Analysis Of Peter Moskos Cop In The Hood

On page 1 of Peter Moskos’ investigative novel, Cop in the Hood; Moskos writes, “At a police funeral no one composes eulogizing platitudes of ‘never again.” In short, the public has grown callous to the death of a policeman. It goes unnoticed and unavenged. Given the recent events in Charlottesville in which Heather Heyer was tragically killed and made into a martyr for equal justice, I thought Moskos’ observation was misinformed. It seemed as if the entire nation had composed eulogizing platitudes of never again in the wake of Heyer’s death. Her death was noticed and is soon to be avenged with public outcry for her assailant to see maximum sentencing. What makes Heyer’s death so different from that of a policeman killed in action? Both are symbols of the active pursuit of justice so why did the nation favor one and not the other?

Curious, I delved into the book further for a possible explanation.

On the next page (page 2), Moskos mentioned that when one becomes a cop, one sheds any other forms of identity, such as race, and becomes blue. Later, on that same page, Moskos discusses the dehumanizing and strict “pseudo-military” regime found in police academy. I couldn’t help but wonder if the dehumanizing actions listed above had affected law enforcement’s ability to empathize with civilians. My suspicions were all but denounced when on page 7, Moskos recalls (or fails to recall) a 12 person shooting. While he fails to recall a scene that would no doubt scar the average person, he does manage to remember his tasteless jokes about the horrendous scene laid out in front of him. Therefore, we can conclude that policemen are desensitized to the death/suffering of civilians. Their strict regiment and lack of personal identity has driven a wedge between us and them. However, we have also lost our ability to empathise with

them. This clearly explains why there is no outcry at the death of a policeman and why the nation favored Heyer’s case. We are able to empathise and identify with her. She was one of us (civilians) who sought justice because she was able to empathise with those who were suffering. This lack of empathy shown by law enforcement does not just affect me, but all of us. If something were to happen to me, I would want to believe that there would be an integral group of men and women saddened and outraged at the loss of a fellow human being as opposed to a group of people laughing at my brain matter splattered on the wall. To prevent the growing epidemic of callous and trigger happy police, we must start with the source; police academy. Moskos said it himself that training is so strict and regimented it fails to teach adaptive thinking which is imperative to being a cop. Young officers are thrust into horrible neighborhoods that directly contradict everything they’ve been taught about order and routine. Of course they will rely on their guns until we teach them not to and revive their sense of humanity instead of going into survival mode. Let’s fix the police training system so that one day when we say, “never again” we will mean it.