Thomas J. Byrnes: The Father of the Third Degree

     The history of American criminal investigaton does not begin with a line of  thinking detectives inspired by the fictitious Sherlock Holmes, but with a police detective who achieved fame and success by acquiring confessions through rubber hose brutality, the so-called "third degree." Although Thomas J. Byrnes is not as familiar today as the nineteenth century private investigator, Allan Pinkerton, it was Byrnes who set the stage for decades of institutionalized police brutality in the United States. It was Byrnes inspired interrogation techniques that produced the Miranda decision in 1966.

     A Civil War veteran living in New York City, Byrnes joined the police department in 1863. Following a brief stint as a patrolman, the smart and ambitious young man got promoted into the newly formed detective bureau where he quickly made a name for himself. In 1880, two years after grabbing headlines for solving a $3 million Manhattan bank burglary, Byrnes, now a captain, took charge of the detective bureau made up of two sergeants and fourteen investigators. With thirty thousand professional thieves and 2,000 gambling dens, New York, one-third the size of London, had three times the crime. The Wall Street district, overrun by sneak-thieves, forgers, pickpockets, and burglars, turned to Byrnes for help. The police captain responded by putting out the word, through a network of paid informants and other law enforcement contacts, that any theif caught south of his infamous Dead Line would be sent to Blackwell's Island for a severe beating; a threat Byrnes carried out with precision and joy until the thieves, having got the message, stayed out of the financial district. The tycoons of Wall Street showed their gratitude by making Captain Byrnes one of the wealthiest police detectives in history.

     Byrnes, as much a businessman as police detective, found other sources of income. During his tenure as Captain of Detectives, he followed the standard policing practrice of ignoring, for a price, the city's gambling establishments, whore houses, and opium dens. One the New York's most notorious madams paid $30,000 a year in police bribes.

     As an investigator, Byrnes, in addition to employing a stable of paid, confidential informants, would let lesser criminals off the hook in return for evidence against the bigger fish. He taught his detectives how to identify criminals, particularly safe-crackers and other signature offenders, through their individualistic crime scene techniques--their so-called methods-of-operation, or M.O. The use of informants, criminal intelligence, and M.O. were tactics pioneered by Allan Pinkerton, the only investigator in the country more famous than Byrnes.

     It is not surprising that Byrnes, as an ambitious, puiblicity-seeking detective working in a era before judicial restraints on police behavior, adapted, as his principal investigative technique, the coerced confession. From a brutally pragmatic point of view, the beauty of the third degree is that it is not necessary, in the acquistion of a confession, to be interrogating the guilty party. By being the first to publicize the fact he would do whatever it took to get a confession, Byrnes established police brutality as a standard operating procedure, installing himself as the father of the third degree. For the next fifty some years, until the U. S. Supreme Court in 1936 specifically excluded confessions extracted from physically abused prisoners, torture, or the threat of torture, became the staple of criminal investigation in America. While Brown v. Mississippi didn't end police brutality, it marked the start of a new era in criminal investigation. However, Byrnes' ghost would inhabit, in varying degrees, interrogation rooms acrosss the country throughout the Twentieth Century.

     Although he worked in the era before the advent of crime statistics--annual crime rates, case clearance percentages and such--Byrnes used statistics, figures no less reliable that their modern counterparts, as indices of success. At one point in his career, Byrnes claimed responsibilty for 3,300 arrests leading to an accumulated ten thousand year prison sentence. Statiistically, there is no telling what percentage of the men he put behind bars were innocent of the crimes charged. Aware that the investigative reputation of Scotland Yard exceeded that of his own department, Byrnes, in the wake of the 1888 serial killings of five prostitutes in East London, challenged Jack-the-Ripper to ply his trade in New York. When a gutted female corpse washed up on the New York side of the Hudson River shortly after Byrnes's burst of bravado, there was serious concern that the ripper had taken up his challenge.

     Thomas Byrnes reached the peak of his fame in 1886 with the publication of a book, under his name, called Professional Criminals of America. The massive book contained the mug shots and detailed criminal histories of four hundred of the city's most active house burglars, safe-crackers, pickpockets, check forgers, and con artists. Reprinted for the first time in 1969, it is considered a classic work in the history of property crime in America.

     In 1892, a crusading Presbyterian minister in New York City named Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, launced a religious crusade to clean up vice in the city, and to expose the police corruption that allowed it to exist. The crusade led to political hearings headed by a New York state senator named Lexow. In 1894 Byrnes, now a police superintendent, was called before the Lexow Committee to explain how he, a public servant, had become so wealthy. As a result of the highly publicized hearings, the mayor resigned and a handful of patrolmen were indicted on charges of bribery. Byrnes, and several other police bigwigs were simply forced to resign.

     After leaving the force in 1895, the 54-year-old father of the third degree took a high paying job as general manager of an insurance company. The Lexow politicians, having enjoyed the limelight, left town, and the moment they did, the corruption and vice resumed.

     In America, the ward and watch system of policing evolved into a better organized, more efficient system of bribe giving and receiving. For the next sixty to seventy years American law enforcement would be pleagued by corruption and brutality. In the late 1800s, D. J. Cook, the superintendent of the Rocky Mountain Detective Association who had been a sheriff and a deputy U.S. marshal, issued words of wisdom applicable to his time and a generation of future cops: "Never hit a prisoner over the head with your pistol, because you may afterwards want to use your weapon and find it disabled."

     In 1910, the week before he died at age 69, Thomas Byrnes transferred, to his wife, a Fifth Avenue building worth a half million dollars. Two years later, the lawyer-writer Arthur Train, in his best-selling book, Courts and Criminals, described the status of criminal investigation some seventy years following the formation of the New York City Police Department: "The detective business swarms with men of doubtful honesty and morals...who are accustomed to exageration if not to perjury, and who have neither the inclination nor the ability to do competent work."
    

Those Lying Bastards

     The art of politics is the art of lying. Only extremely stupid people believe what politicians say. To get elected, a candidate has to lie his or her way into office. Abama, in talking his way into the White House, told more than a few whoppers. Promising Americans that under his rule there would be more governmental transparency was, pardon the expression, a load of crap.

     The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), passed in 1966, was intended to give citizens access to documents generated by the federal government. There were, ofcourse, exceptions or exclusions such as papers related to national security and other "sensitive" governmental matters. In 1987, U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese established an informal Department of Justice policy that directed his bureaucrats to withhold, as "sensitive," the release of documents that could either expose criminal informants or alert subjects that they were under federal investigation. Under this informal policy, a FOIA requestor denied documents on these grounds can attempt to get the Department of Justice determination overruled in court.

     The Department of Justice under Obama wants to allow DOJ bureaucrats, in situations outlined by Edwin Meese, to simply deny the existance of requested documents, papers that do in fact exist. And they want to make this policy either a formal regulation or elevate it to federal law. In other words, the Obama people want the legal authority to lie to the American people. Under this new rule or law, a denied FOIA requester has no recourse in a court of law.

     If government officials aren't controlled, this is what they do. The last thing elected officials and their bureaucrats want is transparency. If we knew what they were doing, or not doing, we would vote them out, and maybe even stop paying our taxes. If members of congress do not kill this proposal, many of them will end up spending more time with their families, or applying for lobbying jobs.    

    

They Still Fix Tickets?

     Following a long-running internal affairs and grand jury investigation in The Bronx New York, sixteen New York City police officers were indicted on October 20 for ticket fixing and various counts of corruption. Two of the defendants are officials in the Patrolman's Benevalent Association, the city's largest police union. Also facing charges are two seargants and a lieutenant. The lieutenant, who had worked on the case when assigned to internal affairs, has been indicted for leaking wiretap information to the ticket fixing defendants. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has reminded the media that the scandal represents a tiny fraction of the 35,000-member department.

     According to the District Attorney's Office, more than 800 traffic summonses were fixed during the three-year investigation. When the investigative dust settles, more than 400 police officers could either face criminal charges or disciplinary action. The investigation began in December 2008 with an anonymous tip that an officer had been protecting a drug dealer. In the suspect's wiretapped conversations, internal affairs investigators learned about the ticket fixing racket.

     What surprises me about this case is that, given computers and modern technology, it's still possible for a cop to fix a traffic ticket. Mayor Bloomberg, when asked about rumors of an upcoming scanda a few days ago, said it was almost impossible in New York City to fix a ticket. Apparently the mayor was wrong about that. Where there's a will, there's a way. This developing police scandal makes me wonder how prevalent this form of corruption is in other departments around the country.

Lawyers Without Licenses: A Good Thing?

     In October 2008, at the request of the Allegheny County Solicitor ( Pittsburgh, PA), the Institute for Law and Policy Planning conducted a study of the Allegheny County Public Defender's Office. In its report, the Institute, citing lost files, delays, lack of training, poor case preparation, and lousy management, concluded tht the public defender's office was "dysfunctional" and wasting millons of taxpayers' dollars. This study came three years after the county signed a settlement agreement related to a class action sit filed by the ACLU in 1996 alleging that the public defender's office performed shoddy defense work, had excessive caseloads and lacked trained staff. As a result of this settlement, the office, among other measures, doubled its staff of attorneys and hired thirteen investigators. The settlement ended in 2005, but problems in the public defender's office--lost files, excessive continuances, lack of preparation, management problems, and lack of attorney incentives to perform well--have, according to its critics, continued.

     The quality of legal services for criminal defendants generally, across the country, has for years been classified by critics as inadequate and substandard. Moreover, many jurisprudence scholars think there are too many third-rate law schools and too many unqualified lawyers practicing in the criminal justice system.

