A cop's life : true stories from the heart behind the badge

Format:

Book

Title:

A cop's life : true stories from the heart behind the badge

Author:

Sutton, Randy.

ISBN:

9780312338961

9780312940010

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2005.

Physical Description:

xvii, 204 pages ; 22 cm

Contents:

Johnny's last day -- Sunday mourning -- 405 -- Graveyard -- Juvenile -- Dead man talking -- Shadow of the executioner -- The journey -- Her name was Jackie -- The ultimate Ninja warrior -- The man of the house -- Domestic -- Honor thy mother -- My child -- The honor student -- Death dance -- The 3:00 a.m. phone call -- Willy -- The messenger.

Summary:

A collection of dramatic tales culled from the author's twenty-year career as a police officer includes his observations of fellow officers, his struggles with depression, and the numerous cases that shaped his moral perceptions.

Subject(s):

Police -- United States.

Geographic Term:

Genre:

Added Author:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Salem Main Library	363.209 Sutton 2005	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

After September 11, 2001 Las Vegas Police Sergeant Randy Sutton began soliciting writing from law enforcement officers-his goal being to bridge the gap between the police and those they serve, with a book that offers a broad and thoughtful look at the many facets of police life. Hundreds of active and former officers responded from all over the United States: men and women from big cities and small towns, some who had written professionally, but most for the first time. Sutton culled the selections into five categories: The Beat, Line of Duty, War Stories, Officer Down, and Ground Zero.The result is True Blue , a collection of funny, charming, exciting, haunting stories about murder investigations, missing children, bungling burglars, car chases, lonely and desperate shut-ins, routine traffic stops, officers killed in the line of duty, and the life-changing events of September 11. Here, officers reveal their emotions-fear and pride, joy and disgust, shame and love-as they recount the defining moments of their careers. In these stories, the heart and soul behind the badge shines through in unexpected ways. True Blue will change the way we think about the deeply human realm of police service.

Author Notes

Randy Sutton is a Senior Sergeant at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Nevada. A member of the Screen Actors Guild, he has appeared in several big screen movies and HBO movies including Casino , Fools Rush In , and The Road Home . On television, he has appeared on COPS , Americas Most Wanted , and Las Vegas .

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Veteran Las Vegas police sergeant Sutton, who edited the acclaimed True Blue, brilliantly evokes the tormented inner life of the average cop with 20 short but powerful autobiographical sketches. With a novelist's skill, Sutton makes fresh situations that could, in lesser hands, come across as hoary clich?s. The broken lives Sutton encounters-the suicides, gangbangers, the mentally ill, the burnt-out officers tempted to eat their guns and the innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time-come vividly to life. The memorable figures include a boy who attempts to protect the grandmother who cares for him from violent punks, and a young girl whose trust in the cynical Sutton helps him gain perspective on his job. The author doesn't minimize the temptation to respond with force that is often the officer's instinctive response to mindless cruelty, and unflinchingly portrays the stresses that plague him when his best efforts to protect or save lives fell short- stresses that led him to consider ending his life. Some may find the closing section, a fictional Christmas parable, slightly sappy, but that doesn't diminish Sutton's achievement in enabling the reader to pound the pavement in his shoes. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Review

Twenty-five-year veteran Sutton proves that there's little glamour in police work. He patrols low-income neighborhoods a few miles from the glitter of the Las Vegas strip, usually on the overnight graveyard shift. The 19 vignettes here reveal a world of domestic abuse, drug use, petty theft and random violence. An honor student hangs himself after receiving a less-than-perfect report card. A daughter beats her dying mother to death in a hospice bed. Gang members slay a grandmother in front of her grandchildren for complaining about the noise the gang members were making outside her tenement window. Victims are often the most innocent and defenseless: young children run down by cars, infants shot in drive-by shootings, the mentally unbalanced vagrants who have slipped through the social services net. When not on the job, Sutton (True Blue, 2004) spends his evenings alone, trying to drink away the grime from his last shift. It's a grim portrait, relieved only by the rare uplifting encounter. In the last and longest vignette, a fellow police officer is lifted from a suicidal depression by a sick puppy he finds in a Dumpster. In an earlier tale, Sutton's heart leaps when a young black girl hugs him after he helps her across a busy intersection. The author clearly knows these mean streets. Unfortunately, his narrative suffers from clumsy, overreaching prose and a maddening lack of crucial detail. Too often, he leaves us stranded at crime scenes without telling us whether victims lived or died, or if arrests were made. A rookie cop, in tears, phones Sutton after his partner commits suicide. A few days later, the rookie sends Sutton the same cryptic message that he'd retrieved from his dead partner's car. Did the rookie also commit suicide? We never know. Conveys the emotional toll exacted by years of cleaning up after human misdeeds, but lacks the crisp narrative and grit of the truly satisfying police story. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.