'Cop in the Hood' by Peter Moskos - Book Review

Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District by Peter Moskos is an intriguing account of both police and civilian life in eastern Baltimore. Moskos supplements his first hand accounts of actual conditions with social and political criticism. Cop in the Hood is a fun read and will be enlightening for many, but ultimately is insufficiently detailed and thought out either in its real life examples or its policy suggestions.

Cop in the Hood is genuinely educational on some topics such as the perverse incentives facing patrol officers in drug-infested neighborhoods and the disturbing arrest culture that dominates thinking. It is also fun to vicariously observe seedy aspects of urban life through Moskos’ stories.

However, the voyeuristic fun of Moskos’ sensational tales is limited by their small number and his lack of elaboration. Moskos’ police tenure ended seven years before he finished writing the book. By his own admission, the author took insufficient notes during his time with the Baltimore police and forgot many details and even whole events. Sadly these faults show in Cop in the Hood.

In addition to relating his experiences in policing, Moskos opines on the drug war and policing in general. He believes that police should make fewer arrests, spend less time in cars and more time walking the streets, that drugs should be legalized and treatment emphasized, and that the drug war is unjust to minorities and doomed to failure. Moskos does not set aside a section to give an organized articulation of his beliefs and argue for their validity, but instead throws in comments about his stances seemingly at random. His arguments, if they can be called that, are not rigorous, are at times contradictory, and he includes false claims and oversimplification. If you generally agree with the author’s opinions you will nod your head a lot, but if you don’t, then Moskos’ feeble arguments will not convince you to adopt his positions. In either case you will not come away having learned much or grown from his political and social commentary.

Overall, Cop in the Hood is a fun escapist read; however, it lacks sufficient color in its stories and lacks rigor and organization in its social and political claims.