Cop in the Hood
Setareh Salehi
Cop in the Hood
Peter Moskos‘, Cop in The Hood, is the story of a sociologist going native by going through the Baltimore police academy, becoming a cop and working for over a year. The book follows Moskos chronological journey, from the academy to the street and the last part of the book is dedicated to a pretty thorough analysis of the War on Drugs.
The first interesting observation from Moskos’s work is his analysis of the police academy as relatively useless for the job:
“So what’s the point of the academy? Primarily, it’s to protect the department from the legal liability that could result from negligent training. To the trainees this appears more important than educating police officers.” And second, despite the lax approach toward academics, instructors were very concerned with officer safety, the aspect of the job they emphasized most: “The most important part of your job is that you go home. Everything else is secondary.” This philosophy is reinforced at all levels of the police organization. Formal and informal rules concerning officer safety are propagated simultaneously. By the end of the academy, less than half the class saw a relation between what police learn in the academy and what police need to know on the street. A strong antimedia attitude, little changed from sociologist William Westley’s observations in the 1950s, grew steadily in the police academy. At the end of training, just 10 percent of trainees believed that the media treat police fairly.
After six months in the academy, trainees learn to: * Respect the chain of command and their place on the bottom of that chain. * Sprinkle “sir” and “ma’am” into casual conversation. * Salute. * Follow orders. * March in formation. * Stay out of trouble. * Stay awake. * Be on time. * Shine shoes.”
But Moskos’s conclusion is that the training actually demoralizes trainees even before they start working on the streets. Physical training is
Cop in the Hood
Peter Moskos‘, Cop in The Hood, is the story of a sociologist going native by going through the Baltimore police academy, becoming a cop and working for over a year. The book follows Moskos chronological journey, from the academy to the street and the last part of the book is dedicated to a pretty thorough analysis of the War on Drugs.
The first interesting observation from Moskos’s work is his analysis of the police academy as relatively useless for the job:
“So what’s the point of the academy? Primarily, it’s to protect the department from the legal liability that could result from negligent training. To the trainees this appears more important than educating police officers.” And second, despite the lax approach toward academics, instructors were very concerned with officer safety, the aspect of the job they emphasized most: “The most important part of your job is that you go home. Everything else is secondary.” This philosophy is reinforced at all levels of the police organization. Formal and informal rules concerning officer safety are propagated simultaneously. By the end of the academy, less than half the class saw a relation between what police learn in the academy and what police need to know on the street. A strong antimedia attitude, little changed from sociologist William Westley’s observations in the 1950s, grew steadily in the police academy. At the end of training, just 10 percent of trainees believed that the media treat police fairly.
After six months in the academy, trainees learn to: * Respect the chain of command and their place on the bottom of that chain. * Sprinkle “sir” and “ma’am” into casual conversation. * Salute. * Follow orders. * March in formation. * Stay out of trouble. * Stay awake. * Be on time. * Shine shoes.”
But Moskos’s conclusion is that the training actually demoralizes trainees even before they start working on the streets. Physical training is