Baltimore ex-cop: Police "have to solve the problems of America nobody wants to deal with"

Police form a line during clashes with protesters near Mondawmin Mall after Gray's funeral. [Reuters]

"One thing that sticks out from my time is how much all cops hate the ghetto," Peter Moskos tells GQ.com in an interview that goes live today. "And that's not a race thing. I think black cops are better at picking up the class nuances of the ghetto and defining it more about that than about geographic area."

"Some people want to make this a racial thing, I really think it's a class issue. You have this underclass that has no education, no jobs, no experience outside of a four block radius. And we ignore it."

Moskos is professor of criminal justice and sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and a former cop in Baltimore's Eastern District. He wrote that experience in his book, Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District.

"You know, cops are put in this horrible position where they have to solve the problems of America that nobody wants to deal with. The same idiots who burned shit down Monday, they're gonna be there today and tomorrow. The cops are always dealing with them, whether they're burning things down or not. They're always there. I was speaking to a cop, a black guy from East Baltimore, and he's like look, 'Cops reflect where they work. Yeah they can be dicks, but that's the neighborhood they're working in. Whether they're from there or not, they end up speaking the language of the ghetto.'"

Moskos is currently working on a book about New York's crime drop in the 1990s, told from the perspective of police officers who were on the job.

"A Former Baltimore Cop: We Have to Solve the Problems of America That Nobody Wants to Deal With" [GQ.com]