Go to qualitypolicing.com

Tag: good press

  • From the Economist

    This is from the Economist:

    Thursday

    I’M STANDING on a street lined with boarded-up shops—a popular haven for drug-dealers. A police officer is frisking a suspect whose trousers are nearly around his knees. The policeman didn’t pull them down; that’s how the suspect wears them. A bit impractical, perhaps, if his line of work requires him to run away from policemen.

    But he insists that he is no longer in that line of work. He was caught once, but is now going straight. He has a legitimate reason for hanging around a nearly deserted street, after dark, in the pouring rain, for several hours. He is waiting for someone, he says.
    AFP Follow the trousers

    The police officer’s colossal partner, whose sense of humour is as robust as his shoulders, prays aloud: “Oh Lord, I pray that a meteorite hits this [drug bazaar].” (He adds a P.S. to the effect that God should be careful not to hurt anyone.)

    The temporal authorities in Baltimore take a more pragmatic approach to fighting crime. Like every other large city, they have copied elements of New York’s system for mapping crime statistics, which allows police departments to send officers where they are most needed.

    Baltimore has also put more officers on foot patrol, so that they are closer to the people they are supposed to protect. It has locked up many of the most violent offenders. And it has encouraged local volunteers to mediate between young hot-heads. Such volunteers know when a fight is about to erupt over, for example, a stolen girlfriend. All this is quite new, but the mayor, Sheila Dixon, thinks it is working. The murder rate for the first three months of this year was sharply lower than last year.

    But still, the drug trade is unlikely to be peaceful so long as it is illegal. Crack pushers cannot ask the courts to settle their disputes. The only way to stop them shooting each other is to legalise drugs, reckons Peter Moskos, a sociologist who spent a year as a policeman in Baltimore’s eastern district and wrote a book about it.

    That is not going to happen, alas. And even if it did, it would hardly be a panacea. Anyone with a proper job leaves the ghetto. The young men left behind develop traits that render them unemployable. For example, says Mr Moskos, they react violently to trivial slights. This is a useful quality in a drug-dealer, but less so in most other trades.

  • I’m lowbrow and brilliant!

    That’s the word from New York Magazine’s”Approval Matrix.” I’ll take it!

  • Fan mail

    A friend and former student of mine (and mid-to-high-ranking officer in the NYPD) wrote me this:

    I picked up your book at Barnes and Noble on W. 18th Street last Wednesday. Congratulations! Just started reading and it is enjoyable already. You’re the best author I know (and only author I know, we cops are not known to hang in literary circles).
    I know you put a lot of hard work and sacrifice into this book. Thanks again for being my professor (Received MA degree in Feb.), friend and now distinguished author. Wish you continued success.

    Talk to you soon,
    [signed]

  • First Amazon reader review

    A round of applause for Generic Guy. I’m glad you liked my book. Thank you.

  • In the Economist

    I’m quoted prominently in an excellent article about Baltimore in the current Economist. But it’s a real shame he didn’t plug my book (Cop in the Hood). Or my school (John Jay College of Criminal Justice). But it is still a very good article.

    A big problem for the police (and more so for respectable ghetto residents) is the unfortunate truth that for many young men, gangster culture is alluring. Apart from the low pay and the high risk of getting murdered, drug-dealing is not a bad job, says Peter Moskos, a sociologist who spent a year as a policeman in Baltimore’s eastern district. You hang out with your friends. People “respect” (ie, fear) you. You project glamour. You get laid.

    You also become otherwise unemployable, says Mr Moskos. To survive on the street, you learn to react violently and pre-emptively to the slightest challenge. This is a useful trait for a drug-dealer, but, oddly, managers at Starbucks do not value it.

    …

    Civil libertarians argue that America punishes non-violent drug offenders far too harshly. Mr Moskos reckons that, at least in Baltimore, the people jailed for drug possession are usually violent dealers whose more serious crimes cannot be proven or whose plea bargains have been accepted by an over-burdened judicial system. He thinks drugs should be legalised, though, because their prohibition fuels a criminal economy where disputes are settled violently.

  • Tar and feathers?

    One of my fears is that my book won’t be well received by my cop friends in Baltimore.

    I’m proud of the book. And I think it’s pro-police because it shows the shit we had to deal with. Good workers in a bad system. But I’m always been afraid that cops wouldn’t like it because it’s not 100% pro-police. I don’t want to be tarred and feathered next time I go to Baltimore.

