Officer Pete says (rule 23):

Always where your seatbelt when you drive. It really does protect you.

Can you get away with murder?

Most of the time.

The City Paper is starting to look into homicides to see what actually happens in the Hall of Justice. Sometimes somebody gets put away. Most of the times, not.

I was turned onto this by the unfortunately fascinating Baltimore Crime Blog.

Save the date, Tuesday, May 13, 4:15pm

I'll be on WBAL's Ron Smith Show, Tuesday, May 13, at 4:15pm (EDT). You can listen to a live stream of the broadcast. I used to listen to WBAL a lot, because they used to broadcast the Orioles games. I particularly liked the local ads for crabcakes and the steamfitters and stevedores local. That's keeping it real.

That's where the money is

A 10AM robbery of an armored truck pulled up at Lexington Market is bold, to say the least. Here's the Sun's account. Makes me think of the line from the Godfather, at least as I remember it: "Forget the gun, grab the crabcake!"

Officer Pete says (rule 24):

Always have your driver’s license on you when you drive. If not, please obey all the traffic laws.

Is "Cop" a bad word?

I gave a talk on my book today at John Jay College. After the talk a man came up to me asking about my use of "cop." He said when he was a kid, it was considered a bad word. Police officer is the proper term.

A couple of cops and students present discussed the issue. I don't consider "cop" a bad word. Maybe it is a generational thing. And also, as one cop said, "it's OK for cops to use the word."

On the street, if somebody addressed me in the second person as "cop," I wouldn't have taken kindly to it. Officer was my title and it is, to some extent, a title of respect. But if you say, "I called 911 earlier and this cop came and said...", that wouldn't bother me at all.

I think cop is perfectly OK as a descriptive and when used in the third-person. But no, you shouldn't address a cop as "cop."

Philadelphia PD shame

Philadelphia cops pulled three men out of a car and beat the crap out of them. For about 30 seconds. I find it inexcusable. I’m sure these guys who were beat are not good people. And no, I don’t know the whole story. But I can’t imagine any scenario where it’s these beatings are justified.

What were they thinking? They were pumped on adrenaline. There was a shooting. A cop had been killed two days earlier. They surely felt these guys “deserved” a thumping. But that doesn’t make it right. Just because you want to beat somebody--just because perhaps they even deserve a good beating--doesn't make you should. Some of these cops might have been very good police. And now their careers are over.

Even worse, the guys who were beat will get big bucks from the city, thanks to the stupid actions of a dozen cops.

Blog people...

If you have a link to my book on Amazon.com, take note:

Because of the coming re-release of my book, the amazon link has changed. The old link is dead.

The new link is: http://www.amazon.com/Cop-Hood-Policing-Baltimores-District/dp/0691140081/
But you should search for it yourself with whatever link/referral service you use.

Sorry for the trouble.

Officer Pete says (rule 25):

Drive slower when it rains.

Praise for Cop in the Hood

Doug LeMaine, an obviously smart man with excellent taste in books, posted this on his website. I couldn't have said it better myself:

Last week I picked up a book called Cop in the Hood by a grad student turned cop (turned academic) named Peter Moskos. He’s a law professor now [I'm not a law professor. But a lot of people think I am because "law" is in my department's name.], but he spent a year policing East Baltimore during his PhD work and wrote a part sociological analysis, part police procedural about his experience.

If The Wire had a literary analog, this would be it, not only because it takes place in East Baltimore, but because it presents a morally complex view of the relationship between law enforcement and the citizenry with whom they interact (mostly poor people in desperate circumstances). It also adds academic underpinnings and a truly excellent set of footnotes that provide avenues to a variety of interesting sources, one of which led me to one of my all-time favorite New Yorker articles, a 1998 installment of the Cop Diary called “The Word on the Street” about the language of NYC cops. The author, the pseudonymous Marcus Laffey (actual name: Edward Conlon) recently wrote a memoir called Blue Blood, which is going on the list for sure.

I really appreciated his discussion of research methods because it puts in high relief some of the challenges that any researcher (e.g., one who is trying to understand how people use high-tech tools) interacts with their interview subjects. So much of it is very un-objective, and Moskos addresses his skeptics early on:

Some will criticize my unscientific methods. I have no real defense. Everything is true, but this book suffers from all the flaws inherent in ethnographic work … Being on the inside, I made little attempt to be objective. I did not pick, much less randomly pick, my research site or research subjects. I researched where I was assigned. To those I policed, I tried to be fair. But my empathy was to my fellow officers. Those nearest to me became my friends and research subjects. My theories emerged from experience, knowledge, and understanding. In academic jargon, my work could be called “front-and-backstage, multisited, participant-observation research using grounded theory rooted in symbolic interactionism from a dramaturgical perspective."

