “Maybe I spelled it with a ‘d’ like it’s said.”

    Ironically, there is an error in the column.

    My date of hire was indeed Dec 6, 1999 (The day before the day that will live in infamy is how I remembered it–and since this date goes on a lot of police forms, I needed to remember it). But I entered the academy on Oct 29, 1999.

    My end date, however, was neither April 1 nor 2002. I turned in my paperson April Fool’s Day (seemed kind of funny to me at the time). But my last night in uniform was June 25. And (because of backed up sick/vacation/personal days) I got paid until early July, when my employment officially ended. And it was 2001.

    So in my mind, I worked from Oct 1999 to June 2001. In the police department records, I should be listed as having worked from Dec 1999, to July 2001.

  • On Point

    I was on National Public Radio’s “On Point” today. You can listen to it here. It’s a quick hour.

  • Unprecedented

    Pulled from the shelves! Indeed, if you don’t already have a copy of Cop in the Hood, odds are you’re not getting one for a couple of weeks.

    No, I didn’t fake the whole thing. No, the book isn’t a safety hazard. No, there’s nothing substantively wrong with the book. But the book is an editing mess. There are errors, little errors, lots of little typos and sloppy mistakes.

    How they slipped by me, how they slipped by professional editors, how they slipped by the damn proofreader (he’s not getting any fruit cup, that’s for sure), is anybody’s guess. Ultimately my friends and mother pointed them out.

    So Princeton University Press is recalling the book. They’re ashamed and aghast. So am I. It is, after all, my book. Princeton Press is going to correct the mistakes and reprint the book. Unprecedented, they told me. That sounds like good blurb for the back of the book. Too bad it’s not good.

    They’ve also offered to replace copies out there, if wanted. But if you’ve already got a copy, I’d hold on to it. Maybe one day it’ll become a collector’s item.

    Here’s the official press release:

    It has come to our attention that a recently published book, Peter Moskos’ Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District, contains a number of grammatical and spelling errors. As a result, Princeton University Press has decided to recall the book so that the necessary corrections can be made. We hope to release a corrected edition in about 4-5 weeks.

    Odds are it will be faster than that.

    A suppose in a month things will be fine. But it sure sucks for now.