San Francisco Police Officers

Editor's Note: One of the authors ia 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 San Francisco Police Department police officers.

Sergeant Peter Thoshinsky graduated from San Jose State University in 1982 with a degree in Criminal Justice. In June of 1982, he joined the San Francisco Police Department. He was promoted to sergeant in 1990. He worked the Poterero, Central, Southern and Ingleside Stations as well as the Narcotics Bureau. A 20 year veteran of law enforcement he also served as a member and supervisor on the San Francisco Police Department’s SWAT team. A photograph for almost 30 years, he is the author of Blue in Black & White, a collection of photographs relating to law enforcement.

Inspector Mark Hawthorne is a 28 year veteran of the San Francisco Police Department. He has been assigned patrol, field operations and investigations. His current assignment is Crime Scene Investigations. As a POST instructor he specializes in Instructor Development, Preliminary Investigations and Crime Scenes. As a an adjunct faculty member of the City College of San Francisco Administration of Justice and Fire Science Department he acts as an advisor to the Forensic Science Club. Inspector Mark Hawthorne is the author of First Unit Responder: A Guide for Physical Evidence Collection for Patrol Officers and Fingerprints: Analysis and Understanding.

According to the book description of First Unit Responder: A Guide for Physical Evidence Collection for Patrol Officers, “Physical evidence cannot be wrong; it cannot perjure itself; it cannot be wholly absent. Only its interpretation can err. Only human failure to find it, study and understand it, can diminish its value." -Presiding Judge, Harris v U.S., 331 U.S. 145 (1947) HOW TO MAINTAIN THE INTEGRITY OF THE CRIME SCENE WHILE CONDUCTING AN INVESTIGATION. First Unit Responder: A Guide to Physical Evidence Collection for Patrol Officers is a training guide and reference for patrol officers and criminal investigators, who conduct preliminary investigations of crime scene, to aid in identification, collection, and booking of physical evidence. Written by a veteran of 24 years of law enforcement, the book stresses the importance of understanding the critical nature of physical evidence and preservation of the crime scene as part of the case against a criminal defendant. This book is an important tool for police academies that train recruits and veteran patrol officers, as well as for students of criminal justice who seek guidelines for proper collection and handling of physical evidence”

According to Corporal Andreas K. Mendel, NCO in Charge, Forensic Identification Section, West Vancouver Police, in Canadian Society of Forensic Science Journal, “Mark Hawthorne's easy writing style and use of personal anecdotes make this book a relaxed read. First Unit Responder is a good resource for recruit training or criminal justice/criminology students, or as review material for seasoned investigators.”

Prentice E. Sanders was the Chief of Police of the San Francisco Police Department for fourteen months in 2002 and 2003. He was born in Texas and moved to San Francisco's Laurel Heights at the age of fourteen. After serving in the Army, he then received Bachelor's and Masters Degrees from Golden Gate University. Prentice Earl Sanders joined the San Francisco Police Department in 1964, becoming the San Francisco Police Department's first African American chief of police. In 2006, Prentice Earl Sanders and co- authored The Zebra Murders: A Season of Killing, Racial Madness, and Civil Rights.

According to Publisher’s Weekly, The Zebra Murders: A Season of Killing, Racial Madness, and Civil Rights is a “look at a largely forgotten reign of terror in San Francisco in 1973 and 1974 is an interesting if superficial true police procedural. Sanders, the SFPD's first African-American chief of police, was one of the lead detectives on the case code-named the Zebra Murders, involving a group of African-American men who, apparently racially motivated, were targeting whites in vicious random acts of violence that claimed 15 lives. The book reads less like an objective assessment of these events than a memoir of Sanders's experiences with the investigation and his role in a civil lawsuit against the SFPD to combat rampant racial discrimination. Oddly, about halfway in, the authors break the linear narrative with information derived only at the case's end, rather than lay out the police work and discoveries as they happened. The efforts to compare the police tactics with post-9/11 targeting of Muslims will strike most readers as labored despite Sanders's insistence that the killings were acts of political terror, not mere serial killings. Nonetheless, this serves as a useful introduction to the case.”

Police-Writers.com now hosts 786 police officers (representing 352 police departments) and their 1674 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.