Year 3, Book 60

40. Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing in Baltimore’s Eastern District by Peter Moskos
For the most part this book is exactly what the title says it is. Harvard graduate and sociologist Peter Moskos wanted to study a police department and had problems finding a department willing to let him do it. Baltimore finally agreed as long as he actually became a police officer. So he went through the police academy and became a patrol officer in the Eastern District. He describes his experiences going through both and certain sociological factors about both. For the most part I felt like I pretty much knew most of what he wrote about having watched The Wire and from keeping up with the local news. I still enjoyed it though because I love books about this kind of thing. The only misstep I think was at the end he went into some weird history of prohibition trying to relate it to the current war on drugs. I understood where he was coming from, but I didn’t feel like it fit really well with the rest of the book. I give it a 7 out of 10.