I have to add the next line: "But I can't even say it with a straight face. And if I wrote that way, very few would read it."

I am enjoying your book

This came to me today:

I came across your book at baltimorecrime.blogspot.com, so far I am 50 pages in to it and I have to say that you have an excellent way of speaking the truth. I am a Baltimore police officer [...] and I have a B.S. in Criminal Justice from [...] (I am debating whether or not to attend Grad School). Thus far, from both my personal experience and academic background everything that you have written seems to be spot on. As I get further into the book, I will keep you posted.

If you are planning on lecturing anywhere in the greater Baltimore-Philly-D.C. area please let me know, I would like to attend.

I'm sure at some point I'll be speaking in Baltimore. No plans yet, though. I'll keep you posted.

Interviewed in the Economist magazine

How nice to post something that will not mention... hmmm... shall we say, oh hell, let's not say anything at all.

There's a great short (16 minute) audio interview of me talking about crime and police and drug legalization.

I get a kick how the hook of the interview is the "liberal sociologist." By police standards, sure. But by liberal sociologist standards, I'm probably a fascist.

Officer Pete says (rule 26):

Just because you "got a job" doesn’t mean I won’t arrest you.

The Chronicle

Well, if any publicity is good publicity, I've sure been getting a lot of good publicity.

The latest is by Jennifer Howard at The Chronicle of Higher Education.

May 2, 2008
Princeton U. Press Recalls Typo-Filled Book and Says It Will Reprint

Princeton University Press has recalled all copies of one of its spring titles after discovering more than 90 spelling and grammar errors in the 245-page work. The book, Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District, by Peter Moskos, was published on Thursday in an initial press run of 4,000 copies.

In what appears to be a first, the press plans to reprint the book and have it back in stores later this month, after the errors have been corrected.
[...]
No one alleges any wrongdoing by Mr. Moskos, nor has the book’s factual substance been impugned. The errors came to light when the author’s friends and family members began sending him lists of the numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes they had noticed.

“I was flabbergasted and embarrassed,” said Peter Dougherty, the press’s director. “This is a terribly embarrassing matter for Princeton University Press.”

He added, “We’re very proud of the book, which makes the embarrassment all the greater.”

He said that Mr. Moskos’s manuscript had been given to an inexperienced copy editor who failed to do the job properly. “We take a lot of pride in the quality of our copy editing,” he said, citing the publisher’s 103-year track record. “In this case, we messed up very, very badly.”

Asked how much the recall would cost, Mr. Dougherty replied, “a lot.”

The Great(,) Humiliation Column

I got a call from Laura Vozzella of the Baltimore Sun the other day.

I thought maybe she was a reviewer asking about a press release from Princeton Press telling reviewers to hold off until the new edition is out.

But I got worried when I started talking about the errors and heard the tapity-tap-type of note taking in the background.

It's certainly not like the Sun has been particularly good to me. Yes, they've published two op-eds of mine. But since then, I've been misquoted in the Sun. They hadn't (yet) mentioned my work or book. They generally don't call me about Baltimore police issues (they always call Eugene O'Donnell, one of my esteemed colleagues. Gene is a great guy, knowledgeable and smart, but he wasn't a Baltimore cop!). And yet for some reason, unlike every other cop I worked with, I don't hate the Sun.

Cops hate newspapers with even more venom than they hate Hillary Clinton. Reporters screw up crime stories. Or break scandals that shouldn't be. Or insist on getting "both" sides of the story when there is only one side.

Sometimes, the truth is exactly like the cops say. Say a thieving, violent, robbing, drug-dealing young thug goes on a rampage, pulls a gun on cops, and gets killed. Nothing is worse than quoting her mother insisting that her baby never did nothing wrong and was just killed by police in cold blood while coming back from volunteer work at the HIV orphanage. Readers are left to assume that the truth lies somewhere in between the two versions. That’s not right, fair, or true.

Probably half of all police stories show cops in a negative light. A reader may be left to assume that half of everything police do is bad. Of course this isn’t the case. But police need to understand that newspapers will never write column after column of “Another cop goes to work, does a damn good job, and comes home safely.”

