Never lose sight...

I received this email today. It’s worth reading. I wish all police officers wrote so well. I wish all my students wrote so well. Too bad he's not my student.

Some small police department’s gain was surely Baltimore’s loss.

I recently finished the first chapter of your book, Cop in the Hood and found it to be completely on point with my experiences as a Baltimore City police officer. I ordered it online and cannot wait to read it cover to cover. I also read your work, “Two Shades of Blue." As for me, I am a white […] conservative male […] hired by the Baltimore City Police after graduating college with a Bachelor’s in criminal justice. As of 2007, I am enrolled in graduate school while working full-time in a small police department in Pennsylvania.
[…]
Baltimore City left an indelible mark on my personal and professional opinion of urban life and policing. I will treasure the time I worked in the city for I will never experience it again. You have put to paper what I have so inadequately attempted to express to people about life as a Baltimore City police officer and life in the “ghetto.” Unless experienced firsthand, no one can fathom what it is like to be an officer there.

Over the course of my time in the city, I was involved in over 550 drug arrests, mainly crack cocaine and heroin. […] I laugh sometimes when I contrast the massive amount of arrests I made in Baltimore […] with the incidents I deal with now. Working in a small area, I am perpetually bored with the “crime” (underage drinking, broken windows, and loud music) I encounter. […] Needless to say, I miss being “a real cop.”

Aside from being a fellow officer, there is a particular reason why you have my gained my respect. […] I have a great deal of respect for academia (I myself am working towards my Master’s), but after going through college and spending 4 years in Baltimore, I realize those professors, outside of their office, are limited in their knowledge of actual police work. I learned this as soon as I hit the streets. Among the topics I once was taught and naively believed to be true include community policing and the drug war. I believe, as so many others, community policing is ineffective and the drug war will never be won.

I have particular respect for you because you lived what you researched. You teach and write from experience. I believe if you are to teach on a subject, you must have real world experience and a good knowledge base. Obviously this is my opinion and I mean no disrespect to any colleagues of yours or to any other person in academia. But I believe this to be true, especially since so few venture into police work. Even though you were on the street a little over a year, one year spent in the city is a career anywhere else.

I appreciate the candor in your work and I look forward to reading more of your literature. Keep up the good work and please never lose sight of what those officers, and all police for that matter, do on a daily basis. Thank you for your time.

No, sir, thank you!

Community Policing query

Dear Prof. Moskos

First off, let me say that I enjoyed your book. As someone who has recently moved to Baltimore and now finds themselves living on the edge of the Eastern I found it a fascinating read. Your discussion of 911 helped to explain the very big difference in reaction between the community meetings.

Commanders (not a direct quote) "We won't know something is happening unless you call 911 and tell us. We can't do anything about it if you don't tell us."—911 operators "You've got transvestite hookers working in the park across the street? We can't do anything about it unless you call when one of them is getting into a car."

Even without my new context, "Cop in the Hood" would have been an interesting book. I appreciate how you are able to speak with two voices; both the police and the sociologist.

That out of the way, I have a question I would appreciate your opinion on: are citizen's patrols actually effective? I've made some minor forays into the literature and searched for opinions. Although community policing generally seems to have a positive effect in some studies, I can't find anything pointing to which aspect(s) is effective.

At a gut level I have a cynical reaction to the overall effect of having a random group of neighbors walking around the area in green vests and waving the occasional flashlight at a dark corner. Keep in mind that I live in Greenmount West straddling the border between the Eastern and Central, so we have to communicate with 2 separate districts. This seems to reduce the level of direct contact with anyone who we have direct contact with.

I'm very interested in your viewpoint...

I answer:

Living between two police districts really does make things worse. And having to deal with a different set of officers on two different blocks is a pain. There is a natural tendency for police officers to push problems (such as prostitution) "away." I certainly pushed some people away from the Eastern and back into the Southeast. Counterproductive, when you consider I lived in the Southeast.

Community policing, by and large, doesn't exist and never has. It was supposed to mark a move away from reactive policing. But despite lip service to the contrary (I mean, nobody will ever come out against community policing), I don't think any police department has every implemented a real long-term community policing program. Quite simply, you can't have community policing if patrol officers are sitting in cars waiting for radio calls.

About citizen patrols… I don't know. My thought is that they can be effective (both directly and indirectly). It really is community policing. That's good, right? But for all the effort put in, the gain is probably very very small.

I'm a big fan of the Guardian Angels, for instance. But that's more from the perspective of being a young guy very happy to see them on the Chicago L than from any actually academic proof that they prevent crime. Buy my guess is that they do help prevent crime from a Broken Windows perspective. And even if the Guardian Angels (or other citizen groups) don't prevent crime, at least they made me feel safer. That's worth something.

District Commanders in Baltimore tended not to be the most enlightened bunch. (At least from my experience back in 2000. I'm sure they're all much better now.) Getting police to move away from rapid response and toward foot patrol in not in their genetic DNA. They're right that they won't know until you call 911. So the question they and you should be asking them is why don't they know and what can they do to know better.

And that 911 operator is an idiot. Just call for disorderly then, to get police to respond. But even better would be to talk to your post officer (on any of the three shifts, but the midnight is probably the best because we had more time) and talk to him or her about ways to solve the problem. As a police officer, I would much prefer to help a real person than just respond to another anonymous 911 call for prostitution. What the cops can do is arrest. And some arresting is probably part of the solution here. But probably just one piece of the solution.

Interestingly, there weren't many street-walking prostitutes in the Eastern when I was there. My guess is it was too dangerous for prostitutes and Johns alike.

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.