Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District

(Princeton University Press) For just over one year, Peter Moskos served as a police officer in the high-crime area of Baltimore’s eastern district. In this book, he provides a first-hand account of poverty and violent crime, thriving drug corners, and a criminal justice system that incarcerates poor black men on a mass scale. In particular, he argues that the war on drugs is more dangerous to the community than the drugs themselves, and calls for drug legalization as the only realistic way to end drug violence. Peter Moskos is an assistant professor of law, political science, and criminal justice administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and at the City University of New York’s doctoral program in sociology.