400 Things Cops Know

Adam Plantinga

Description

How does it feel to be in a high-speed car chase? What is it like to shoot someone? What do cops really think about the citizens they serve? Nearly everyone has wondered what it’s like to be a police officer, but no civilian really understands what happens on the job. “400 Things Cops Know” shows police work on the inside, from the viewpoint of the regular cop on the beat—a profession that can range from rewarding to bizarre to terrifying, all within the course of an eight-hour shift. Written by veteran police sergeant Adam Plantinga, “400 Things Cops Know” brings the reader into life the way cops experience it—a life of danger, frustration, occasional triumph, and plenty of grindingly hard routine work. In a laconic, no-nonsense, dryly humorous style, Plantinga tells what he’s learned from 13 years as a patrolman, from the everyday to the exotic—how to know at a glance when a suspect is carrying a weapon or is going to attack, how to kick a door down, how to drive in a car chase without recklessly endangering the public, why you should always carry cigarettes, even if you don’t smoke (offering a smoke is the best way to lure a suicide to safety), and what to do if you find a severed limb (don’t put it on ice—you need to keep it dry.) “400 Things Cops Know” deglamorizes police work, showing the gritty, stressful, sometimes disgusting reality of life on patrol, from the possibility of infection—criminals don’t always practice good hygiene—to the physical, psychological, and emotional toll of police work. Plantinga shows what cops experience of death, the legal system, violence, prostitution, drug use, the social causes and consequences of crime, alcoholism, and more. Sometimes heartbreaking and often hilarious, “400 Things Cops Know” is an eye-opening revelation of what life on the beat is really all about.

Sujets

• EDUCATION
• True Crime
• General officer
• Criminology
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Linden Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781610352475
• Langue: English

Extrait

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR

400 T HINGS C OPS K NOW

"Every cop should read this book and so should anyone who wants an uncensored peek into the real world of street cops. It’s wise and witty, fascinating and fun … a lot of fun!"
Joseph Wambaugh, bestselling author of The New Centurions , The Blue Knight , the Hollywood Station series, and numerous other crime novels

" 400 Things Cops Know is by turns funny, harrowing, insightful, chilling, and unrelentingly honest. Most books, the writer Richard Russo once said, ‘aim for the head, the heart, the gut, or the funny-bone.’ The best books, he continued, go for all of them. This is one of those books."
from the foreword by C.J. Hribal

"If you are considering a career in policing, read this book. Read it before you start the academy, read it after the academy, read it all through FTO and probation. Read it as you go through your career. It’s that accurate. This book might very well save your life."
Pete Thoshinsky , retired police lieutenant and author of Blue in Black and White

"A precise, concise, interesting, insightful, and necessary read for police officers and those contemplating police work, as well as those wanting to understand policing in society today. Once you begin to read this book you continue to want to hear more. It’s well worth the reader’s time and money."
Michael G. Krzewinski, Ph.D ., retired director of training, Milwaukee Police Department
400 T HINGS C OPS K NOW

Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman
Adam Plantinga

Fresno, California
400 Things Cops Know
Copyright © 2014 by Adam Plantinga. All rights reserved.

Published by Quill Driver Books
An imprint of Linden Publishing
2006 South Mary Street, Fresno, California 93721
[phone] / [phone]
QuillDriverBooks.com

Quill Driver Books and Colophon are trademarks of Linden Publishing, Inc.

ISBN 978-1-61035-247-5

135798642

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.
Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

ONE: 27 Things Cops Know About Shots Fired

TWO: 18 Things Cops Know About the Use of Force

THREE: 29 Things Cops Know About Tactics and Hazards

FOUR: 19 Things Cops Know About Working with the Public

FIVE: 17 Things Cops Know About Juveniles

SIX: 13 Things Cops Know About Seasonal Policing

SEVEN: 11 Things Cops Know About Courts and Legalities

EIGHT: 19 Things Cops Know About Chases

NINE: 28 Things Cops Know About Booze and Drugs

TEN: 31 Things Cops Know About Investigations

ELEVEN: 18 Things Cops Know About Traffic

TWELVE: 14 Things Cops Know About Being Among the Dead

THIRTEEN: 16 Things Cops Know About Hookers and Johns

FOURTEEN: 12 Things Cops Know About Domestic Violence

FIFTEEN: 24 Things Cops Know About Their Coworkers

SIXTEEN: 21 Things Cops Know About Thugs and Liars

SEVENTEEN: 14 Things Cops Know About Making the Arrest

EIGHTEEN: 15 Things Cops Know About Policing the Neighborhood

NINETEEN: 54 Things Cops Know About Being on the Job

Index
To Jennifer
Acknowledgements

Many thanks to my editors, family and friends, especially Mark, Andy, Angela, and Brent for your vital feedback on this book, and to Dean Tom Kennedy of Berry College, who got me started writing about police work in the first place.

