A Cop's Life: True Stories from Behind the Badge - Softcover

Sutton, Randy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312940017 ISBN 13: 9780312940010

Verlag: St Martin's Press, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

A COP’S LIFE...
is about a midnight call that brings you to a grandmother battered to death in her bed while three punks go running and laughing through the night....

A COP’S LIFE...
is about the man in the Ninja outfit who absorbs a full magazine of hollowpoint bullets and still raises his gun to kill you...

A COP’S LIFE...
is about the honor student, the pride and hope of his family, hanging from a speaker wire, or the baby who dies in your arms, or the people who think you’re a hero—or the devil...

In this powerful collection of tales from the frontlines, Las Vegas police sergeant Randy Sutton goes beyond the neon into the dark corners of society, putting us into the driver’s seat of his cruiser and a job that ricochets from moments of sheer terror to coffee-fueled boredom—with stops on the way at every conceivable act of human folly and depravity. With a poet’s touch, and the unflinching realism of a crime scene photograph, A COP’S LIFE is the ultimate depiction of the hardest job there is.

“Brilliantly evokes the tormented inner life of the average cop.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A compelling, sometimes wrenching, always insightful read that takes us into the soul of a working cop.”
--John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author of The Second Chair and The Motive

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

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, America’s Most Wanted, and Las Vegas. He is the editor of and a contributor to True Blue, a collection of true police stories written by officers from across America, also available from St. Martin’s Press.

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, America's Most Wanted, and Las Vegas. He is the editor of and a contributor to True Blue, a collection of true police stories written by officers from across America, also available from St. Martin's Press.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

A COP'S LIFE...
is about a midnight call that brings you to a grandmother battered to death in her bed while three punks go running and laughing through the night....

A COP'S LIFE...
is about the man in the Ninja outfit who absorbs a full magazine of hollowpoint bullets and still raises his gun to kill you...

A COP'S LIFE...
is about the honor student, the pride and hope of his family, hanging from a speaker wire, or the baby who dies in your arms, or the people who think you're a hero--or the devil...

In this powerful collection of tales from the frontlines, Las Vegas police sergeant Randy Sutton goes beyond the neon into the dark corners of society, putting us into the driver's seat of his cruiser and a job that ricochets from moments of sheer terror to coffee-fueled boredom--with stops on the way at every conceivable act of human folly and depravity. With a poet's touch, and the unflinching realism of a crime scene photograph, A COP'S LIFE is the ultimate depiction of the hardest job there is.

"Brilliantly evokes the tormented inner life of the average cop."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A compelling, sometimes wrenching, always insightful read that takes us into the soul of a working cop."
--John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author of The Second Chair and The Motive

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One 

Johnny's Last Day
 
My life as a cop began with a death on a muddy locker room floor. As I look back on that moment now, nearly three decades later, I wonder if that tragic event was a portent of my future, if my fate, my career, had been irrevocably bound to trauma and anguish and grief. It was not an auspicious beginning but an ironic one, and now, as I trace my life in uniform back to its earliest days, as I wend my way emotionally and spiritually past so many ghosts--of cops and criminals and victims and bystanders alike--back to those earliest days, the first face I see is that of Patrolman Johnny Rogerson.
 
Johnny Rogerson was a crusty veteran cop approaching the magical twenty-fifth year of service, the year when the brass ring of retirement would be within his grasp. He was the desk officer at the small-town police department where I, at nineteen, was a police cadet. Like a lot of guys who became police officers after World War II, he had joined the police department straight out of the army. After more than two decades, he still had the military bearing and wore his steel gray hair in a military-style brush cut. His face was crisscrossed with deep lines, and he had the look of a rugged, albeit retired, Marlboro Man, which was fitting since he was almost never without that brand of cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. Johnny's job was to answer the phone, to greet citizens who stormed the desk with questions and complaints, and to dispatch officers on calls. All the patrol officers rotated between patrol and working the desk--all except Johnny. Unlike everybody else on the force, he preferred, or so I thought, to be behind the desk instead of in a patrol car. To me, he was like a giant spider in the center of its web, alert to everything and everybody who wandered into his reach, as quick to criticize as he was to console.
 
How did he take to me? He tended to regard me with one raised eyebrow and a lot of skepticism.
 
"You're too young to be here, kid," he'd say whenever I came through the door in my cadet's uniform. "What are they doing putting babies in men's boots?" he'd mutter and shake his head. "You better be fully grown before you pin a badge on your chest. Nobody's gonna hold your hand out there, boy."
 
