The Wall Street Journal

A Close Look at Mean Streets
Never mind "The Wire." Here is the real thing.

By Daniel Horan

High on the list of things that police officers loathe -- and the list is a long one -- is the sight of an egghead doctoral candidate approaching the precinct house in the hope of finding a research subject. Among cops it is generally assumed that, no matter how much time an academic researcher may spend on ride-alongs in the field, and no matter how well intentioned he may be, he will remain an outsider, studying a culture that is all but impenetrably foreign to him. Which makes Peter Moskos's "Cop in the Hood" all the more remarkable and all the more welcome.

Mr. Moskos is an assistant professor of law and political science at New York's John Jay College. In 1999, as a graduate student in sociology at Harvard, he was granted permission to join a police academy class in Baltimore for the purpose of studying police training. On his second day, though, he was pulled from the class and told that he could not continue. A shift in Baltimore's political winds had swept out the police commissioner who had approved the project, and the interim commissioner was unreceptive to the idea.

But Mr. Moskos was offered an interesting alternative: He could continue his research, he was told, if he completed the city's hiring process and became an actual police officer. He accepted the challenge, passing a battery of tests that included the first mile-and-a-half run of his life. In "Cop in the Hood" he acknowledges that having been on the payroll of the organization he was studying presented, in strict academic terms, a potential conflict of interest, but he writes that "a meager paycheck can go a long way to advance the noble pursuit of knowledge, especially since none of my grant applications had been accepted."

Mr. Moskos completed his training and was assigned to the midnight shift in Baltimore's Eastern District. He spent 14 months as a patrol officer before returning to Harvard, but in that short time he saw more mayhem than most police officers see in 14 years. The murder rate in Baltimore is six times that of New York City, and the Eastern District is the city's most violent.

Mr. Moskos discovered that the police academy, with its emphasis on quasimilitary formalities and tedious routines, did little to prepare him for the reality of Baltimore's meanest streets. Like most rookie police officers, who tend to be law-abiding members of the middle class, he had had little exposure to life in what he unabashedly calls the "ghetto," where he was routinely called into people's homes "because the residents have, at some level, lost control."

He describes in unsparing detail the conditions he found to be all too common -- homes "without heat or electricity, rooms lacking furniture filled with filth and dirty clothes, roaches and mice running rampant, jars and buckets of urine stacked in corners, and multiple children sleeping on bare and dirty mattresses." Entering a "normal" home, one that was "well furnished and clean," he writes, was "so rare that it would be mentioned to fellow officers."

A lot of his time on patrol was spent "clearing the corners" of young drug dealers. The task was usually accomplished through a simple assertion of dominance, in which the cops stopped their car and stared the dealers down. The dealers who got the message and moved on were allowed to do so, while those who defiantly returned the stare were detained and often arrested for loitering. As Mr. Moskos discovered, much of police work simply involves the cops exerting their authority, either formally or informally, over those they believe to be lawbreakers. "Every drug call to which police respond," he writes, "indeed all police dealings with social or criminal misbehavior, will result in the suspect's arrest, departure, or deference."

In "Cop in the Hood," Mr. Moskos manages to capture a world that most people know only through the distorting prism of television and film, where police officers are usually portrayed as quixotically heroic or contemptibly corrupt. "Incidents [of corruption] do happen," Mr. Moskos says, "but the police culture is not corrupt."

For all the book's detail, Mr. Moskos reserves his most passionate writing for a call to abandon the war on drugs. He claims that the drug war -- with its violent turf battles and revolving-door cycles of arrest -- has caused more social devastation than drugs themselves. This is an opinion much in vogue today, one no doubt shared by most of Mr. Moskos's colleagues in academia but not by most police officers.

One must admire Mr. Moskos for his willingness to walk in a police officer's shoes for 20 months. But it is important to remember, while reading "Cop in the Hood," that though he wore the badge and carried the gun, in his heart he was still a researcher foremost, not a police officer. He lacked the attribute that marks out the genuine cop -- that rare and inexplicable impulse to run toward gunfire when other sane people are running away. It is an attribute that may be described and analyzed at Harvard, but it is not often found there.
—Wall Street Journal

Jewish Post & Opinion

Objective, incisive and intelligent account of police work "in the hood"

Reviewed by Arnold Ages

This is what the industry calls “a sleeper book.” There is no doubt that it will soon be auctioned off as a film script.

