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Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District, by Peter Moskos. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. 245pp. $24.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780691140087.
In Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District, Peter Moskos provides a relatively detailed discussion of police work in Baltimore's Eastern District, which he characterizes as one of the worst ghettos in America. The book focuses on three main themes: the hopelessness of life in the ghetto, the frustration and ultimate futility of police work in the ghetto, and the impact that drugs and drug control have on the first two themes. Moskos provides an interesting account of police work in Baltimore, starting with the ineffectiveness of police training and encompassing many of the standard topics covered in academic discussions of police work. The most important of these topics include the use of discretion, the failure of the 911 system, and the overuse of arrest as a police tactic to control interactions with the public. While such discussions are commonplace in the criminological and sociological literature, they frequently are pedantic and theory-laden, a factor which limits their accessibility to a select group of specialists. Moskos overcomes this limitation by using stories (often sensational) to present information and illustrate his arguments. While this approach makes his discussion more interesting and accessible to a wider range of...