     In a recent New York Times article, Clifford Winston, an economist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes that the licensing requirement that practicing lawyers must graduate from American Bar Association accredited law schools and pass state bar examinations has not protected clients from shoddy legal work and incompetence. (This article is based on the author's new book, First Thing We Do, Let's Deregulate All The Lawyers) Winston asserts that the licensing requirements/restrictions, rather than insuring professional quality, simply exist to protect lawyers from competition from non-lawyers and firms that are not lawyer-owned, competition that would reduce legal costs (without sacrificing quality) and give the public greater access to legal assistance. Winston writes: "...the existing legal licensing system doesn't even do a great job at protecting clients from exploitation. In 2009, the state disciplinary agencies that cover roughly one million lawyers practicing in the United States received more than 125,000 complaints....But only 800 of these complaints--a mere 0.6 percent--resulted in disbarment."

     In Clifford Winston's deregulated legal profession: "Legal costs would be reduced because non-lawyers, who have not had to make a costly investment in a three-year legal education, would compete with lawyers, who in many states are the only options for basic services like drafting wills. Because they will have incurred much lower costs to enter the field--like taking an online course or attending a vocational school--and can operate as solo practitioners with minimal overhead, these non-lawyers would force prices to fall...."

     As a libertarian, and unlicensed law school graduate, I like Winston's idea. And having witnessed, upclose, many lawyers at work, I know how incompetent (and expensive) they can be. But having lived in the real world, I also know that while pigs may someday fly, Winston's vision of a deregulated legal profession will never become reality. And, I must also admit that while para-legal practitioners can write wills, interview potential clients, handle real estate transactions and the like, I would not like one of them defending me against a charge of first-degree murder.

Rape Investigations in New Orleans

   The head of the New Orleans Police Department's sex-crimes unit was replaced in June 2010 after an audit by the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement found that 32 percent of the rape complaints filed in 2009 ended up in the books as "miscellaneous incident" cases. This study followed a 2009 Times-Picayune report revealing that in 2008, 60 percent of rape complaints in the city had been written-up as so-called Signal 21 cases. Police superintendent Ronal Serpas, in response to the scandal, announced that the city planned to hire two DNA specialists to work on rape cases in the Louisiana State Crime Laboratory.

     In March 2011, a review of the New Orleans Police Department's sex-crime unit by the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that detectives rarely interrogated rape suspects, and while questioning rape accusers, suggested they were to blame for their attacks. Investigators, in questioning victims' credibility, often emphasized inconsistent statements, gaps in memory, and various motives for false accusations. This approach encouraged victims to become less cooperative with the police which in turn justified the filing of cases as Signal 21s rather than rapes.

     The head of the New Orleans Police Department's criminal investigations division, in October 2011, announced a backlog consisting of 800 untested rape kits dating back to the late 1980s. These kits contain DNA evidence that had been collected by nurses following reports of sexual assault. The hiring of the two additional DNA analysists had not cleared the backlog at the Louisiana State Crime Laboratory. Some of the New Orleans rape kit testing would be done by DNA experts at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.

     While law enforcement agencies across the country are adding expensive and unnecessary SWAT vehicles to their crime-fighting arsenals, crime labs are struggling with DNA backlogs that keep rapists on the loose.

The War on Crime: Cracking Down on Impersonators and Barbers

Phoenix, Arizona
October 20, 2011
     Jace Lankow, an undergraduate student at Arizona State University, interrupted a college football game by running onto the field dressed as a referee. The intruder blew his whistle then ran toward the end zone while stripping down to his underwear. A deputy sheriff apprehended the streaker with an open-field tackle. A few seconds later Lankow found himself on the ground on the bottom of a pile of police officers and security guards. The authorities hauled the offender to the Prima County slammer where he spent the night. Lankow told officers his antics were motivated by his desire to enhance his chances of getting on the TV show "Wipeout" as a contestant.

     The next day, a local prosecutor charged Lankow with Criminal Impersonation, a Class 6 felony that carries a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison. In Arizona, it is a felony to impersonate a referee. Under federal law, it's a misdemeanor to impersonate a FBI agent. When I was in the bureau, when assigned one of these cases, I'd interview the offender then close the case. I couldn't participate in the prosecution of someone impersonating a FBI agent when I was doing the same thing and getting paid for it. But the impersonators I dealt with hadn't interrupted a football game, and given the seriouness of college football, and the importance of being a referee in a big game, justice can only be served by putting this man in prison and throwing away the key. We simply can't have fake referees running up and down football fields in their underwear. It's unAmerican, and a threat to the peace and dignity of the Game.

Orlando, Florida
June 2011
     Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) agents and Orange County Sheriff's Deputies, wearing flakjackets, masks and all the rest, burst SWAT team style into Brian Berry's barbershop, and in front of his frightened customers, handcuffed him and his staff of barbers. The reason for this sudden, violent, and humiliating raid was to determine if Mr. Berry and his employees were all properly licensed. As it turned out, they were.

     In October, Brian Berry and several other Orange County barbers asked a federal judge to direct the DBPR to pay monetary damages to Berry and the other barbers who had lost business after being subjected to these unwarranted, militaristic raids. Three DBPR raiders were fired over these invasions, and raids of this nature have been discontinued. Still, it's disturbing that they happened in the first place. If the police are not restrained, this is what they'll do. This is, unfortunately, the nature of the beast.

The Mary Rogers Case: The Murder That Launched Modern Policing

     In America, police didn't get around to systematically investigating crime until well into the Twentieth Century. There were no police, at least as we know them today, until the mid-l800s, about the time the word "detective" first appeared in the Oxford Dictionary. Charles Dickens, in his 1853 novel, Bleak House, used the word for the first time in a book.

     From colonial America to the mid and late 1800s, most cities were "policed" by bands of politically appointed, unsalaried watchmen and constables who were compensated through a system of fees, rewards and bribes. If a thief had more money than his victim, he could avoid jail by paying off the constable or local justice of the peace. Watchmen and theives commonly operated as teams wherein the thief would steal the property then turn it over to the watchman who would solicit the reward which they would split. At best, watchmen were nothing more than middlemen in the ransoming back of loot.

     In 1840, New York City had a population of a half million, and a growing crime problem, particularly in the Five Points area, a south Manhattan slum. In addition to gangs of young thugs, the area was being overtaken by a small army of safe-crackers, lockpicks, pickpockets, and shoplifters. The neighborhood also featured gambling, prostitution, and public drunkeness. While homicide was still rare, more and more people were being raped and assaulted.

     During the day, so-called "roundsmen," a group of inept and corrupt watchmen who existed off fees and rewards, patroled the city. At night, watchmen called "leatherheads," equally ineffective and corrupt, took over. The watchmen ignored nonproperty crimes such as missing person cases, sexual assaults, and other crimes that did not offer monetary incentives. Even in cases of violent crime where the victim's family could afford rewards, the results were rarely good simply because no one knew how to conduct a criminal investigation. Moreover, forensic science, and the technology to identify offenders beyond their names--bodily measurements then later fingerprints--didn't exist. As a result, there were no criminal record archives, and because photography was relatively new technology, rogues' gallerys, collections of offender mugshots, didn't exist. It would be decades before the police in the U. S. routinely photographed arrestees.

     In 1841, a notorious murder case highlighted the sorry state of law enforcement and criminal investigation in New York City and the rest of the country. As is often the case, a celebrated crime would serve as a catalyst for change--and in this instance--progress.

The Mary Rogers Case

     Three men, late in the afternoon of July 28, 1841, while fishing from a boat on the Hudson River just off the Hoboken, New Jersey shore, spotted, floating in the water, the bloated body of a woman. The partially clothed corpse was identified that evening as 20-year-old Mary Rogers, the former employee of a popular Manhattan cigar store. She had gone missing three days earlier. The once attractive woman had been badly beaten in the face, and strangled by a length of muslim found wrapped around her neck and tied with a slip knot. Her hands and feet had been bound, and, according to the coroner, who ruled her cause of death as downing, she had been raped.

     Mary Rogers had lived with her mother Phoebe who owned a boarding house on Nassau Street in Hoboken. On the day after the fishermen found the body, a lawyer named Alfred Crommelin, a boarding house resident who at one time had been the victim's suitor, asked the authorities not to make inquiries into the death. Amid rumors that Mary, prior to her last disappearance had been absent from work six days recovering from an abortion, Crommelin based his request on the need to protect the family from embarrassment. The watchmen he spoke to, a man ill equipped to conduct an investigation of any kind, readily agreed to drop the case. Had it not been for a reporter for "The New York Evening Mercury" writing a scathing editorial criticising this official inaction, the case would have sllipped into obscurity. When the other newspapers in town picked up the story, the authorities had no choice but to conduct a token investigation. Most of the information gathered on the case--Mary's background, associations, and activities before her most recent disappearance, would be developed by newspaper reporters rather than the constables and watchmen responsible for looking into the homicide.

     Mary Rogers began working at John Anderson's Cigar Store, on Broadway near Thomas Street, in the spring of 1840. During her ten months of employment there, more and more men, dazzled by her beauty and charm, flocked to the store. One day, in January 1841, Mary didn't show up for work and remained missing for six days during which time her absence was reported in several newspapers as the "mysterious disappearnce of the cigar girl." Upon returning to the store, her admiring customers noticed her despondency, and were skeptical of her story that she had been in the country visiting a relative. The rumor spread that she had undergone an abortion, a legal procedure at the time.

