Cop in the Hood

1255 Words6 Pages
Author Peter Moskos took a different approach to writing a book about the police than most authors do. Instead of interviewing different officers form departments and believing all they have to say (because they never talk up stories or stretch the truth), Peter Moskos became a Baltimore cop and worked in the ghetto of the eastern district. In his book Cop in the Hood, he talks about the everyday struggles of being a cop and also talks about his personal view of policing and the academy. In the beginning of the book Peter talks about how useless he and other officers feel the academy is. He says that the sole purpose of the academy is “to protect the department from the legal liability that could result from negligent training” (22). He explains how the academy never really did teach him anything about how to be a good officer rather. The academy is explained by one officer as “no wonder that’s how cops are out there [rude to people]. They demean us. They break us down. But there is no buildup. It’s like prison” (37). This is the same kind of feeling most of the new officers shared with Moskos. After the academy he talks about how the first few months of policing are in field training with a training officer and they show you the ropes of policing. Here he describes how police see misery at its best. According to Moskos, walking into a “normal” home is very rare; most of the time the houses he entered were “families 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 the corners, and multiple children sleeping on bare and dirty mattresses” (39). These conditions were part of the everyday life of a Baltimore Police Officer. This type of ghetto lifestyle creates a lot of tension between the Baltimore Police and the community. It’s evident in the book

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