No matter, I like newspapers. I like reporters. Maybe it's because there's a bit of journalism in my blood. I loved writing for and editing my high-school newspaper, the Evanstonian. And my uncle was a big-shot editor-in-chief for many fine papers.

So Ms. Vozzella is typing away and I'm telling her everything that's bad about my book. What can you do? All publicity is good publicity, they say... as long as they spell your name right. Well Laura not only spelled my name right, but she wrote a damn good column:

First, don't kill all the editors
by Laura Vozzell
May 2, 2008

First, Princeton University Press issued the book, Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District. Then it issued the news release recalling the book.

"Turns out I wasn't a cop at all, and I made it all up," joked Peter Moskos, the author and an assistant professor of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Moskos really was a city officer from Dec. 6, 1999, to April 1, 2002, Baltimore police spokesman Sterling Clifford confirmed. (Clifford wasn't otherwise vouching for the book, which he hadn't read. "It's not like the CIA where even if you're gone, if you write something about it, they have to approve it," Clifford said. "We're stuck with what they write.")

The real reason the book has been pulled off shelves, according to Moskos and Princeton: more than 90 grammar and spelling mistakes. After the book was issued two weeks ago, Moskos' mother and friends spotted what copy editors at the esteemed publisher apparently overlooked.

"A lot of errors for a 200-page book," said Moskos, who quipped that he should not have gone with a "fly-by-night organization" like Princeton. "The director of the press called it 'unprecedented.'"

Said Princeton publicist Lisa Fortunato: "For us, this is very unusual."

Don't those Ivy League-types have Spellcheck?

"You know what? We asked the same question," Fortunato said. "I don't know the full story."

The book is expected to be back on shelves in four to five weeks. Not a huge delay, but one that's upsetting to Moskos, since he has already begun promoting the book.

"It's just frustrating because I was on the radio today, and you can't buy it this instant on Amazon," he said.

At least he has a sense of humor about some of the errors.

"Somewhere in the book, 'Baltimore' is spelled wrong," Moskos said. "Maybe I spelled it with a 'd' like it's said."

Ironically, there is an error in the column.

My date of hire was indeed Dec 6, 1999 (The day before the day that will live in infamy is how I remembered it--and since this date goes on a lot of police forms, I needed to remember it). But I entered the academy on Oct 29, 1999.

My end date, however, was neither April 1 nor 2002. I turned in my papers on April Fool's Day (seemed kind of funny to me at the time). But my last night in uniform was June 25. And (because of backed up sick/vacation/personal days) I got paid until early July, when my employment officially ended. And it was 2001.

So in my mind, I worked from Oct 1999 to June 2001. In the police department records, I should be listed as having worked from Dec 1999, to July 2001.

Officer Pete says (rule 27):

Don't take heroin, it’s an ugly drug.

Amazon Sales Rank

If Amazon isn't accepting orders for my book right now, how is my Amazon sales rank going up?

Reassign narcotics officers to patrol duty

"Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey has reassigned the 135-officer Narcotics Strike Force to more general crime-fighting duties." This from Andrew Maykuth and Barbara Boyer's article in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

I'm all for it.

The Commissioner called the department "overspecialized." Right on!

"It may be disappointing to you," he said. "A lot of people thought my crime plan was going to be something, but it's very fundamental: Back to basics, and more uniformed patrols." I like this guy.

Officer Pete says (rule 28):

If you’re stinky, please take a bath.

On Point

I was on National Public Radio's "On Point" today. You can listen to it here. It's a quick hour.

Unprecedented

Pulled from the shelves! Indeed, if you don't already have a copy of Cop in the Hood, odds are you're not getting one for a couple of weeks.

No, I didn't fake the whole thing. No, the book isn't a safety hazard. No, there's nothing substantively wrong with the book. But the book is an editing mess. There are errors, little errors, lots of little typos and sloppy mistakes.

How they slipped by me, how they slipped by professional editors, how they slipped by the damn proofreader (he's not getting any fruit cup, that's for sure), is anybody's guess. Ultimately my friends and mother pointed them out.

So Princeton University Press is recalling the book. They’re ashamed and aghast. So am I. It is, after all, my book. Princeton Press is going to correct the mistakes and reprint the book. Unprecedented, they told me. That sounds like good blurb for the back of the book. Too bad it's not good.