     Shortly after her return to work, Mary broke off her engagement to Daniel Payne, a heavy-drinking cork cutter of whom her mother strongly disapproved. She then quit her job. On July 25, the day she
disappeared for the second time, Mary told Payne she was spending the day at her aunt's house on Bleecker Street. Three days later the fishermen found her floating in the Hudson River.

     Failing to acquire confessions from their only suspects--John Anderson, Alfred Crommelin and Daniel Payne--the police published a reward for information leading to the killer's arrest. This resulted in an anonymous letter from a man who said he had seen Mary, on the day of her disappearance, with six rough looking men at a summer retreat near Hoboken. From the beach Mary and the men were seen disappearing into a wooded area. The letter, published in several newspapers, brought forward two men who were on the beach that day, men who remembered seeing an attractive young woman in the company of several men. As far as these witnesses could tell, Mary was with these men voluntarily.

     Shortly after the publication of the anonymous letter, a stage driver came forward and said he had seen Mary, on the day of her disappearance, with a young naval officer. They were at a road house near the Hoboken summer retreat. Mary's companion turned out to be a sailor named William Adam. Taken into custody, watchmen, after grilling him for two days, released him back to his ship.

     On September 25, two months after the murder, children playing in the woods near Elysian Fields in Hoboken, found a white petticoat, a silk scarf, a parasol, and a linen handkerchief bearing the initials "M. R." This area was not far from where Mary had been seen entering the woods witht the six rough looking men, the probable place of her killing. No one in authority had thought to search this site for clues related to her violent assault. Without the ability to connect a suspect to the scene of a crime through fingerprints or various forms of trace evidence--the investigation ended here. A few weeks later, at this very spot, Daniel Payne killed himself by drinking a bottle of laudanum, a particularly painful and unhurried mode of poison-suicide. Because Payne had an air-tight alibi for July 25, the day of the murder, he was never considered a real suspect.

     No one was ever arrested for the murder of Mary Rogers. Edgar Allan Poe used the case as the basis of his story, "The Mystery of Marie Roget," a crime he set in Paris. The piece, reflecting Poe's contempt for New York's law enforcement authorities he believed had bungled the investigation, first appeared in the November 1842 issue of Snowden's Ladies' Companion. Two installments followed.

     The Mary Rogers case, through Edgar Allan Poe, led to the formation of a new literary genre; sparked the beginning of crime reporting; produced early anti-abortion legislation; and kick-started the formation, in 1845, of the New York City Police Department, the nation's first modern law enforcement agency.

       

Dr. Michael McGee: Another Foresnic Pathologist Under Attack

     In 2006, in Alexandria, Minnesota, a jury found Michael Hansen guilty of second-degree murder in the 2004 death of his infant daughter Avryonna. Dr. Michael McGee, the medical examiner for Douglas County, Minnesota, had ruled the death a homicide. The baby had suffered a fractured skull, an injury five forensic pathologists for the defense believed happed in a Walmart accident six days before the baby died. These defense medical experts testified that Avryonna had accidentally suffocated to death in her crib. Dr. McGee told jurors that the Walmart accident could not have caused the baby's skull fracture, and that it wasn't possible for a baby to die by accidental suffocation.

     Douglas County Judge Peter Irvine has recently ordered a new trial for Hansen based on new evidence that infants can in fact die by accidental suffocation. The judge, in his decision, wrote that Dr. McGee stopped looking for a cause of death when he found the child's skull fracture. The judge found that Dr. McGee gave "false or incorrect" testimony at the Hansen trial. Judge Irvine ordered Michael Hansen's immediate release from prison. A few weeks later, the Douglas County prosecutor dropped all charges against Hensen.

     Dr. Michael McGee works out of the Ramsey County, Minnesota Medical Examiners office in St. Paul. Since 1985, his company, M. B. McGee, P. A., has provided an autopsy service for Ramsey, Douglas, and twelve other counties throughout Minnesota. The 63-year-old forensic pathologist earned $1million last year, most of it from a $700,000 contract with Ramsey County. McGee's company, in the other counties, charges a $500 fee per autopsy. Last year Dr. McGee performed 500 autopsies in these jurisdictions. Out of his company's revenue, McGee pays Ramsey County for the use of the building and supplies.

     As a result of Judge Irvine's ruling in the Hansen case, the Ramsey County Attorney's Office has initiated an investigation and review of Dr. McGee's work. The county attorney has also hired a retired prosecutor to review the Hansen case. McGee's pathology contract with the county is set to expire at the end of 2014. His contract could, however, be terminated.

     Over the years Dr. McGee has testified in 150 homicide trials held throughout the state. Some of these cases might be coming under review as well.

     Due to the critical shortage of medical examiners in the country, Dr. McGee is one of many forensic pathologists who do work, on a contract basis, for several counties. Critics of this arrangement believe that these forensic pathologists, because they are stretched so thin, and motiviated by profit, do substandard work. Moreover, when they get into trouble, they aren't fired because there is no one to replace them.
(See: "The Troubled Career of Dr. Thomas Gill," September 27, 2011)

Walmartology: Crime in Consumerland 2

October 8, 2011
Baltimore City, Maryland
     A fight broke out in a Walmart store between two women who knew each other and had fought before over a man. When one of the combatants poured bleach and Pine-Sol on her opponent, Walmart officials had to close the facility for two hours. The fumes sent nineteen customers and employees to area hospitals. Police charged the 33-year-old woman who poured the hazardous material (mixing ammonia and bleach can create toxis gas) with first and second degree assault. Bond was set at $350,000.

October 7, 2011
Palm Springs, California
     At 7:30 PM, a Walmart customer, on his way to his care in the parking lot, got into an argument with two people in another vehicle. One of the occupants of that car shot the customer several times. Paramedics rushed the wounded man to a local hospital. According to the police, the shooting was not gang-related.

October 10, 2011
Columbia, South Carolina
     At 6:00PM, after a 41-year-old female Walmart customer had placed her grocery bags in the trunk of her car, a man reached into the front passenger seat of her vehicle and grabbed her purse. The woman fought him for the handbag until he pulled a handgun. The robber jumped into a getaway car with the purse and was gone.

October 12, 2011
Beaumont, Texas
     Shortly after 5:00PM, a man put a gun to a 64-year-old woman's head while she loaded groceries into her car. The victim was parked no more than 250 feet from the entrance to the Walmart Store. When the woman refused to give up her purse, the robber pulled it off her shoulder, knocking her to the ground. The gunman jumped into the backseat of a waiting car that sped off.

     It may not be a bad idea for women who shop at Walmart to leave their purses at home.  (See: "Walmart: Bargains, Jobs and Crime," October 4, 2011)

Joe Biden: Is Our Vice President a Political Hack--Or Just An Idiot?

     On October 19, Vice President Joe Biden told a reporter from Human Events that if Congress failed to pass President Obama's Jobs Act, "...murder will continue to rise, rape will continue to rise, all crimes will continue to rise." When confronted by the reporter's skepticism regarding rising crime rates, Biden told him to check the crime statistics for Flint, Michigan, pointing out that when police officers were laid off in that city, rape rates went up.

     According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, the number of rapes in Flint, Michigan declined from 2009 to 2010. In 2008, the city employed 265 sworn police officers. In 2010, there were 144. So, in Flint, as more and more officers were laid off,  the incident of rape, according to the FBI's statistics, dropped. Flint's chief of police, Alvin Lock, said this in September 2010: "A smaller police force doesn't automatically mean more crime. There's been years when we had 300 officers and we still had more homicides."

     Because police officers generally react to crime rather than prevent it, there is little relationship between policing and crime rates. This is particularly true with regard to crimes like rape and homicide. If an escalation of police manpower and weaponry affected crime rates, we would have won the drug war twenty years ago.

     Let's assume that the Obama administration gave the city of Flint enough federal money to double their police force. How would the police department use those funds? They would hire patol officers and buy expensive weapons and SWAT gear. The money would not be used to solve rape cases. The crime lab would still have a two to three year DNA analysis backlog, and there would still be a shortage of forensic nurses, rape kits, and trained sexual offense investigators. The citizens of Flint would see more militarized policing in the form of an increased use of SWAT teams to conduct predawn, no-knock drug raids.

     Rape is primarily a crime committed behind closed doors involving people who know each other. Having ten combat equiped officers on the street in front of the crime scene will not prevent the offense. The incidence of rape depends on demographics and the availabilty of criminal opportunity unrelated to how many police officers are on patrol. Rape statistics depend upon the percentage of victims who report the crime. Crime researchers believe that most victims of rape, for a variety of reasons, don't report the offense.

     Joe Biden's linkage of bailout money to rape and homicide reduction makes me think he's an idiot and a political hack. At least as a hack, he's not particularly bright. It's the smart ones you have to worry about.

    

The Book Editor

   There was a time in book publishing when editors like Maxwell Perkins of Scribner's and Sons played a hands-on role in getting a manuscript ready for publication. Today, editors still evaluate manuscripts and make suggestions, but get much less involved in shaping the book for publication. In the 1960's, editor Don Preston had the almost impossible job of getting a glitzy, gossipy novel by an amateurish writer named Jacqueline Susann into publishable form. The manuscript, entitled Valley of the Dolls, became a national bestseller thanks in large part to Don Preston's editorial skills. This is Preston's evaluation of Susann's manuscript: "...she is a painfully dull, inept, clumsy, undisciplined, rambling and thoroughly amateurish writer whose every sentence, paragraph and scene cries for the hand of a pro. She wastes endless pages on utter trivia, writes wide-eyed romantic scenes that would not make the pages of True Confessions, hauls out every terrible show biz cliche...lets every good scene fall apart in endless talk and allows her book to ramble aimlessly....I reaally don't think there is a page of this manuscript that can stand in its present form. And after it is done, we will be left with a faster, slicker, more readable mediocrity."