So it went for most of my first year. I figured he was taunting me in a good-natured way, but I also figured that being a man, much less a police officer, involved absorbing taunts with placid indifference. Johnny Rogerson became my testing ground for handling brusque personalities. I'd respond to his jesting by smiling and shaking my head as if he'd just told a great joke. After a few weeks, I discovered we were getting along just fine.
 
My job, after all, was to help him at the desk. I was the only cadet in the station, a holdover from a high school internship program. When my classmates made a running leap for the wide open summer and either packed for college, left to travel through Europe on a Eurailpass, or sought a summer job that would provide gas and beer money, I put on my uniform and walked straight back to the police station. I also worked a security job during the day and took some college classes at night, but I knew, with absolute conviction, what I wanted to do with my life. It was just a matter of time.
 
"So what do you want to be when you grow up, boy?" Johnny would chide me as I'd sit down at my desk behind the bulletproofed, glass-walled dispatch console that separated city hall from the police station.
 
"A cop," I'd say, since this had become a ritual greeting between us. "That's all I've ever wanted to be. I don't want to be anything but a cop."
 
"Hey," Johnny would say to a group of cops coming in from patrol. "Got some career advice for this kid? Seems he's got his heart set on being one of us."
 
"This job sucks!"
 
"Go be a banker or something."
 
"Go someplace where you can make some goddamned money!"
 
They all would laugh, and I would laugh, too, because anyone who wanted to be a cop knew it wasn't a practical choice and maybe not even a choice at all but a calling. I believed I was one of the lucky ones because I'd known what I wanted to do with my life while still in high school; becoming a cop was my sole aim. The age of majority had recently changed from twenty-one to eighteen, so it was actually possible to be a cop while still a teenager. I was intent on doing just that, even though I knew that openings didn't come up very often in a small town; usually one new recruit was hired every two years. I wasn't dissuaded; I had taken an extra load of courses in high school so that I could graduate six months early and be able to test for the department while still a cadet.
 
I had tested when the last opening came up a year before and had done well--just not well enough. I was number two. When the results were posted, Johnny had chuckled and clapped me on the back.
 
"That's just the department's way of saying, 'We like you, kid, but you're just too goddamned young.'"
 
The other cops were a bit more encouraging. When they passed by the front desk, they'd offer, "Hey, kid, hang in there and keep trying, you'll get somewhere."
 
But, God, I was frustrated. The list was only good for a year, and there wasn't going to be another cop hired until after Johnny retired, which would be after the list expired. I had tested with other departments as job announcements came out, but I really wanted to stay at my hometown department. I knew all the guys working there from the chief on down, and I felt comfortable with them. And, despite my initial reservations, I found myself looking forward to my half-shift at the desk with Johnny Rogerson.
 
Johnny was the "open for business" desk sergeant; he unlocked the doors to the street, ran the flag up the flagpole, made coffee, and perused the blotter, all before 6.00 a.m. No matter how early I came jogging up the steps, he would already be standing at the floor-to-ceiling window reveling in the sight of the sunrise, his gone fishin' coffee mug steaming in his hand, his Marlboro cigarette at the corner of his mouth.
 
"Never miss a sunrise, boy," he'd say when I pushed through the double doors. "A sunrise is God's way of saying 'Praise be to Jesus, you lucky sonovabitch, you get to live another day.'" He'd smile and hand me my own mug, with rookie stenciled hopefully on the side, and we'd settle down to police business.
 
"What the hell are you doing with slime like that?" he'd bellow to a tearful young woman who had come in to bail out the boyfriend who had slapped her around and blackened her eye. "You're better than that, missy! There's a nice young man out there who will treat you with the respect you deserve. Do yourself a favor and leave this piece of shit in jail where he belongs."
 
He'd listen patiently to an old lady's tearful tale of her lost cat and dispatch a patrol car to help find it. He'd lecture the twelve-year-old who had thrown water balloons off Carnegie Bridge; he'd excoriate the purse-snatcher who had dislocated a woman's arm; he'd console the elderly man whose senile wife had wandered away in Palmer Square. Whoever walked through the front door, whoever called the station, was subjected to the wisdom, advice, and judgment of desk patrolman Johnny Rogerson. It was, for me, the most entertaining show in town.
 
Whenever there was a lull in foot traffic and police business, Johnny would regale me with stories of his life as a cop--his life "on the road," as he called it. He told me rousing tales of foot chases and shootouts, of rescues from burning buildings, of brawls and barricaded hostage incidents. Whenever he told me of a particularly harrowing caper,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St Martin's Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312940017
• ISBN 13: 9780312940010
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 261
• Herausgeber: Wells Cassie
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar