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.