     A lot of writers think of book editors as failed novelists who take out their frustration on authors. This view is expressed in a quote by David A. Fryxell: "Most of them [editors] grew up wanting to be writers. Now they hold the power of professional life or death over people who are doing what they would probably still rather be doing--writing." I disagree. Literary editing is an art form in its own right, and great editors are talented people. A great editor can turn a good manuscript into an excellent book.

     What follows are what authors say about book editors and the editing process:

Editors in publishing houses can be perceived as basically performing three different roles, all of them simultaneously. First they must find and select the books the house is to publish. Second they edit (yes, Virginia, they still do edit,...). And third, they perform the Janus-like function of representing the house to the author and the author to the house.
Alan D. Williams

Although they're skittish and sometimes blind to real talent, they [editors] are often ambitious idealists; they would like nothing better than to discover and publish a great book--or even a moderately good one.
John Gardner

Often the editing talent is not the writer's own. An outside eye and hand is usually essential.
Dr. Alice W. Flaherty

The successful editor is one who is constantly finding new writers, nurturing their talents, and publishing them with critical and financial success. The thrill of developing fresh writing makes the search worthwhile, even when the waiting and working becomes months, sometimes years of drudgery and frequent disappointment.
A Scott Berg

Master editors taught me how to break books down and put them back together. You learn values--the value of tension, of keeping tension on the page and how that's done, and you learn how to spot self-indulgence, how you don't need it. You learn to become very free and easy about moving things around, which a reader would never do. A reader sees a printed book and that's it. But when you see a manuscript as an editor, you say, well this is chapter twenty, but it should be chapter three.
E. L. Doctorow

Good editing is one of those laborious invisibile jobs, like housekeeping, that are apparent only when they aren't done.
John Jerome

Readers give as much credit to an editor for the books they read as pitchers pay tribute to the horses whose hides encase baseballs.
John T. Winterich

You know I'm not the sort of editor who pesters authors [of children's books] and artists. I love creative people, and I never want to do anything to make life harder than it is for creative people.
Ursula Nordstrom

Nobody remotely interested in the role of editors or their relationship to writers should fail to read Editor to Author: The Letters of Maxwell Perkins, edited by John Hall Wheelock. With their warmth, eloquence, total empathy with authors, and gentle but keenly persuasive suggestions, these letters stand alone as lasting beacons to those who would follow.
Alan D. Williams

A good editor is a man who understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much. A good editor can put his finger on weakness...without trying to tell you how to repair it.
Irwin Shaw

The job of editor in a publishing house is the dullest, hardest, most exciting, exasperating and rewarding of perhaps any job in the world.
John Hall Wheelock

When I was an editor, nothing turned me off quicker than reading a presentation that stated the author's book was suitable for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.A., and therefore the book had a potential sale of more than 200 million.
Oscar Collier (Oscar became a well-known literarary agent in New York City. I'm proud to say that he represented me until he passed away in 1998.)

Writers work under constant threat of public ridicule and rejection. Editors are protected by a shield of public anonymity
Ralph Keyes

Police Shootings: Aurora 9 Denver 2

     So far in 2011, the police in Denver, Colorado, a city of two million, have shot two people, killing both of them. In Aurora, the suburban city of 325,000 that sits adjacent to Denver on its eastern border, the police this year have shot a total of nine people, killing six. (This year 14 Aurora police officers have been assaulted, eleven more than in 2010. Firearm-related homicides are up 33 percent over the past year.)

     This year in Denver, 950 police officers--the entire patrol force--have completed Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training, a week-long course. In Aurora, about 150 patol officers have completed CIT training this year. That's about half of the officers assigned street patrol duty. Denver is one of a handful of cities that employs an Assessment Response Team which works with licensed social workers from the city's Mobile Mental Health Unit. The goal is to reduce police contacts with mentally ill people.

     In October, Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates ordered each of the city's officers to attend specialized training. In the all-department letter in which the chief acknowledged the "disproportionally high number of officer-involved shootings," said it was time for the department to review its use of deadly force policy. The new training will cover "de-escalation skills including tactical retreat and the use of nolethal force." (In most states, an officer is justified in using deadly force to protect himself or others from serious bodily injury or death. Questionable shootings often include fleeing suspects; vehicles used as weapons situations; cases where the officer thinks the suspect is reaching for a gun; and suspects' holding things in their hands that look like guns. The shooting of manifestly insane people in stand-off situations also brings criticism of the police.)

     What follows is a summary of each police involved shooting case this year in Aurora, Colorado:

Shooting Episode Number One
January 14
     The first shooting of the year involved the wounding of an armed bank robber. (Because there was so little media coverage of this event, I have not been able to identify the subject or gather additional information about the shooting.)

Shooting Episode Number Two
February 10
     Someone tipped the police that Richard Arreola was selling methamphetamine at a middle school. The narcotic officers were surveilling the suspected when, for some unknown reason, he approached them. At some point the suspect raised a handgun. One of the surveilling officers shot and killed Arreola on the spot. 

Shooting Episode Number Three
March 15
     At 11:00 PM officers were called to a Super 8 Motel on a report that a man was threatening a woman with a gun. En route, the police learned that the disturbance had moved to a car in the parking lot south of the motel. According to information issued to the officers, the subject was holding two people hostage. The police blocked off the parking lot and called in the SWAT team.
     As more officers converged on the scene, police heard a shot frired from inside the car. Officers rushed the vehicle, broke out a window, and opened fire. In the gunfight, an officer was shot in the wrist. The hostage taker, 25-year-old Danial A. Garcia, was shot to death. The police also shot and wounded one of the hostages.

Shooting Episode Number Four
March 18
     At 8:15 PM an Aurora officer on patrol spotted a man matching the description of the suspect accused of shooting at a police officer. When patrolman pulled the man's car over, the suspect bolted on foot into an apartment complex courtyard where the suspect fired at the pursuing officer, hitting him in the leg. Police set up a perimeter and began searching for the shooter. As residents of the complex were being evacuated, police learned that the suspect had taken a family in the apartment complex hostage.
     During the stand-off that followed, a member of the SWAT team established communications with the subject who advised that he planned "to go out shooting." The hostages managed to escape and inform the officers that the suspect was holed-up in a back bedroom of their apartment. The SWAT team tried unsuccessfully to flush the man out with tear gas. When the subject, armed with a handgun, tried to escape through a window, officers opened fire, killing him on the spot. Police identified the dead man as 20-year-old Aaron Williams. Williams had been the one who, the day before, had shot at another police officer.

Shooting Episode Number Five
March 20
     Just before midnight, Aurora officers spotted three male suspects inside a fenced-in car storage lot behind a automotive service garage. Several cars had been recently stolen from this neighborhood. The suspects saw the police, jumped into a pickup, and sped off. During the vehicular chase, the police opened fire on the suspects' truck, hitting two of the subjects. One of the men survived his wound, the other died in the hospital a few hours later. The dead man was a 22-year-old Russian immigrant named Oleg Gidenko. The man wounded by the police was 18-year-old Yevgeniy Straystar.
     On May 18, Gidenko's family filed a lawsuit against the city of Aurora. Three weeks later, the Aurora city attorney announced that he was exploring the possibility of a court settlement with the plaintiffs. Court papers revealed that the police officers had fired more that a dozen bullets, and that Gidenko, shot in the head, had died instantly. The city settled the lawsuit out of court.
     On July 11, the Arapahoe County District Attorney announced that the Gidenko/Straystar shootings were justified. In the press release, the district attorney wrote: "I find that Mr. Gidenko's driving constituted an imminent use of deadly physical force and that the officers were justified in using deadly physical force to protect themselves and each other."

Shooting Episode Number Six
July 23
     An elderly woman called the police from a store parking lot. After losing her car keys, she had found a note on her car offering the return of her keys in exchange for $50. The note writer left a phone number. A plainclothed officer used a spare key to drive the woman to meet her would-be extortionist. At a Family Dollar parking lot, the officer met 59-year-old Juan Contreras who now demanded $100 for the keys. While trying to take Contreras into custody, the suspect, while sitting in his car, punched the officer. He then, according to the police report, reached for a 9-inch knife. After repeatedly identifying himself as a police officer, the officer shot Contreras three times in the chest. The suspect died later that night in a local hospital.
     On July 29, Chief Danial Oates, in announcing a Tactical Review Board investigation into the shooting, said, "We need to take a thorough look at the decisions we made that evening and the tactics we employed. We need to determine whether we can learn from this event. Could we have done this better? We have an obligation to be the best we can as a police department, and if we can learn from what occurred here and thereby avoid a deadly confrontation in the future, that will be a positive outcome."

