Sex or lunch, what would you do, six days in a row? If you dont find the baby soon, will she freeze to death? It appears to be a single gunshot wound directly under the chin; should we assume suicide or possibly foul play? It appears the grandfather had a heart attack and fell through the glass storm window. Do we remove the body before the young grandkids show up? Its against rules but we cant allow the childrens last memory of grandpa to be crumpled and bleeding. Is that a gun in his hand or is that a cell phone? Its too dark, but the call was a man with a gun! If youre right youre a hero. If youre wrong you go to the morgue. These decisions are made on a daily basis if you are a Chicago Police Officer. Hopefully youre right. If youre wrong not only do you suffer but your family does as well. No police officer wants to make a split second decision but at times thats all you have.
Martin Preib is an officer in the Chicago Police Department—a beat cop whose first assignment as a rookie policeman was working on the wagon that picks up the dead. Inspired by Preib’s daily life on the job, The Wagon and Other Stories from the City chronicles the outer and inner lives of both a Chicago cop and the city itself. The book follows Preib as he transports body bags, forges an unlikely connection with his female partner, trains a younger officer, and finds himself among people long forgotten—or rendered invisible—by the rest of society. Preib recounts how he navigates the tenuous labyrinths of race and class in the urban metropolis, such as a domestic disturbance call involving a gang member and his abused girlfriend or a run-in with a group of drunk yuppies. As he encounters the real and imagined geographies of Chicago, the city reveals itself to be not just a backdrop, but a central force in his narrative of life and death. Preib’s accounts, all told in his breathtaking prose, come alive in ways that readers will long remember.
Surviving a career in law enforcement involves a considerable amount of natural instinct, skill, luck, and intellect. Fortunately for Pat McCarthy, he possessed all of these, some more than others, at different times.
The critically acclaimed memoirs of one female police officer's sixteen-year odyssey, beginning with day one at the Police Academy and spanning assignments on Chicago's West Side, one of the most dangerous areas in the city. The notorious cops' code of silence is broken as the author recounts incidents in the West Side projects: shoot-outs, ambushes, and what it feels like to kill a man—just four days out of the Academy. The stories told are sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, often poignant, and always provide the reader with an on the scene feel for life behind the badge. Domestic violence, murdered spouses, abused children, and philandering CPD brass are just some of the topics addressed, topics that officer Gallo dealt with everyday. From her work with gangs, narcotics, the gun task force, and acting as a prostitute, Gina Gallo offers a gritty account of the darker side of the city, giving readers an objective side to the cops, crooks, and victims that comprise a the police cops world. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
A former Chicago cop exposes shocking truths about the abuses of power within the city's police department in this memoir of violence, drugs, and men with badges. Juarez becomes a police officer because he wants to make a difference in gang-infested neighborhoods; but, as this book reveals, he ends up a corrupt member of the most powerful gang of all—the Chicago police force. Juarez shares the horrific indiscretions he witnessed during his seven years of service, from the sexually predatory officer, X, who routinely stops beautiful women for made-up traffic offenses and flirts with domestic violence victims, to sadistic Locallo, known on the streets as Locoman, who routinely stops gang members and beats them senseless. Working as a narcotics officer, Juarez begins to join his fellow officers in crossing the line between cop and criminal, as he takes advantage of his position and also becomes a participant in a system of racial profiling legitimized by the war on drugs. Ultimately, as Juarez discusses, his conscience gets the better of him and he tries to reform, only to be brought down by his own excesses. From the perspective of an insider, he tells of widespread abuses of power, random acts of brutality, and the code of silence that keeps law enforcers untouchable.
Former Chicago police officer and mafia associate Fred Pascente is the man who links Tony Spilotro, a central character in Nicholas Pileggi's Casino and one of Chicago's most notorious mob figures, to William Hanhardt, chief of detectives of the Chicago Police Department. Pascente and Spilotro grew up together on Chicago's Near West Side, and as young toughs they were rousted and shaken down by Hanhardt. While Spilotro became one of the youngest made men in Chicago Outfit history, Pascente was drafted into the army and then joined the police department. Soon taken under Hanhardt's wing, Pascente served as Hanhardt's fixer and bagman on the department for more than a decade. At the same time, Pascente remained close to Spilotro, making frequent trips to Las Vegas to party with his old friend while helping to rob the casinos blind. Mob Cop tells about the decline of traditional organized crime in the United States, and it reveals information about the inner workings of the Outfit that have never been publicly released. Fred Pascente's positions as an insider on both the criminal and law enforcement fronts make this story a matchless tell-all. Fred Pascente was a Chicago police officer for twenty-six years and a professional thief with close ties to the mafia. He died in 2014. Sam Reaves is the author of ten novels and has served as president of the Midwest chapter of the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.
Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.
Offers a distillation of police life and lore, drawing on the experiences of Chicago cops to present the often surprising knowledge they acquire and the methods they employ in their line of work.
"The book also delves into how the Chicago Police Department battles gangs, guns, drugs, and murder; how Hillard exhibited leadership in good times and in bad times; how Hillard dealt with politicians, the community, cops on the street and the media; how the department handled difficult crimes and their investigations; and how Hillard led, what he learned in the process, and what he accomplished. The book also discusses contemporary police issues including police corruption and brutality, use of force by police, police pursuits, police shootings and deaths, community policing, police accountability, and the use of emerging technologies in the fight against crime."--BOOK JACKET.
This complex and compelling novel, written by retired Chicago Police Lieutenant Dennis M. Banahan, reveals the many faces of crime in the city. Taut action, political intrigue and an earthy pathos illuminate the range of man's Threshold of Pain and create a sexy, fast-paced thriller.The story unfolds at the end of 1968, a volatile year in Chicago's history. Undercover (Chicago) police officer Johnnie Parello, who is assigned to the elite Red Squad Unit, stumbles upon an incredulous lead that may link a University of Chicago law student with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. When Parello attempts to launch an investigation into the matter, however, it appears that the FBI is stonewalling his efforts. Despite a federal injunction and pressure from the department to end the investigation, Parello and his partner, Big Mike Corrigan, are compelled to put the puzzle pieces together at all costs, and, it costs them plenty. The investigation that begins as a casual curiosity turns into a twenty-two year odyssey laden with death and political scandal.As we follow the well-structured plot, many characters captivate us, from Big Mike Corrigan's six-foot-seven thrust of spring-loaded energy to the dark, silky-skinned beauty of Detective Rennata McCray. Crisp writing and good pacing make Threshold of Pain a thoroughly engrossing crime novel.