They've also offered to replace copies out there, if wanted. But if you've already got a copy, I'd hold on to it. Maybe one day it'll become a collector’s item.

Here’s the official press release:

It has come to our attention that a recently published book, Peter Moskos’ Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District, contains a number of grammatical and spelling errors. As a result, Princeton University Press has decided to recall the book so that the necessary corrections can be made. We hope to release a corrected edition in about 4-5 weeks.

Odds are it will be faster than that.

A suppose in a month things will be fine. But it sure sucks for now.

Police "kill Colombian drug lord"

These kind of headlines, this one from the BBC, always crack me up... and make me sad. Why? Do you feel safer? This guy's death won't mean shit. Some other drug lord will take his place. I nominate his second-in-command.

I mean, really... Does anybody think that killing some bad guy is going to win the global war on drugs?

We got rid of Noriega. Think of all those "cartels" we broke up in Columbia. We get drug lords all the time. We got millions in prison. We invaded Afghanistan! Keep up the fight! Another victory! But it doesn't matter. This is so 1984. Why won't we win? Because--as Chris Rock so eloquently puts it--people wanna get high.

Drug users don't support terrorism. The War on Drugs supports terrorists. Shame on us.

Police-involved shootings

For those interested in an honest police perspective on shooting (and not shooting) people, I recommend Into the Kill Zone: A Cop's Eye View of Deadly Force by professor and former police officer David Klinger. It's a lot of 1st-hand accounts of deadly force incidents. And it's good stuff. You can read an excerpt here.

Sean Bell Verdict May Deepen Mistrust of Police

You can listen to my appearance on the Talk of the Nation radio broadcast.

Marijuana Arrest Crusade

I haven't digested all this yet, but there's an interesting little brouhaha about a recent study released by the NYCLU by Queens College Professor Harry Levine and Deborah Small. The paper is called, “Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in New York City, 1997-2007.” The report claims that 35,000 people a year are arrested in New York City for marijuana possession. This figure is somehow disputed by the NYPD. I’m not sure who’s right.

Officer Pete says (rule 29):

Police officers don’t go to work wanting to shoot somebody.

Buying drugs in Amsterdam

Buying drugs doesn't need to involve criminals, violence, and neighborhood blight.

These are pictures I took a few years back of a friend buying drugs in an Amsterdam “coffee shop.” I show it to my classes at John Jay College of Criminal justice.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city of canals and old buildings.

I love being on a boat.
In a nice (and expensive) part of town, there’s a seed store. They’re not selling tulip bulbs here.


It’s a very sleek and modern store to buy all you need to grow your own dope.
Around the corner, there’s the Hemp Hotel. I don’t think you have to smoke there, but I’m pretty sure they won’t kick you out of their bed if you do.
A block away, on the Reguliersgracht (of the Seven Bridges fame).
There’s a “coffee shop” selling marijuana and hash. Again, it’s nothing that will lower property values.
Even the police welcome you!
The store is licensed and regulated. It can be shut down by the police for any reason and without cause. But there never is trouble in a “coffee shop.” Partly because, well, why should there be? And also because the owners don’t want to risk losing their license. They know they’re sitting on a cash cow. This coffee shop can be open from 7 to 1AM.
Inside the place looks nice! Nicer than the average “coffee shop.” Much nicer, need I mention, than the average drug corner in Baltimore.
I had to ask my students what this was. How do they know?
The guy working there was happy to show off the coffee and ice cream, but didn’t want me taking pictures of drugs.
So I went to another coffee shop, across the street from the seed store.
Here’s the menu. Standard cafe stuff except for the filters, screens, and rolling papers.
You have to be 18. The idea that consumption is “compulsory” cracks me up. But they’re not talking about drugs. You just have to buy something if you want to hang out in their store. Fair enough.
The drug menu is now behind a window that you have to press a button to see. I’m not certain why they made this rule. It’s not like people in a coffee shop don’t know they sell weed. But I’m always happy to see drug selling successful regulated.
Here’s the money shot, as he weighs out some marijuana to sell.
Many tourists don’t even know there are canals in the city until after they arrive in Amsterdam.
They also sell pre-rolled joints, mixed with tobacco. In Holland, smoking marijuana straight is considered a bit gauche. Hell, in Holland, smoking marijuana at all is considered a bit gauche.
It’s that easy. So what’s the result? I nation of stoners? No. In fact, there are fewer marijuana smokers in Holland than there are in the United States. 37% of Americans have tried marijuana compared to 17% of people in the Netherlands. 5.4% of Americans admit to smoking in the past month compared to 3% of the Dutch (and I would imagine the Dutch would be more likely to admit it, since it’s not a crime). Heroin addiction is 1/3 in Holland. Incarceration rates are 1/7. The murder rate is 4 times higher in America. (the cites for these are in my book, Cop in the Hood, and also here.)