Shooting Episode Number Seven
September 29
     At three in the morning, a homeowner called the Aurora  police to report that a man and a woman were having a loud agrument out in the street. When officers pulled up to the scene, they found two people inside a van. Officers asked the man to alight from the vehicle and he did. When an officer tried to pat this man down, he ran off. After a brief foot chase officers caught up with the subject and tasered him. The shock had little effect. When the man pulled a handgun, the officers shot him. Jerome Blackmon, 21, died a few hours later in the hospital. Police said they had no idea why Blackmon had fled when they tried to frisk him. (Perhaps it was because he was armed with the handgun.)
(See: "Armed and Dangerous: Who the Police Shoot and Why," September 22, 2011 and "Wednesday, October 12: A Busy Day in the Shooting War on Crime," October 22, 2011)

Police Taser Abuse in New York State

     In October, the New York Civil Liberties Union released a report, based on 851 taser incidents from eight police departments in the state, called "Taking Tasers Seriously: The Need for Better Regulation of Stun Guns in New York." According to this report, 60 percent of taser incidents failed to meet departmental guidelines that limit the use of taser guns to situations where physical aggression is encountered. Moreover, 75 percent of taser use in the study didn't involve verbal warnings prior to the execution of this form of nonlethal police force.

     According to departmental regulations in all of the agencies studied, officers are not supposed to taser children and elderly people. Notwithstanding these guidelines, police, in an astounding 40 percent of cases, tasered these "at-risk" subjects. Even though the excessive shocking of a person can be fatal, one-third of these cases involved prolonged shocks. In 15 percent of these incidents, the police tasered subjects who were already restrained, including people in handcuffs.

     The authors of the taser report noted that officers with the New York City Police Department had complied with departmental policies and guidelines. However, other law enforcement agencies in the study had used tasers in an "inappropriate, irresponsible and downright deadly manner." (See: "Taser Madness," October 6, 2011) 

Are Writers Nuts?

     Is there such a thing as a writer's personality or type? Are there behaviorial quirks, personality traits, and emotional temperments common to writers? Do writers, like serial killers, fit some knd of psychological profile? Are writers, as some people think, emotionally disturbed egomaniacs? Some writers openly reveal in memoirs, journals and letters that they consider themselves, at least in some respects, psychologically strange and abnormal. In addition to being odd, many writers have outsized egos and are pathologically competitive. George Bernard Shaw, for example, said this of himself: "With the exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Sharkespeare when I measure my mind against his." Writers have also shown themelves to be compulsive, whiny, petty, and cruel. When Truman Capote died, his rival Gore Vidal was supposed to have referred to his passing as "a good career move."

     Having recently read two James Ellroy memoirs, it seems this man did his best work while out of his mind. I just finished a memoir by Dan Fante, the son of novelist and screenwriter John Fante.  According to the son's account of his life and his father's before him, both writers were heavy drinking, angry, physically aggressive men. Ellroy, Dan and John Fante, and another brilliant whack-job writer, Charles Bukowski, all come from southern California. That may help explain these men, but what about all the others?

     Here are some quotes from authors about the writer's personality, and state of mind:

Most writers I know have a combination of self-loathing and great narcissism.
Anne Lamott

One has to be an egomaniac to be a writer, but you've got to hide it.
James Jones

[Writers are] a bad lot on the whole--petty, nasty, bilious, suffused with envy and riddled with fear.
Roger Rosenblatt

Personally, I think it's [the talent to write] a disease, and the fact it produces books that people buy doesn't make it any more healthy.
James M. Cain

Most people who have strong talent [to write] also have impedimenta. There is something wrong with their character one way or another. It's not accident that so many talented writers are heavy drinkers and all that.
Norman Mailer

Neurologists have found that changes in a specific area of the brain can produce hypergraphia--the medical term for an overpowering desire to write.
Dr. Alice W. Flaherty

Unsurprisingly, a psychological survey of the Iowa Workshop showed that 80 percent of writers in the program reported evidence of manic depression, alcoholism, or other lonely addictions in themselves or their immediate families. We're writers, whoever claimed we were a tightly wrapped bunch?
Tom Grimes (This quote appeared in "The Workshop: Seven Decades of Iowa Writer's Workshop," 2000. I am currently reading Grimes' memoir, "Mentor," 2010 which provides an interesting look into his writing life.)

Sigmund Freud said that writers and artists are people who discovered as youngsters that they lost out in the hurly-burly of the playground. They discovered, however, that they had the power to fantasize about such things, about the fruits of power, such as money, glory and beautiful lovers.
Tom Wolfe

Do you have a new idea almost every day for a writing project? Do you either start them all and don't see them to fruition or think abut starting but never actually get going?...Do you begin sentences in your head while walking to work or picking up the dry cleaning? Do you blab about your project to loved ones, coworkers or strangers before the idea is fully formed, let alone partially executed? Have you ever been diagnosed with any combination of bipolar disorder, alcoholism, or skin diseases such as eczema or psoriasis? Do you snap at people who ask how your writing is going? What is it to them? Do you fear that you will someday wonder where the years went? How is it that some no-talent you went to high school with is being published everywhere you look?...If you can relate to the above, you certainly have the obsessive qualities--along with the self-aggrandizement and concurrent feelings of worthlessness--that are part of the writer's makeup.
Betsey Lerner 

Another Best-Selling Memoir Under Attack

     In 1973, the memoir, "Sybil" told the story of Sybil Dorsett (real identify Shirley Mason) who claimed to have had sixteen separate personalities as a result of childhood abuse. The best-selling book (7 million copies) created the multiple personality disorder and planted the notion of the repressed memory syndrome into the American consciousness.

     According to a new book by Debbie Nathan called "Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case," the 1973 memoir was a phony book contrived by Munson, her therapist, and a journalist. In a 1958 letter uncovered by Nathan, Mason confessed that she didn't have multiple personalities. Shirley Mason died of breast cancer in 1998. (In the years that followed the publication of the 1973 memoir, several defendants in serial murder cases, pursuant to insanity defenses, claimed--unsuccessfully--multiple personality disorders.)

     Mason's memoir led 40,000 readers to claim they had repressed memories of childhood abuse, an unknown syndrome prior to 1973. Several of these claims led to the sexual abuse convictions of innocent people. In 1976 and 2007 two movies based on Mason's memoir were produced. One of them starred Sally Fields. (See: "The Memoir: Fact or Fiction?" September 26, 2011 and "Mommie Dearest Books: The Art of the Hatchet Job," October 9, 2011.) 

Wednesday, October 12: A Busy Day in The Shooting War on Crime

12:15 AM
Kansas City, Missouri
     Just after midnight, an out of control vehicle crashed into a grocery store. A man at the accident scene started shooting at the driver who was still inside the car. When the shooter didn't drop his handgun, a Kansas City police officer shot and wounded him. The subject has yet to be publically identified.

11:00 AM
Myrtle Creek, Oregon
    In this town of 3,500 in southern Oregon, John Bocock, 58, shot and wounded 51-year-old Vincent Lytsell outside a real estate office. The two men had been arguing. After the shooting, Bocock fled the scene on foot. When encountered by local police officers, Bocock refused to put down his handgun. Myrtle Creek officers shot him dead. Bocock believed that Lytsell had been sleeping with his estranged wife.

5:00 PM
Indianapolis, Indiana
     City police shot Jarvis Clay after a foot pursuit following a traffic stop. When the 27-year-old pointed a handgun at the pursuing officers, they shot him in the leg. This year in Indianapolis, the police have shot and wounded two other men in separate incidents.

7:00 PM
Downey, California
     When two Downey police officers approached a man standing near a palm tree fire (I didn't know people set them on fire), he drew a knife and charged them. The officers fatally shot the subject. A week after the shooting, the dead man has not been publically identified. As far as I can tell, there has been only one piece of reportage on this case. Police involved shootings have become that ordinary.

7:00 PM
Lower Burrell, Pennsylvania
     On October 2, Charles Post, 33, fired shots at his boss at a construction company in a neighboring Pittsburgh area town. As a result of this incident, Post was wanted by the authorities. On October 12, Post shot and killed Lower Burrell K-9 officer Derek Kotecki outside a local Dairy Queen. After the shooting, police officers chased Post on foot into a wooded area behind the fast food place where they shot the fugitive in the head, chest, and abdomen. Post, who had an extensive criminal history dating back to the late 1990's, died at the scene.

10:00 PM
Tacoma, Washington
     After a police officer tried but failed to pull over a motorist driving without his headlights, the sergeant drove to the driver's house and waited for him to come home. When the suspect pulled into the parking lot of his apartment complex he saw the police car and sped toward it in an aggressive manner. The officer fired six to eight shots into the approaching vehicle, hitting the driver in the neck. The car then crashed and burst into flames. Because officers pulled the suspect out of his burning car, he survived. They had saved a man who had tried to kill one of their own. This was the third police shooting this year in Tacoma. The earlier incidents were both fatal. (In November 2009, a gunman burst into a Lakewood, Washington coffee shop near Tacoma and shot four uniformed police officers dead. It was a targeted ambush by 37-year-old Maurice Clemmons who was killed a few days later by police in Seattle.
(See: "Armed and Dangerous: Who the Police Shoot and Why," September 22, 2011)

The History of the FBI Crime Laboratory

     Shortly after becoming the FBI's fourth director in 1924, J. Edgar Hoover envisioned a national crime laboratory under the auspicies of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hoover had been influenced by August Vollmer, the innovative chief of the Berkeley, California Police Department and John H. Wigmore, author and professor at Northwestern University Law School. Vollmer and Wigmore were the pioneers behind the formation of the Scientific Crime Detection Lab formed in Chicago in the wake of the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre. These practitioner scholars believed that the developing fields within forensic science, coupled with highly trained criminal investigators, would someday bring victory over crime.  Hoover had already made the image of the latent fingerprint the unofficial logo of the FBI. A FBI crime laboratory would advance Hoover's goal to create the ideal crime fighter--an highly educated, well-trained scientific crime detection professional.