Peter Moskos, a professor at the City University of New York, researched his Harvard Ph.D. dissertation in a most unusual way: He joined the Baltimore Police and after graduation from the Academy, was assigned to Baltimore’s toughest district, the Eastern.

Moskos did not hide the purpose of his enrollment and for a year and a half he joined fellow police officers pursuing the bad guys and in so doing learned important things about the criminal justice system.

His book, however, is not only a description of the daily activities of the men in blue but also a meditation of the Black underclass, the drug war and the ethics of his fellow officers. This reviewer has not read a more objective, incisive and intelligent account of police work.

There is criticism galore in his essay—of the irrelevance of the police training academy, of the targeting of poor Blacks and of the misguided drug policies of the American government.

With regard to those with whom he served, Moskos has high regard for their dedication and honesty and observes that few police officers would jeopardize their pension benefits by becoming “dirty,” the name for corrupt cops. He admits that there are some, but they are few in number.

While violence is endemic in the area where Moskos served, few police officers, he says are victimized by gun violence: Most fatalities among the police occur as a result of auto accidents. The author himself lost a colleague in that way.

One interesting element in this essay pivots on the arrest phenomenon. It is well known that police everywhere are expected to fill their arrest quotas. Baltimore is no different. But what is not known is that police officers receive overtime pay for court appearances and this can result in handsome monetary rewards.

Moskos’s graphic descriptions of the drug culture in Baltimore’s Eastern District are the most detailed and analytical to be found anywhere. The author offers a comprehensive look at the “stoops” abandoned buildings, lookouts and benches where drug transactions occur. He also zeroes in on the personnel involved in the drug trade and provides ample details about the police’s efforts to inhibit that “business.” One of the surprising revelations that emerge from his reportage is that, except for the major bosses, street level entrepreneurs make relatively little money.

Their clientele, the author notes, use a form of English language that is sui generis. “Bank” means to hit; “bounce” is to leave; “hoppers” are troublesome young people; “cousin” in a close friend; “fall out” is to faint; “zinc” is a sing. Mastering this linguistic tool is important for police officers because ignorance in this area can lead to misunderstandings when interrogating suspects. “Snitch” is another word popular in Baltimore’s Eastern District, and it is a despised term. In fact, the phrases “snitches get stitches,” more or less sums up the scorn in which such people are held.

What distinguishes Moskos’s book from similar ones is the author’s plea for greater flexibility in addressing the rampant drug crisis. He characterizes the current ideology as prohibition—much like that which paralyzed the United States in the 1920s. Ultimately prohibition failed and Moskos feels that there are lessons to be learned from the experience.

Citing the example of Holland, where addicts can the drugs they need, Moskos argues that de-criminalizing the illegal drug industry will no de-stabilize the American moral compass and that tax revenues from the legitimate purchase of hard drugs will fill the coffers of government.

The reason the author is so passionate about his advocacy is because he has seen close hand what the alternative is in the microcosm of Baltimore’s Eastern District, where pandemonium reigns for its majority of poor Black inhabitants.

—Jewish Post & Opinion

ACJS Today. October, 2008

Moskos, P. (2008). Cop In The Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 

by Monica J. Massey, Graduate Student Virginia State University 

The world of policing is one of extreme mystery and fascination. Often times, police officers are viewed by the communities that they police as personal security ready to respond to major and minor issues at the stroke of a finger, while others may view police officers as a nuisance to the productivity of illegal acts and violations. In a world of crime and deviance, it is the responsibility of police officers to ensure public safety within the means of the law while thinking fast and using discretion when determining the severity of each situation he or she encounters. With the recent acquittal of three New York City police officers in the shooting death of Sean Bell, the field of policing has again been placed under an ever-growing magnifying glass, suitable for both praise and criticism.   

Cop In The Hood, by Peter Moskos offers readers a riveting insight on experience as a police officer in Baltimore, Maryland’s crime infested eastern district. Moskos organized his debut book into seven chapters in addition to an epilogue. The first chapter entitled “The Departed” is a first person introduction of the author that offers some background on how Moskos came to transform from a sociology graduate student seeking to observe and research “job related police behavior” ( p. 4) to a full fledged Baltimore police officer. 