Fewer drug users. Fewer addicts. Fewer prisoners. Fewer overdoses. Less violence. Less money spent on drug-related problems. No money spent on a “war on drugs.”

Could it work here? I don’t know. But why aren’t we even considering it?

Officer Pete says (rule 30):

Don’t ask police for a ride. Despite what we say, we could give you a ride. We just don’t want to.

Talk of the Nation on National Public Radio

I'll be on Talk of the Nation today, after 2pm, Eastern Time.

Officer Pete says (rule 31):

No, I don’t "know how it is." You’ll have to explain.

Adapt or die

I just got an email from an academy classmate of mine. One of the nicest things about writing Cop in the Hood is that I hear from people I miss, but with whom I had lost touch.

So you know, I never left the Eastern District. I love patrol. I don’t know why, but I do. My beat is [***] post (the projects) and I seem to be the only officer who loves to walk foot in every project alleyway. Anyways, being a city police officer changed me... changed me ALOT! I even changed my hair cut style. Also, I am no longer shy or timid. I guess that’s what working the ghetto does to one person. It is like "adapt or die." [...] Anyways, I am working at this moment, but wanted to congrat you on your book and teaching. Oh, and a lot of our classmates were either fired or left to other agencies. Anyways, have a good one!

Regarding Sean Bell

Clearly something wrong happened because an innocent man was killed," Peter Moskos, author of Cop in the Hood, and a professor at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told TIME. "But that's not what the system was testing. They were testing if there was reasonable doubt. I think the verdict is fair, but it doesn't address that this man was killed. The court system is no place to address these problems.

The whole article is here.

The Sean Bell verdict came out at 3pm, Amsterdam time. At 5pm, I got a call on my temporary Amsterdam cell phone from Time Magazine (thanks to John Jay's public relations and my quick thinking wife for getting my phone number to the reporter). It was an awkward interview, because 1) I don't like talking on cell phones. And 2) I'm standing in a bar in the Leidseplein with a gypsy band busking outside. I felt a very long way away from the Queens Courthouse. I was very worried about failing to get my thoughts together and being misquoted on such a sensitive topic.

Madison Gray captured my words and thoughts perfectly (and he mentioned my book).

3 Detectives in Bell Shooting Acquitted

You heard it here first in my March 6 post.

My gut knows the police did something wrong because Sean Bell is dead. But what should a reasonable police officer have done? I don’t know. I never had to shoot my gun on duty. My gun was never the only thing between me and an SUV trying to kill me. I have doubts. As long as Justice Cooperman has some of the same doubts, the officers will and should walk free.

"Hard" versus "soft" drugs

The Dutch make an interesting and useful distinction between "hard" and "soft" drugs. When a Amsterdam police officer says, "I think drugs should be illegal and dealers should go to prison," they're almost assuredly talking about "hard" drugs like crack and heroine. Marijuana and hashish are considered “soft” drugs and were decriminalized in 1976.

The result is that "coffee shops" selling weed and hash appeared, since people knew you wouldn't get arrested for possession.

When the hard/soft distinction was made, the idea was to accept marijuana for what it is and allow people to buy weed without having to deal with drug dealers and guns and gangsters.

The hard/soft distinction is somewhat arbitrary. But no more so than our distinctions between legal, prescription, and prohibited drugs.

There is also some debate about whether to classify ecstasy and hallucinogenic mushrooms as hard or soft.

Dutch police generally support the hard/soft distinction and would not want to close “coffee shops,” even if they could. In speech, they use “drug” to mean “hard drug.”

When I asked a police officer to clarify the distinction between "hard" and "soft" drugs, she said a hard drug is one that, "if you do it wrong, you can die." That's not a bad working definition. Particularly because it presents the problem of drug policy as geared to saving lives, and not imposing morals or punishing deviants.

Of course I think all drugs should be regulated, but I would settle for a system where no drug user is jailed, violence is low, and drug use is seen as a public-health rather than criminal-justice issue.