     In April 1931, Hoover sent Special Agent Charles A. Appel, Jr. to Chicago where he enrolled in a short course sponsored by the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory which was a private, fee-charging lab partially funded by Northwestern University. Most of the lab's case load consisted of forensic document examination, firearm identification (then called forensic ballistics), and research and development of the newly invented polygraph technique.) In 1938 the Scientific Crime Detection Lab would be taken over by the Chicago Police Department. Hoover also sent agent Appel to police departments in St. Louis (in 1906 the first police department to establish a fingerprint identification bureau), New Orleans, and Detroit, the only law enforcement agencies besides Berkeley and Los Angeles that operated crime labs.

     The FBI Technical Laboratory, with Charles Appel as its head, opened its doors on November 24, 1932 (in 1942 it was renamed the FBI Laboratory) in a nine-by-nine foot room in the Southern Railway Building at Thirteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. Special Agent Appel, its director and only employee, performed firearm identification work using a comparison microscope, a device for examining the interior of a gun barrel, and, to produce forensic exhibits of the physical evidence, utilized basic photographic equipment. The FBI Lab, as advertised by Hoover, would provide evidence anyalysis and testimony for the bureau, and for any local law enforcement agency that requested it--at no cost. Hoover also promised research and development in the various criminalistic fields. Hoover's ambitious undertaking would eventually make the FBI an indispensable, and highly visible cog, in the nation's crime-fighting machine.

     By 1940, the laboratory, now located at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, employed firearm identificaton experts, questioned document examiners, forensic chemists, physicists, metallurgists specializing in tool mark identification, forensic geologists (soil examinations), hair and fiber analysists, forensic serologists (blood and bodily fluids examinations), and latent fingerprint identification experts. The laboratory, employing over a hundred people, had gotten so large it was divided into three sections: questioned documents; physics and chemistry; and latent fingerprint identification. At this time, only fifteen police departments, and sixteen states operated crime labs. The FBI Lab continued to grow, and by 1958, employed two-hundred scientific, clerical and administrative personnel. 

     The FBI Laboratory, by the end of the 1980's, was the busiest, and most famous crime lab in the world. It had also become one of the top tourist attractions in Washington, DC. But even in its heyday, because of the quantity of forensic examinations and laboratory hiring criteria, there were problems with the quality of the work being done. The FBI Lab was the biggest and the most famous, but not the best. Because it was nearly overwhelmed by a staggering case load, and did not hire top-rate scientists, there was no research and development, some bad science, and a problem with scientific objectivity. Besides having to compete for personnel with a growing number of city, county, and state crime labs, the FBI only hired lab employees who also met the criteria for the position of Special Agent. In fact, all FBI Lab personnel (except clerical employees) were first sent into the field to work as agents, many of whom had to be dragged kicking and screaming back to DC to work inside a crime lab. Many of these people had used their degrees in science to get into the FBI to become investigators, not bureau criminalists. Moreover, the close identification with law enforcement created by three years in the field as special agents worked against scientific objectivity. (The FBI has since changed its crime lab hiring criteria.)

     J. Edgar Hoover died in office in May 1972, and by 1990, there was nothing left of his reputation and status as an American law enforcement pioneer. The mere mention of his name on a TV sitcom or a late night talk show brought instant laughter. Once a powerful and innovative man, Hoover, like so many other American historical figures--Charles Lindbergh for one--had been reduced by a tabloid culture and hack journalism into a character you might find in an underground comic book. The post-Hoover image of the FBI agent, while having lost some of its luster, had not gone down with the Hoover ship. Notwithstanding his fall from grace, Hoover's most profound contribution to the art and science of criminal investigation, the FBI Crime Laboratory, is still considered the gold standard of forensic science in America.

    

A Gun Control Problem: Securing SWAT Weapons

     Burglars, on October 13, 2011, stole twenty-one MP-5 submachine guns and fifteen Colt .45-caliber handguns from storage at a SWAT training site in downtown Los Angeles. Fortunately the training weapons had been converted to fire rounds with plastic bullets. According to a Los Angeles police commander, it would take significant skill and special parts to make these weapons functional.

     What follows are a few examples of what has become a recurring problem regarding the security of SWAT weapons and gear:

June 3, 1997
Memphis, Tennessee
     Thieves stole, from an FBI SWAT team Chevrolet Suburban parked in a hotel parking lot, a cache of M-16 rifles, shotguns, tear-gas equipment, bullet-proof vests, helmets, shields, and ammunition. Police found the burned-out shell of the vehicle on the other side of town.

November 5, 2004
Dayton, Ohio
     After SWAT team practice, an officer with the Dayton-Montgomery County Regional SWAT team parked his pickup outside a restaurant where he stopped to eat. While he had dinner, someone broke into the vehicle and stole a shotgun, two rifles, and a submachine gun.

February 6, 2005
Jacksonville, Florida
     On Super Bowl Sunday at 3:45 in the morning, thieves broke into an Atlanta Division FBI van and stole eight assault weapons including four sniper rifles. Also taken were scopes and 80 rounds of 308 ammunition. The unmarked van had been parked at a Holiday Inn

November 10, 2006
Orange County, Florida
     From a SUV parked outside an Orange County SWAT team member's house, a thief stole an UMP-45 fully-automatic machine gun with a silencer, an H & K G3 assault rifle, and a Glock 21 semi-automatic handgun.

April 23, 2007
Memphis, Tennessee
     While a Wake County (North Carolina) SWAT team ate dinner at a barbecue restaurant, thieves stole seven guns from their van. Stolen were three Sig Sauer Model 551, .223-caliber fully automatic assault rifles; two Remington Model 870 pump-action 12-gauge shotguns; and one Sig Sauer Model 226, 357-caliber semi-automatic handgun.

March 5, 2008
Dallas, Texas
     A SWAT officer with the Dallas Police Department parked his pickup near a department store in a shopping plaza. A thief pried open a door and stole an assault weapon, ammunition, and two flakjackets. Less than a month earlier, a thief stole a semi-automatic handgun from a police car parked in a church parking lot.

June 29, 2008
Orange County, Florida
     A car burglar stole an AR 15 assualt rifle from a Florida Highway Patrol vehicle parked on a residential street. The thief also took a SWAT uniform, body armor, a gas mask, and more than $4,000 worth of speed-detection equipment. The car had been left unlocked, and the gear had not been secured in the trunk.

November 21, 2008
White City, Utah
     After persuading a suicidal man to surrender following a four-hour standoff outside the subject's house, the Salt Lake County SWAT team left a M 4 assault rifle in the front yard of a neighbor's house. The weapon was recovered after a citizen notified the authorities.

October 28, 2009
Dallas, Texas
     A thief stole eight Dallas SWAT team weapons from a Chevrolet Tahoe parked outside the officer's apartment building. The burglar also took body armor, uniforms and a badge. One rifle, which shoots three bullets with one trigger pull, was worth $25,000 on the black market. Three Dallas SWAT vehicles had been broken into that month.

     SWAT weapons and gear, in recent years, have also been stolen from police vehicles in: Palm Beach County and Orlando, Florida; Washington, DC; Jefferson County, Colorado: Las Cruces, New Mexico; Seattle, Washington; Frederick, Maryland;and Phoenix, Arizona.  

Despicable Versus Criminal Behavior

     Five years ago congress passed The Stolen Valor Act which makes it a crime to falsely claim to have earned medals for service in the U.S. armed services. The law imposes a maximum sentence of $5,000 and six months in prison. In 2007, Xavier Alvarez, a newly elected member of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District in Claremont, California, introduced himself to his fellow board members as a retired Marine of 25 years who, in 1987, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Alvarez never served in the military.

     Following his federal indictment under this law, Alvarez pleaded guilty then appealed his conviction to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which, in a 2-1 decision, struck down the act on the grounds it violated free speech. The U.S. Solicitor appealed this decision, and the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.

     In my view, unless the questioned lying is under oath, or pursuant to theft by deception, this behavior should not constitute a crime. If we're going to criminally prosecute fake war heroes, what about job applicants who submit phony private sector resumes, people who exploit bogus diploma-mill degrees, and politicians who tout fake backgrounds and nonexistent accomplishments? Where would it end?

     While phony war heroes should be exposed and humiliated, I don't see what is gained, from a jurisprudence point of view, by sending this particular type of liar to prison. If despicable behavior is criminalized, there will be more people in prison than out. I will be surprised if the Supreme Court doesn't declare this law unconstitutional. (See: "Zero-Tolerance Policing," October 18, 2011)

Writing Humor Is So Hard It's Not Funny

     Humor is like pornography in that it's easy to recognize, but hard to define. Robin Hemley distinguishes  comedy from tragedy this way: "Simply put, tragedy has serious and logical consequences. Cause and effect. Comedy usually doesn't. You throw a person off a tall building in a comedy, he bounces. You throw someone off a building in a tragedy, don't wait for the bounce."

