Police History and Military Fiction

Editor's Note: One of the authors is a former servicemember.

October 26, 2007 (San Dimas, CA) Police-Writers.com is a website that lists nearly 800 state and local police officers who have written books. The website added three authors who have written police history, military fiction and on crime prevention.

Kevin J. Mullen served for more than twenty-six years with the San Francisco Police Department and retired at the rank of deputy chief. He has written extensively in magazines and newspapers on criminal justice issues. He is the author of Let Justice Be Done: Crime and Politics in Early San Francisco, Dangerous Strangers: Minority Newcomers and Criminal Violence in the Urban West, 1850-2000 and The Toughest Gang in Town: Police Stories From Old San Francisco.

According to the book description of Dangerous Strangers: Minority Newcomers and Criminal Violence in the Urban West, 1850-2000, “Have newcomers to American cities been responsible for a disproportionate amount of violent crime? Dangerous Strangers takes up this question by examining the incidence of criminal violence among several waves of immigrant/ethnic groups in San Francisco over 150 years. By looking at a variety of groups--Irish, German, Italian, and Chinese immigrants, primarily--and their different experiences at varying times in the city's history, this study addresses the issue of how much violence can be attributed to new groups' treatment by the host society and how much can be traced to traits found in their community of origin.”

Chief Steven J. Newton is a 25-year law enforcement veteran and a former Marine/Navy veteran. He served with the 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines, 4th Marine Division. With the Navy, he was with NAVACTS-UK-318 and was called back to active duty for the first Desert Storm. Steven J. Newton began his law enforcement career in 1977 when he joined the Springfield Police Department (Missouri). In 1995, he became the chief of police of the Clever Police Department (Missouri).

Now retired and afflicted with Parkinson’s Disease, he continues to write article for various law enforcement, military and veteran publications. He is also the author of the Old Sergeant and the Old Sergeant and Friends. Steve Newton continues to serve on the Advisory Board of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and serves as Director of the Law Enforcement Equipment Program. He is the Founder of the Silver Star Families of America and he is a supporter of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.

According to the book Description, “The short stories of The Old Sergeant compile many different aspects of the human character, including inspiration, tragedy, honor and humor. He is fictional, but his life, and the lives of the men he commands, become very real to the reader as the stories come together as one. One life lived and some lives lost. Through the war in Iraq and reflections on past wars won, now a distant memory, the Old Sarge is someone who most everyone can relate to. There is a real-time sense in all of the stories told, to be embraced into the reader’s mind and heart.”

William Langlois is a retired San Francisco Police Department police officer and the co-author of Surviving the Age of Fear/Life-Saving Lessons for Senior Citizens from San Francisco's Heroic Decoy Cop Who Was Mugged 256 Times. According to Booklist, “Langlois had a record of successful performance as a decoy in past stings when he was recruited to play the role of The Old Man on a short-term undercover RAT (robbery abatement) team formed in 1987 (and reestablished in 1988) to cut the rate of violent robberies of the elderly in and around their homes in San Francisco's Tenderloin district.”

Police-Writers.com now hosts 783 police officers (representing 352 police departments) and their 1670 law enforcement books in six categories, there are also listings of United States federal law enforcement employees turned authors, international police officers who have written books and civilian police personnel who have written books.