Chapter two entitled “Back to School,” is an outline of Moskos’ academy experience and his encounters with fellow classmates and superiors. It is in this chapter when Moskos first provides the reader with a glimpse into the overwhelmingly discretionary and subjective nature of policing in Baltimore’s mean streets. Moskos describes the thin line of how things should be done as taught in the academy, and the informalities of how things are actually done on the streets. Additionally, in this chapter, the author touches on issues of professional courtesy, demeanor and vernacular amongst police officers in different precincts across the city of Baltimore and surrounding cities.

Appropriately titled “New Jack: Learning To Do Drugs,” chapter three encompasses the author’s first experiences as a patrol officer and his day-to-day experience with drug addicts and race relations. In addition to discussing the probability and purpose behind arresting drug addicts in order to combat the “war on drugs,” Moskos provides the reader with a detailed look at how officers both black and white viewed criminals in the primarily African-American neighborhood while exploring the racially associated biases that exist. Additionally, Moskos discuses the debilitating impact that street patrol has on the desire for officers to serve and protect; this is what the author described as the shift “from a public-centered ideal to more police centered ideals” (p.49). This shift is later highlighted in the chapter when the author discuses the swayed perceptions of the community those police officers develop due to an overwhelming amount of exposure to the criminal elements. Throughout this chapter, the reader is offered multiple personal accounts from police officers on issues of race, public service and the disconnection between policing and the court system.

Chapter four, “The Corner,” dives further into street life from a police officer’s perspective while placing a magnifying glass on the structure of the drug trade in the eastern district and the technicalities in the justice system that often discouraged Moskos’ fellow officers from pursuing drug dealers and addicts. Moskos stresses the resounding view that the arrest of street level drug dealers had very little, if any, impact on the complicated drug trade of the city of Baltimore. Although police corruption is often perceived as a pervasive problem the author only dedicated a small portion of this chapter to discuss it. While managing to preserve the integrity of his fellow officers, the author still provides the reader with a brief synopsis of police impropriety.

Chapter five entitled “911 Is a Joke,” takes a straightforward approach in discussing the 911 system and its hindrance on police work. Moskos goes on to discuss that although created to ensure public safety by expediting calls for emergency and police assistance, that often times police officers would be dispatched to calls that ended in no arrest or that could have been resolved without police assistance. Throughout this chapter, the author further examines how the overflow of 911 calls hinders true police work and furthers the gap between patrol officers and the community.

The sixth chapter, “Under Arrest: Discretion in the Ghetto,” is dedicated to discussing the level of discretion that police officers are given as it pertains to who to arrest and who to let go with a simple warning. Issues discussed in this chapter range from motivation for arrest, how police officers use their discretion and make what some may refer to as unnecessary arrest, and officers who choose not to arrest at all due to time constrains and paperwork. First person accounts coupled with statistics help the author provide the reader with a brief synopsis of discretionary arrests.

The final chapter in this book , “Prohibition: Al Capone’s Revenge,” includes a history of drug prohibition in America. The author cites multiple historic drug acts and drug enforcement agencies that will ring a familiar bell to readers who have taken an introduction to criminal justice course, while still offering information that is clear and concise and can be easily understood by readers with little or no background in criminal justice. Lastly, in the epilogue, the author returns to first person to reflect on both the favorable and not so favorable experiences he had while policing one of Baltimore’s most dangerous areas. Cop In The Hood would be a great addition to any curriculum in the field of criminal justice, criminology, and sociology, with an even larger benefit for individuals interested in the sociology of policing, police administration, as well as urban studies. The structure of the book allows for easy reading and would be suitable for students at all levels of higher education.

Although this work is based on first person accounts of officers in Baltimore’s eastern district, the experiences, activities, and reality of the information presented can be found in many police precincts across the country. The insight of the author coupled with the actual quotes of real police officers provides the reader with an exceptional view of police behaviors and the day-today obstacles that officers face while policing the communities they patrol.

Pepper Spray Me. June 29, 2009.

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. Instead of merely studying cops, he ended up as a gun and badge wearing member of the Boston Police Department.

After graduating from the academy, the then Officer Moskos was assigned to Baltimore’s Eastern District, where he worked patrol during witching hours (the midnight shift). It’s a place made famous by HBO’s The Wire. Moskos went where no Ivy League graduate student had gone before.

Officer Moskos’ year of working as a police officer in one of the toughest, grimiest American ghettos is encapsulated in Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District. In this book, the now Assistant Professor 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.