     While I don't read that many books by humorists, I do appreciate humor in novels and works of nonfiction. Memoirs and biographies devoid of humor tend to be tedious and not worth the effort. All really good writers, I think, can write funny stuff. When bad writers try it, the results are disasterous. In the crime fiction genre, my favorite authors--Donald Westlake and Ross H. Spencer--are funny. Here's what some professional writers have said about humor:

Comedy writers have a long-running debate....It is known as the Mickey Mouse Question, and it goes like this: Mickey Mouse is not a funny character. He neither tells jokes nor does anything funny, he has no point of view, no real character, and his girlfriend is an uptight bore. Bugs Bunny, on the other hand, is a brilliantly inventive comic genius, sharp-witted, physically agile, a fearless wise guy who thinks nothing of donning a dress, producing an anvil out of the air, kissing his enemy on the lips, and in the face of death and torture calling out a cherry "What's Up Doc?" Bugs is much funnier than Mickey, no contest. Why, then, is Mickey the billionaire movie star?...Creating a television sitcom means choosing between Mickey and Bugs, between a universe of likable, not-terribly funny people and a universe of vaguely disturbing, very funny people. Networks tend on the whole, not to like funny characters very much. If they had their choice, every sitcom would be a family or group of Mickeys, with maybe a Bugs living next door. Writers, unfortunately, on the whole prefer a big group of Buges with a Mickey around saying things like, "What's going on here?"
Rob Long

What is the secret of writing funny? If I knew, I would write my own ticket. But I venture this thought: The art begins with a sense of sadness. This is the clown's gift.
James J. Kilpatrick

Humor is the hardest to write, easiest to sell, and best rewarded. There are only a few who are able to do it. If you are able, do it by all means.
Jack London

I don't think a man can deliberately sit down to write a funny story unless he has got a sort of slant on life that leads to funny stories.
P. G. Wodehouse

Analysts have had their go at humor, and I have read some of this interpretative literature, but without being greatly instructed. Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
E. B. White

With humor you have to look for traps. You're likely to be very gleeful with what you've first put down, and you think it's fine, very funny. One reason you go over and over it is to make the piece sound less as if you were having a lot of fun with it yourself. You try to play it down.
James Thurber

Writing comedy is quite a joy for me. There's an instant reward. If I've written a really funny line, then, for a moment, I become the audience and I laugh. I enjoy it, I know it works.
William Peter Blatty

If you have doubts about whether something's funny, play it straight. Nothing is worse than a lame joke. And if you're not sure humor is appropriate, it probably isn't.
Patricia O'Conner

Writers often have a predilection for humor based on wordplay. Caution is advised, especially when using puns. They can reek of corniness, and they don't alway work on paper.
Roger Bates

...you must never make one character laugh at what another says or does....Yu must never offer the reader anything simply as funny and nothing more. Make it acceptable as information, comment, narrative, etcetera, so that if the joke flops the reader will get something.
Kingsley Amis

Writing humor is more difficult than delivering a punch line to a joke you tell while standing by the office water cooler. For one thing, our society is much more practiced at telling jokes than at writing them. Also, a joke written on paper has no facial expressions, pauses and emphasis to go with it. It's devoid of the most important elements of comedy--timing.
John McCollister

Zero-Tolerance Policing

     It seems that more and more police officers are authoritarian types who see everything as either black or white. When it comes to enforcing the law there is no gray. If a cop sees a person breaking the letter of a minor law, or is engaged in behavior he simply doesn't like, that person could be on his way to jail in handcuffs. Policing in this country is becoming more heavy-handed, more zero-tolerant. The police are not only over-enforcing the law (the so-called broken window theory), they are manufacturing crime out of noncriminal behavior. This is what I call the criminalization of America.

     In my book, "SWAT Madness," examples of zero-tolerant, heavy-handed policing include: arresting grade school children for schoolyard fights (assault); carving their initials in their desks (vandalism); truancy; drawing pictures depicting violence;  general classroom misbehavior (disorderly conduct), posessing an aspirin tablet; and carrying something as dangerous as a pocket knife. Any kid caught playing with matches today is marked as a potential pathological firesetter and sent off for psychological help.

     Otherwise law-abiding adults have to deal with speed traps; sobriety checkpoints; jaywalking tickets; rolling through stop sign busts; and thousands of regulatory infractions such as holding a yard sale without a permit. If you park your car in the wrong place, or let the meter expire, in addition to paying a fine, you may have to ransom your vehicle out of an impound lot.

     If, in the war against real criminals, police need the cooperation of law abiding citizens, zero-tolerance policing is not a good way to get it. Too many officers seem unable or unwilling to distinguish between a burglar and someone trespassing across someone's yard to find his dog. Because militarized law enforcement is replacing community based policing, cops have become isolated from the public they are paid to serve. They do not see themselves as public servants but as crime-fighting warriors. Officers with this mindset see everyone as a potential enemy combatant. In this way of thinking, it's not good guys versus criminals, but cops versus everyone.     

COPS VERSUS CAMERAS

     In Illinois you can be arrested for videotaping an on-duty police officer. Citizen's using their cellphones to record police abuse have been arrested, handcuffed and hauled off to jail. Under Illinois law you cannot audio-tape a phone conversation without the consent of the other party. The police are using this law to justify arresting people who have videotaped them in public.

     In 2007, Simon Glik videotaped a Boston police officer using excessive force. The police arrested Glik for this activity. The videotaper fought the case and won. He then sued the Boston Police Department for violating is First Amendment right to record police activity. He won that case as well.

     In California, it's legal to videotape a police officer if the video taker is in a public place and has a right to be there. Police in the state fought against this law and lost.

     In Philadelphia the police have arrested many videotaping citizens. The arresting officers have confiscated and destroyed the offending cellphones. Public outrage over this over-enforcement led the police commisioner, in October 2011, to issue a departmental order declaring it legal for citizens in the city to videotape police officers doing their jobs. Rank and file police officers were not pleased.

SPEED TRAPS

     One of the worst speed traps in America was (and possibly still is) on U.S. Route 19 as is passes north and south through Summersville, West Virginia. At this popular interstate shortcut to and from Florida, the speed limit drops from 65 to 50 MPH where traffic cops lie in wait with radar guns. Police in Summersville wrote between 10,000 and 18,000 speeding tickets a year, generating millions in revenue for the town of 3,250.

     Local businessman Charles McCue objected to the speed trap on the grounds it scared away business. He banned police officers from using his shopping center parking lot as a place to clock passing motorists. When that didn't solve the problem, he put up a giant billboard along Route 19 warning drivers of the upcoming speed trap. Although the police were not amused, Charles McCue became a hero to thousands of motorists who managed to get through this town without paying a fine.

     In central Florida, police officers routinely pulled over and fined motorists who flashed their headlights to warn oncoming drivers of an upcoming speed trap. In justifying these tickets, the cops cited a Florida statute that prohibits the flashing of lights except as a means of indicating a turn or to indicate when a vehicle is stopped on the road. Motorists stopped for trying to save their fellow citizens the cost of speeding tickets were fined around a hundred dollars. They were charged with "Improper Flashing of High-Beams." Traffic cops considered this motorist to motorist form of communication "obnoxious and disrespectful" and equated it to obstruction of justice. These officers saw no difference between warning someone of a drug bust and telling a fellow motorist to slow down to avoid a speeding ticket.

     One of the fined "high-beam" flashers filed a class-action lawsuit against the state of Florida on behalf of 2,400 people who had been ticketed for this activity between 2005 and 2010. A few days after the filing of the suit, the head of the Florida Highway Patrol ordered officers to stop ticketing the light flashers until the case is resolved in the courts.

HELP NOT WANTED

     On September 8, 2011, Alan Ehrlich encountered a traffic-light outage at a major intersection in South Pasadena, California. To bring some order to the traffic chaos, Ehrlich took matters into his own hands. He put on a bright orange shirt and began directing traffic. Within ten minutes he had traffic flowing smoothly again. When a police officer arrived at the scene, instead of thanking Ehrlich and taking over the job, he wrote him a ticket and drove off. Once again traffic became snarled at this intersection. Officers do not appreciate citizens who think they can do police work.

GOING TO THE SLAMMER FOR EXPIRED PLATES

     In Washington, DC, the police are authorized to arrest drivers if their license plates are more than thirty days out of date. These offenders, under DC law, can be fined up to $1,000 and jailed up to thirty days.

     In October 2011, a naval officers was pulled over in DC for having an expired Florida plate. The Navy man carried a Maryland driver's license, but lived in DC. (He kept his legal residence in Florida for voting and income tax purposes.) Because he was in the military, the officer didn't change his driver's license everytime he moved from one state to another. (Military personnel are exempt from having to acquire a new driver's license everytime they move.) The naval officer tried to explain all of this to the police officer. He promised to go home and immediately renew his Florida tags online.

     The DC cop ordered the officer out of his car. When a second policeman arrived at the scene, they handcuffed the motorist and hauled him off to jail where they fingerprinted him and took his mug shot. The police released the officer three hours later. While he was incarcerated, his wife, who had sent him out for some fast food, had no idea what had happened to him. The judge who dismissed the case told the Navy man that in two years he could request to have his arrest record sealed.  

This Year's Mass Murder and Killing Spree Cases

     The term "mass murder" pertains to cases involving two or more victims killed in a single incident at one location. (Cases in which a killer murders more than two with a cooling off period between each homicide are called serial killings.) A "spree killing" consists of murders at two or more locations with a little time between each of the homicides. Sometimes these events are referred to in the media as homicidal rampages. Mass murderers and spree killers fall generally into three groups: family annihilators, paramilitary enthusiasts, and disgruntled workers.

     While homicide rates in most jurisdictions have been falling or staying the same, there seems to have been more mass murders and spree killings this year than usual. Moreover, the victim counts in these cases have been startingly high. The motive common to most of these cases is pathological hatred and rage. Unlike serial killers who are cold-blooded and organized, mass murderers and spree killers are often mentally ill and out of control. Quite often these killers take their own lives or are shot to death by the police. These cases almost never go unsolved and grab a lot of media attention. When taken alive, these homicidal subjects usually plead not guilty by reason of insanity. 