A genuine "good guy"

Initially my presence was greeted with skepticism, especially from supervisors who believed, probably accurately, that nothing good could come from my writing. One lieutenant told me: “Moskos, I like you. But I don’t want anything to do with your book. I don’t want to be in it. I don’t want my name in it. I don’t want any part of it.” Outside of this reference, he’s not.

That quote is from Cop in the Hood. That very lieutenant (if my memory is correct) sent me the following email:

Moskos,

I hope you are doing well.

You were always a genuine "good guy" and always listening and learning.

Can't wait to get the book.

It isn't like it used to be around here. You would probably only know a handful of people at the Eastern.

Good Luck, ............

Those are very kind words. Of course any two-bit grad student can listen and learn, it's the actual "doing" that makes you real police.

I received a follow-up email on 28 April:

Yes, I believe it was I the one who said don't put me or my name in your book. That's OK.

The small portion I read online looks great! It should be mandatory reading for all high school seniors to give them a taste of reality not seen on MTV's "real world".

So how's life as a professor? I hope things are going well for you. I bet some of your students can't believe some of the stories you can tell them about inner city life.

I think the experience you've had will be nothing but good for your career, and life in general.

You've had the chance to see things 95% of society doesn't know exist.

With any luck all of your students will become right wing conservatives!

Officer Down

It's horrible anytime a police officer dies. It's particularly horrible when it's at the hands of another police officer.

If the Baltimore Sun is correct, the officer who died had 44 years on. I didn't know any officer had 44 years on.

My condolences to the officer's family.

From the Economist

This is from the Economist:

Thursday

I'M STANDING on a street lined with boarded-up shops—a popular haven for drug-dealers. A police officer is frisking a suspect whose trousers are nearly around his knees. The policeman didn't pull them down; that's how the suspect wears them. A bit impractical, perhaps, if his line of work requires him to run away from policemen.

But he insists that he is no longer in that line of work. He was caught once, but is now going straight. He has a legitimate reason for hanging around a nearly deserted street, after dark, in the pouring rain, for several hours. He is waiting for someone, he says.
AFP Follow the trousers

The police officer's colossal partner, whose sense of humour is as robust as his shoulders, prays aloud: “Oh Lord, I pray that a meteorite hits this [drug bazaar].” (He adds a P.S. to the effect that God should be careful not to hurt anyone.)

The temporal authorities in Baltimore take a more pragmatic approach to fighting crime. Like every other large city, they have copied elements of New York's system for mapping crime statistics, which allows police departments to send officers where they are most needed.

Baltimore has also put more officers on foot patrol, so that they are closer to the people they are supposed to protect. It has locked up many of the most violent offenders. And it has encouraged local volunteers to mediate between young hot-heads. Such volunteers know when a fight is about to erupt over, for example, a stolen girlfriend. All this is quite new, but the mayor, Sheila Dixon, thinks it is working. The murder rate for the first three months of this year was sharply lower than last year.

But still, the drug trade is unlikely to be peaceful so long as it is illegal. Crack pushers cannot ask the courts to settle their disputes. The only way to stop them shooting each other is to legalise drugs, reckons Peter Moskos, a sociologist who spent a year as a policeman in Baltimore's eastern district and wrote a book about it.

That is not going to happen, alas. And even if it did, it would hardly be a panacea. Anyone with a proper job leaves the ghetto. The young men left behind develop traits that render them unemployable. For example, says Mr Moskos, they react violently to trivial slights. This is a useful quality in a drug-dealer, but less so in most other trades.

A night of fieldwork in Amsterdam

I often wonder why anybody would prefer to crunch numbers than do fun qualitative research.

I'm in Amsterdam right now. I made contact with and successfully gained access to my desired police station tonight (to make a long story short).

I want to compare the attitude toward drugs of Baltimore and Amsterdam police officers. These attitudes are very different. Even the most conservative of Dutch cops thinks that people should be able to purchase and smoke weed in “coffee shops.” No Dutch cop thinks that drug users should rot in prison. Most Dutch cops think that punishment needs to be harsher for dealers of “hard drugs” (crack and heroin).

I meet the chief. He is both friendly and smart. And welcoming to an outside American research he doesn't know. I interview him and some of his main men. Then I ask to talk to some low-level cops, doing the kind of work I did. I am passed around to various police officers and interview them all.

As a cop, I’m impressed with the free coffee machine. It makes much better coffee than the machines they used to have when I did research here 10 years ago in de Pijp.