Pelkington, Alexander and Erler

Editor's Note: One of the authors is retired US Army.

April 22, 2008 (San Dimas, CA) Police-Writers.com is a website that lists state and local police officers who have written books. The website added three law enforcement officials from the State of Florida.

Chief Joe Pelkington’s 43 year career in law enforcement began with the Tampa Police Department, in 1960. As a member of the Tampa Police Department, he commanded the Patrol Division, Detective Division and the Selective Enforcement Bureau. In 1985, he retired from the Tampa Police Department as a Deputy Police Chief. He then began an 18 year career with the Treasure Island Police Department (Florida) as their chief of police. Joe Pelkington is the author of Shades of Blue.

According to the book description of Shades of Blue, “The early 1960's were the years that segregation started to wane and civil disobedience tested police leadership. The police had broad discretion on the use of force including deadly force. Society demanded and pressured police to exhibit restraint and improve professional conduct. Police violence, tragedy, courage, dedication, compassion and misconduct are all revealed in this book. There are stories of police responding to dangerous encounters, humorous cases involving humans, animals and about police officers themselves.”

Dr. John Alexander is a senior fellow with the Joint Special Operations University. For more than a decade, Dr. John Alexander has been a leading advocate for the development of non-lethal weapons. At Los Alamos National Laboratory, he organized and chaired six major conferences on non-lethal weapons, served as a U.S. delegate to four NATO studies on the topic. He wrote many of the seminal articles on non-lethal weapons and was a member of the National Research Council Committee for Assessment of Non-Lethal Weapons Science and Technology.

Dr. John Alexander entered the U.S. Army as a private in 1956 and rose through the ranks to sergeant first class. He later attended Officer Candidate School and retired as a colonel of Infantry in 1988. During his varied career, he held many key positions in special operations, intelligence, and research and development. Academically, he holds an MA and a Ph.D. from Walden University. He has attended the Anderson School of Management, the Sloan School of Management, and the Kennedy School of Government.
Earlier in his life, Dr. John Alexander worked five years as a deputy sheriff for the Dade County Sheriff’s Department. He is the author of Winning the War: Advanced Weapons, Strategies, and Concepts for the Post-9/11 World and a co-author of The Warrior's Edge and Future War: Non-Lethal Weapons in Twenty-First-Century Warfare.

According to Publisher’s Weekly, Future War: Non-Lethal Weapons in Twenty-First-Century Warfare, “In a thoughtful examination of the future of military doctrine, Alexander takes a hard look at what options might be available to the American military in a world in which the rules of warfare have changed. Non-lethal weapons, he argues, will become more important for both political and practical reasons. Americans have grown increasingly aware of and sensitive to all casualties on any side in even the most just wars.”

Bob Erler, an ex-Green Beret, became a police officer Hollywood Police Department. One day he came home and found his wife and son had left him. Suffering from the effects of a high speed pursuit crash, Bob Erler went into depression. Later, on a day off, he came across a lady and her 12-year old daughter with no place to stay. He invited them to stay in his trailer but once there the lady told him she would call the police chief and tell him Bob was entertaining two women in his trailer unless he gave her $75.

Bob Erler shot the lady and her daughter dumping their bodies and calling the police station and saying "I've just shot two people, please catch me." From that day the suspect was known as "The Catch Me Killer." The next day he was assigned to investigate his own homicides. Bob Erler is the author of They Called Me the Catch Me Killer.

Police-Writers.com now hosts 987 police officers (representing 413 police departments) and their 2090 police books in 35 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.