Thanks to Quill Driver Books for taking a chance on me.

Thank you to the academy staffs of the Milwaukee and San Francisco Police Departments for teaching me the basics and beyond. And a tip of the hat to the officers I’ve worked with, especially Willie Williams, Steve Pinchard, Ramon Lastrilla, Gilbert Gwinn, Rolf Mueller, Kevin Worrell, Al Ciudad, and Nico Discenza, all of whom kept me alive and highly entertained. If I know anything, it’s because I learned it from you guys.
Foreword

I am not a cop. And most likely neither are you. If you’re at all like me, your experience of the police and police work comes mostly from TV shows, movies and maybe the occasional novel. My experience with the police might be slightly broader in that I’ve also, for the past quarter-century, lived in a city neighborhood that is usually described as "transitional." My neighborhood is on the edge of a ghetto, but it’s populated by people city workers, single moms, gay couples, working-class folks and a smattering of professionals, all in the rainbow hue of colors humans usually come in who like living in the city and having a lot more house than you can buy in the suburbs. We call the police regularly and trust that they’ll help us, or at least try to.

Still, most of the time I’ve no clue what their job entails, or what they do all day, or what the job looks like from their perspective. Like you, I only know I want them to show up pronto when they’re needed. And that’s why 400 Things Cops Know is such a wonderful book. Adam Plantinga takes us behind the stereotypes and general notions we have about police work and gives us a richly detailed tour of what it is really like to be a cop everything from the "tells" a person gives off that they actually want to fight with a cop, to what it’s like to be pepper-sprayed, to how to kick in a door properly, to why, when you approach a car and an occupant of said car lifts his shoulders, you need to be wary they’re likely removing a gun from their waistband either to hide it under the seat or to use it.

This book is chock-full of insightful nuggets and details, like why cops write their blood type on their ballistic vests in large print, and why they don’t no matter what you’ve seen in movies stand in front of cars hurtling at them, blasting away. How you can lure an angry pit bull into a squad car using only Junior Mints, or what to do when faced with an underfed pit bull during a drug raid. How thugs walk versus how the rest of us do, and why, when you see the right-hand pocket of a suspect’s windbreaker swinging like a pendulum, you can be reasonably sure there’s a gun in said pocket. You’ll learn how easy it is to walk on a stolen vehicle rap, and why, when you’re assigned to watch a prisoner at the hospital all shift, it’s likely you’re in for eight hours of the prisoner’s scrotum on display. You’ll learn about the "turtle effect" of shoplifters, and about "ghost calls," which can haunt you, and that, while "you never see Dirty Harry writing a police narrative," a big hunk of your day can be spent writing reports and filling out forms that come in various colors and with routing specifications that can make you feel like you’re a bit player in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil .

400 Things Cops Know gives you more than what cops know; it gives you what cops feel. The befuddlement of having someone come up to you while you’re making the perimeter for a bank robbery still in progress and their wondering if it would be okay if they just ducked inside for a minute to use the ATM. The rage of having a suspect, while you’re arresting them, ask you to "say hello to Officer X, the most recently murdered cop on your department," most likely a cop you know and have had to your house for dinner, and resisting the urge to take a swing at him, because he might have an accomplice nearby filming it so they can sue you later. The heart-wrenching, punch-in-the-gut feeling of dealing with victims of child pornography, wanting to go medieval on the perpetrator, and then going home to watch your own children sleep, and questioning the balance of good and evil in the world.

Full disclosure: some twenty years ago, Adam Plantinga was a student of mine at Marquette University. He wrote an amazing story back then called "Untitled" that wound up anthologized in Twenty-Five and Under: Fiction . I was impressed by the intensity of the writing, but also by its tenderness a story two-thirds Mad Max , one third Million Dollar Baby . Time and again in reading this book I was taken by how smart, how knowing, how tough, and also how tender the writing is. How human.

I’ve taught writing for going on thirty years now, and 400 Things Cops Know does what great books always do: It takes you inside somebody’s world so that it feels as real as your own. It renders the strange familiar and the familiar strange. ("As a patrol cop, you’re a generalist ….You must be familiar with everything from how to treat a sucking chest wound to the various city ordinances governing horse-drawn carriages.") Told in a matter-of-fact style, 400 Things Cops Know is by turns funny, harrowing, insightful, chilling, and unrelentingly honest. Most books, the writer Richard Russo once said, "aim for the head, the heart, the gut, or the funny-bone." The best books, he continued, go for all of them. This is one of those books.

C.J. Hribal
Louise Edna Goeden Professor of English at Marquette University Author of The Company Car , American Beauty , Matty’s Heart , and The Clouds in Memphis
Introduction

I became a police officer because I liked the thought of varied, challenging work, I was interested in criminal justice, and I wanted to see some action; the idea of kicking in doors and chasing down felons appealed to me. Beyond that, I had been a writing major in college and my impression was that police work was where some good stories might be fo