Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District by Peter MoskosMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is as great as you'd want it to be, everything you hope for when a university professor steps out of the classroom and into his "real-life lab," on the streets. It is beyond enormous to get a spot on the not only the police academy, but to actually pass it, and be a beat cop. It is frikkin hard, mentally and physically punishing to get through police training--6 months at the academy and 6 months being shadowed, before finally going it solo. We civilians don't get the full magnitude of what it takes and undervalue the import of our officers hard at work. Moskos is remarkable., his writing crystalline and pure, raw from lived experience. He lived to write about every nuance of what it's like to walk those streets, danger lurking around every corner, when he left his front door and stepped out of his patrol car, not knowing if he'd make it back alive. Damn. That's intense and then some. He humanizes everything, not that it needs it. Every civilian should read this book--nothing will cure us faster of referring to police as "pigs." Some respect, right?
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