     Allthough it is impossible to predict who will go off the deep end and start shooting people, most of these killers have histories of violence and/or mental illness. And no matter how much we militarize our police forces, the spree killing and mass murdering will continue. It's a troubled population, not a lack of policing that is causing all of this mayhem. The following is a summary of this year's most deadly cases:

January 8, 2011
Tuscon, Arizona
     Jared Loughner, a 23-year-old schizophrenic, shot six people to death and wounded thirteen at a political event outside a supermarket. Because one of his nonfatal victims was U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, this mass murder received even more media attention than usual. The crime also engendered an endless wave of sophomoric talk about toning down political rhetoric deemed too violent by certain politicians and media wags. Loughner's attorneys say his is too mentally ill to be tried for murder.

February 12, 2011
Brooklyn, New York
     Maksim Gelman, an Ukranian immigrant, stabbed and killed his stepmother, his ex-girlfriend and her mother in their apartment. He stabbed aman in the process of stealing his car, then killed a pedestrian by running him over. Before being arrested, Gelman stabbed six other people. The obsessive 23-year-old had been stalking his ex-girlfriend for weeks. Police arrested Gelman without incident.

July 7, 2011
Grand Rapids, Michigan
     Thirty-four-year-old Rodrick Dantzler shot and killed his former girlfriend, his estranged wife, his 12-year-old daughter, and four others. Before taking his own life, Dantzler wounded two others. In his suicide note, Dantzler blamed his mother-in-law for breaking up his marriage. He had a history of cocaine abuse.

August 7, 2011
Copley, Ohio
     For reasons that remain a mystery, Michael Hance, 51, fatally shot seven people. He also shot and wounded his girlfriend. He killed two teenage girls, an 11-year-old boy, and four adults. Police officers shot him to death.

September 6, 2011
Carson City, Nevada
     Eduardo Sencion, a Mexican citizen with a valid U.S. passport, fired sixty shots in an IHOP restaurant, killing four and wounding seven. Three of those killed by Sencion were members of the Nevada National Guard. The mass murder ended with Sencion killing himself. According to his family, he had struggled with mental illness.

September 25, 2011
Laurel, Maryland
     David Ison, 46, shot and killed four members of the Napier family, and one other person, in the Napier's moble home. Taken into custody, he his being held on $5 million bond. His motive has not been revealed.

September 26, 2011
Everett, Washington
     David Pederson, 31 and his 24-year-old girlfriend, Holly Grigsby, shot and killed Pederson's father and the father's wife in Everett. A few days later they killed two other people in California. Police arrested the couple several days later in Yuba County, California. According to media reports, Pederson is a white supremacist who hates jews.

October 4, 2011
Crow Agency, Montana
     On the Crow Indian Reservation, 22-year-old Sheldon Chase shot to death his grandmother, his cousin and his cousin's best friend. Mentally ill and off his medication, Chase was arrested without a fight.

October 5, 2011
Cupertino, Texas
     Shareef Allman shot nine of his co-workers at a cement plant, killing three. He was angry at being assigned night duty. A few days later Allman was killed by the police. People who knew Allman are shocked he was capable of  mass murder.

October 12, 2011
Seal Beach, California
     Forty-two-year-old Scott Evans walked into a hair salon and shot nine people, killing eight. One of his victims was his ex-wife. According to people who knew the couple, Evans had a history of wife abuse. It is believed this mass murder was motivated by revenge. When the police arrested Evans he offered no resistence.  

Venezuelan SWAT: A New Weapon in the War on Drugs

     The Venezuelan National Assembly in Caracas is debating a proposed law that would allow its military to shoot down planes suspected of carrying drugs. To those who love militarized policing, this is almost as good as it gets. Imagine, a SWAT team with its own air force!

Campus SWAT: The Militarization of the College Cop

     As a result of the fear mongering that follows public school and college campus spree shootings--the so-called Columbine Effect--the aging campus security guard has been replaced by the SWAT equipped and trained commando. The militarization of campus security has not made our colleges and universities any safer. It could be argued that militarized campus policing has had the opposite effect.

The Adu-Brempong Case

     On March 2, 2010, in Gainsville, Florida, members of the University of Florida's Critical Incident Response Tearm (CIRT), responded to a 911 call that a 35-year-old doctoral student from Ghana was screaming inside his on-campus apartment. Kofi Adu-Brempong was having psychotic delusions brought on by his fear that his student visa would be denied.

     Adu-Brempong, a man disabled by childhood polio, refused to come to his door and speak to the police. This led to an eleven hour standoff that ended with the CIRT officers breaking into the apartment. After failing to subdue Adu-Brempon with a taser gun and a beanbag device, a CIRT officer shot the deranged man in the head with his Bushmaster M-4 rifle. According to the police, the subject had attacked them with a knife and a pipe.

     Adu-Brempong survived his head wound and was charged with one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill, and five counts of resisting an officer with violence. A judge, ruling that the police did not have sufficient evidence to support these charges, dismissed the case against Adu-Brempong.

     On August 11, 2011, the University of Florida Police Department announced that its internal investigation had found the Adu-Brempong shooting unjustified. The head of the CIRT unit, a 17-year veteran of the force, was fired. According to the internal review of the shooting, the CIRT officers should not have been deployed in this case.

    As a result of the shooting, a group of educators and filmakers produced a documentary about the case called "In His Own Home." The film reveals that the CIRT officer who shot Adu-Brempon remained on the force until he was fired for roughing up a white student who was driving a Mercedez.

The Nonfiction Novel: What in the Hell is That?

     Time Magazine's all-time best nonfiction list--a selection so politically correct it's virtually useless as a reading guide--contains just two books about murder. Both works, Norman Mailer's "Executioner's Song," and Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," can be found under the subcategory "Nonfiction Novels."  This begs the question: how can a novel, a work of fiction, be a work of nonfiction? Isn't the term "nonfiction novel" a contradiction?

     Al Dewey, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation detective in charge of the 1959 Clutter family murder, the Holcomb, Kansas mass killing upon which "In Cold Blood" is based, told my friend and colleague John Kelly (University of Delaware), that Capote's account is more fiction than fact. According to Dewey, Capote altered the story's chronology, created composite characters, and invented scenes and dialogue. While Capote based his book on the Clutter case, he intended it as a novel, and that was how it was published. What is this book doing on Time Magazine's nonfiction list? Perhaps the list's compilers, unfamiliar with the true crime genre, had to include a couple of crime books by well-known novelists. At any rate, just how much liberty can a nonfiction writer take before his book slips into the fiction genre? This is a debate that has gone on for decades.

     Doris Ricker Marston, in "A Guide to Writing History," defines what is alternatively referred to as narrative nonfiction, creative nonfiction, literary journalism and the new journalism as: "...a dramatic presentation of true reporting. There are real characters moving as they actually did in the events that actually took place, and with action dramatically presented."

     Book-length practitioners of this genre include Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Joseph Wambaugh and Tom Wolfe. While Truman Capote claimed to have invented the "nonfiction novel," as Anthony Arthur points out in his book, "Literary Feuds," others before him--Thomas Carlyle, Lytton Stachey, John Hersey, Alan Moorehead, Shelby Foote and Ernest Hemingway--had applied novelistic techniques to nonfiction. In his introductory essay to "New Journalism," an anthology of narrative nonfiction work, Tom Wolfe predicted that literary nonfiction would replace "the novel as the number one literary genre, starting the first new direction in American letters in half a century." While the genre has gained respect, and now outstrips the literary novel in the marketplace, it has not dethroned its fictional counterpart as a form of literary art.

     The following quotes about literary nonfiction are from professional authors who write in the genre:

Creative nonfiction requires the skills of the storyteller and the research ability of the conscientious reporter. Writers of creative nonfiction must become instant authorities on the subjects of their articles or books. They must not only understand the facts and report them using quotes from authorities, they must also see beyond them to discover their underlying meaning, and they must dramatize that meaning in an interesting, evocative, informative way--just as a good teacher does.
Theodore A. Rees Cheney

Some people criticize nonfiction writers for "appropriating" the techniques and devices of fiction writing. These techniques, except for invention of characters and detail, never belonged to fiction. They belong to storytelling.
Tracy Kidder

Creative nonfiction demands spontaneity and an imaginative approach, while remaining true to the validity and integrity of the information it contains. That is why the creative nonfiction form is so appealing to people with new ideas or fresh interpretations of accepted concepts in history, science, or the arts; people with an intellectual curiosity about the world around us or a fresh viewpoint or approach.
Lee Gutkind

Story-driven nonfiction is extraordinarily successful, and there's a huge market for it now. I think it's partly because when you publish a nonfiction book, especially one that's story driven as opposed to didactic or scholarly, you can target the market in an easier way.
Charlie Conrad

Creative nonfiction is frequently about people. We're all curious about how other people live, what they do, and how they think.
Rita Berman

...for the nonfiction-novel form to be entirely successful, the author should not appear in the work.
Truman Capote

I certainly always use novelistic techniques, but I also felt that the boundaries between fact and fiction should never be blurred.
Tom Wolfe

The line between truth and fiction has become so blurred that the public no longer knows what to expect.
Jack Olsen

I very often will have "The Orchid Thief" [a nonfiction book] referred to as a novel, and it drives me crazy.
Susan Orlean