Ghetto Cops
On the Streets of the Most Dangerous City in America
Buy the Book: AmazonTitle: Ghetto Cops: On the Streets of the Most Dangerous City in America
Published by: RosettaBooks
OVERVIEW
GHETTO COPS is a journalistic account of the day-to-day activities of the police officers of Compton, California. A full decade before the popular TV show “Cops,” Bruce Henderson, then a young newspaper reporter destined to become a #1 New York Times bestselling author, spent the summer of 1974 riding with the Compton police. The first-person account of what he witnessed is not a mild story; Compton then had the highest per capita crime rate in the nation. The city and its cops were unmasked by a discerning, honest eye, and by a journalist unafraid to tell the truth.
GHETTO COPS is like a wild ride in a police car down the wrong side of the street with the siren wailing and the gas pedal jammed down to the floorboard. It is a montage of street crime that most citizens never see, through incidents packed with drama, pathos, violence, even humor, and illustrated with award-winning photographer Phil Nelson’s action photos.
GALLERY
PRAISE
“They bust a lot of ass in Compton. It’s a tough city that is a virtual powder keg…For the police, the streets are a battlefield and working on any shift is like going to war.”
—Los Angeles Free Press
“You don’t put down GHETTO COPS once you pick it up. Bruce Henderson puts flesh and blood on policemen with all the drama of fiction, yet this is a true story and thus carries a special realness.”
—Livermore (CA) Independent
“A personalized account of how the author felt riding in a black-and-white in a high-crime area…There’s always something happening–always somebody with a story to tell.”
—Los Angeles Times
“The action is swift and dramatic, dialogue terse…down-to-earth cops doing a tough job.”
—Pleasanton (CA) Times
