Peter Moskos: Progressives Are Wrong about the Crime-Fighting Benefits of Good Policing

Blue City Blues · Oct 27, 2026 · 1h 5m

Peter Moskos spent the better part of two years as a cop patrolling the mean streets of East Baltimore on the midnight to 8 am night shift, before he left policing to complete a Ph.D. in sociology at Harvard University. He now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, where he directs the NYPD Executive Master’s Leadership Program, and where he writes extensively about the importance of good policing to maintaining order and keeping crime in check in American cities.

So we asked Peter, the author of four books, including most recently Back from the Brink (2025), an oral…