    But the initial reports from Charm City’s Finest are favorable.

    One of my academy classmates said he liked the academy chapter and wrote me a good story I’d forgotten:

    I don’t know if you remember, but one day we were getting ready to take a test, and [____] stood up and said, “Sir, you can’t give us the test yet. We have not been spoon fed the answers yet.”

    He never knew when to shut up.

  • Good Press in the Atlantic Monthly

    I was on the subway today, reading the Atlantic Monthly(or is it just The Atlantic?… no matter, it’s my favorite magazine…. with the New Yorkerplacing a close second and the Economistto show). I see a book review for Judith Herrin’s Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire. I like Professor Herrin. I took a class from her in Byzantine History. She was great.

    As the subway picks up speed going under the East River from Queens into Manhattan, I turn to my wife and say, “Hey look, I took her class at Princeton. She was great. Why isn’t mybook in here?! And as my finger goes down the page, I see MY book:

    Here’s the review. It’s short, but it’s good. I wonder how many times a professor and her student have had books reviewed on the same page? From the Atlantic’s May, 2008 issue.

    Cop in the Hood(Princeton)
    Those prone to facile comparisons will liken this riveting book to The Wire, the acclaimed and popular cable-television series that inhabits the same mean streets. Those who take a longer view, however, will see this for what it is: an unsparing boys-in-blue procedural that succeeds on its own plentiful—and wonderfully sympathetic—merits. Moskos, now an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, deftly intermingles cops-and-robbers verisimilitude and progressive social science, yet keeps his reportage clear-eyed, his conclusions pathos-free. What results is a thoughtful, measured critique—of the failed drug war, its discontents, and the self-defeating criminal-justice system looming just behind.

  • I [heart] foot patrol

    The smart folks at Marginal Revolution mentioned my book again. There’s nothing I like talking about more than foot patrol.

    The following are taken mostly from a comment I wrote to this post.

    The Kansas City Preventative Patrol experiment is the most amazingly ignored police study ever. For police and crime prevention, it’s one of the few scientific studies ever (meaning there was actually a control group). It showed that a post with no “randomly patrolling” cars has no more crime than a post with twice as many cars. Cars don’t matter. Cops only need to be in cars to backup other police officers. Almost everything else could be done by foot and bike.

    And yet the Kansas City study changed nothing. It’s ignored because police officers like cars and the police department is tied to radio dispatch. Culturally, it’s almost impossible to get police out of cars. Policing on foot is hard work. It’s usually punishment. So even cops who liked foot patrol, like me, didn’t want to do it.

    In cars you can stay dry and warm (or cool) and listen to the radio. You can also more easily avoid crazy and stinky people that want to talk to you. Why do you think police hang out in cars in the back of remote parking lots?

    People don’t feel safer with more police cars driving around (or sitting in parking lots) Putting more cops on foot *does* make people safer. See the Newark Foot Patrol Experiment (Police Foundation 1981) and common sense. It’s very debatable if foot patrol reduces crime. I think it does. But I may be wrong. But if people want more foot patrol (and they do), why not give it to them?

    When patrol cars first hit the street, cars were supposed to save money (and oh yeah, eliminate crime). That didn’t happen. More foot patrol is not a matter of needing resources; it’s a matter of priorities and will. It’s not the citizens or the politicians who want car patrol, it’s the police.

    My idea to get police officers out of cars is to give patrol officers, if they patrol on foot, the gas money they saved. Police model Crown Vics go through about 3/4 of a gas tank per shift. Cops don’t want to walk the beat, but $30 per shift could change that.

  • Well meaning, Balto is

    My thanks to Marni Soupcoff of the (Canadian) National Post for her kind words about my blog. She’s right, the real purpose of this blog is to get people to buy my book, Cop in the Hood. And she did! So thanks, Marni. Hopefully the weak dollar will inspire many others up north to buy a copy as well.

    I particularly like Marni’s quotable take on Baltimore, her old college home. I love Baltimore, poor Baltimore. “Horribly flawed but strangely lovable… inspires an arresting honesty”! These compliment my own line very well. “Baltimore: it means well.”

  • Marginal Revolution

    Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen, the people behind Marginal Revolution, a respected and well read blog, have been very kind to me (or at least very kind to my book).

    Tyler Cowen posted about my book and the Amazon pre-sales rank got a big boost (not that I check these things, of course).