Résultats de recherche de titre
Articles 61 à 80 sur 159
This true story of an ex-Marine who fought crime as an undercover cop, a narcotics agent, and finally a federal…
prosecutor spans a decade of crime fighting and narrow escapes. Charlie Spillers dealt with a remarkable variety of career criminals, including heroin traffickers, safecrackers, burglars, auto thieves, and members of Mafia and Mexican drug smuggling operations. In this riveting tale, the author recounts fascinating experiences and the creative methods he used to succeed and survive in a difficult and sometimes extremely dangerous underworld life.As a young officer with the Baton Rouge Police Department, ex-Marine Charlie Spillers first went undercover to infiltrate criminal groups to gather intelligence. Working alone and often unarmed, he constantly attempted to walk the thin line between triumph and disaster. When on the hunt, his closest associates were safecrackers, prostitutes, and burglars. His abilities propelled him into years of undercover work inside drug trafficking rings. But the longer he worked, the greater the risks. His final and perhaps most significant action in Baton Rouge was leading a battle against corruption in the police department itself.After Baton Rouge, he joined the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics and for the next five years continued working undercover, from the Gulf Coast to Memphis; and from New Orleans to Houston, Texas. He capped off a unique career by becoming a federal prosecutor and the justice attaché for Iraq. In this book, he shares his most intriguing exploits and exciting undercover stings, putting readers in the middle of the action.Troutmouth: The Two Careers of Hugh Clegg
Par Ronald F. Borne. 2015
Hugh Clegg (1898-1979) was among the most notable Mississippi historical figures during the 1920s through the 1960s. Born in Mathiston,…
Mississippi, he was a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1926 to 1954, during which time he rose to the top leadership and worked directly under Director J. Edgar Hoover and Associate Director Clyde Tolson. In his second career, as executive assistant to Chancellor J. D. Williams at the University of Mississippi from 1954 to 1969, he was in a top leadership position before and during the civil rights crises in the State of Mississippi and at Ole Miss.While with the Bureau, Clegg's responsibilities included leading the search for many of the most dangerous gangsters in the country, including John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, the Barker gang, and Alvin Karpis. He established the FBI's National Training Academy and coordinated the hunt for atom bomb spy Harry Gold, collaborator with German spy Emil Klaus Fuchs. He was sent to England by Director Hoover prior to the outbreak of World War II to study British intelligence agencies.A close friend of many of the leading federal and state elected officials and of members of the US Supreme Court, Clegg was well known to many in power. At the University of Mississippi he was the prime contact between the university and the federal government during the desegregation crises of Clennon King and James Meredith. He was also assigned the lead role in combating the efforts of Mississippi politicians to discredit and remove faculty members when scholars were thought "too liberal" and therefore a threat to the state.Through a Freedom of Information request from the FBI, author Ronald F. Borne obtained thousands of pertinent documents. In addition, he mined Clegg's oral history and an unpublished book manuscript. Borne interviewed close relations, colleagues, and friends to reveal a portrait of a distinguished, loyal man who significantly shaped the training procedures for the FBI and then mediated the University of Mississippi's conflicts with both state officials and the federal government.From Midnight to Guntown: True Crime Stories from a Federal Prosecutor in Mississippi
Par John Hailman. 2013
As a federal prosecutor in Mississippi for over thirty years, John Hailman worked with federal agents, lawyers, judges, and criminals…
of every stripe. In From Midnight to Guntown, he recounts amazing trials and bad guy antics from the darkly humorous to the needlessly tragic. In addition to bank robbers—generally the dumbest criminals—Hailman describes scam artists, hit men, protected witnesses, colorful informants, corrupt officials, bad guys with funny nicknames, over-the-top investigators, and those defendants who had a certain roguish charm. Several of his defendants and victims have since had whole books written about them: Dickie Scruggs, Emmett Till, Chicago gang leader Jeff Fort, and Paddy Mitchell, leader of the most successful bank robbery gang of the twentieth century. But Hailman delivers the inside story no one else can. He also recounts his scary experiences after 9/11 when he prosecuted terrorism cases.Return to Guntown: Classic Trials of the Outlaws and Rogues of Faulkner Country
Par John Hailman. 2015
A federal prosecutor in Mississippi for over thirty years, John Hailman routinely worked with federal agents, lawyers, judges, and criminals…
of every type imaginable. Encouraged by the acclaim for his earlier book, From Midnight to Guntown, he has opened even more of the astonishing cases within the over thirty-five boxes full of trial stories he carried into retirement. Hailman gathers colorful exploits of eccentric modern criminals from William Faulkner's Mississippi, where savvy victims often outwit their criminal perpetrators. Characters range from rich but incompetent drug lords and nationwide gun-runners to bumbling Dixie Mafia kidnappers. The book ends with “Fancy Frauds” in which ingenious con men (and women) offer hilarious but surprisingly sophisticated “special deals” on tax-free gold mines in Mexico and bargain (but bogus) Viagra. Chapters include “Guns, Bombs, and Moonshine Whiskey,” “Drug Kingpins Have Troubles Too,” “Crime Victims Fight Back,” “Mere Theft,” and “Fancy Frauds.” Written to entertain and enlighten, these stories will delight any fan of the true crime genre and anyone who enjoys good writing and the skill of a master storyteller.George T. Malvaney's life epitomizes the old maxim that "You cannot make this stuff up." Combine a young Klansman from…
Mississippi, an armed coup attempt in the Caribbean, a stay in prison, and a life-changing epiphany, and you have but half of this swashbuckling tale. Throw in the worst man-made ecological disaster in the history of the United States, and you have unleashed Malvaney's full life story. The Klansman, the soldier of fortune, the wild-eyed prisoner transforms into a renowned leader of the Mississippi Gulf Coast cleanup effort in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.In his too-crazy-not-to-be-true memoir, Malvaney chronicles what easily should be several lifetimes of adventure--and misadventure. Growing up in a close-knit family in Jackson, Mississippi, the young Malvaney preferred woods and swamps to the drudgery of high school. He dropped out, enlisted in the Navy, and shortly afterwards joined the Ku Klux Klan. While onboard, he organized a branch of the Klan, corrupting and endangering his crewmen. After his discharge, he answered a mercenary call to take part in an invasion of Dominica, a Caribbean fiasco known as the "Bayou of Pigs." That madness landed him in a federal penitentiary. And there, somehow, he vowed to turn his life around.Cups Up, a title drawn from the wake-up call shouted at prisoners, is a story of perseverance, cleansing, and redemption. It chronicles the roller coaster life of a high school dropout, ex-Klansman, ex-mercenary, ex-felon, and ex-con, who went on to become a college graduate, a hardnosed environmental regulator, and a widely respected top executive in a company with more than a thousand employees.The Nominee: A Political and Spiritual Journey (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography)
Par Leslie H. Southwick. 2013
President George W. Bush nominated Leslie H. Southwick in 2007 to the federal appeals court, Fifth Circuit, based in New…
Orleans. Initially, Southwick seemed a consensus nominee. Just days before his hearing, though, a progressive advocacy group distributed the results of research it had conducted on opinions of the state court on which he had served for twelve years. Two opinions Southwick had signed off on but not written became the center of the debate over the next five months. One dealt with a racial slur by a state worker, the other with a child custody battle between a father and a bisexual mother. Apparent bipartisan agreement for a quick confirmation turned into a long set of battles in the Judiciary Committee, on the floor of the Senate, and in the media.In early August, Senator Dianne Feinstein completely surprised her committee colleagues by supporting Southwick. Hers was the one Democratic vote needed to move the nomination to the full Senate. Then in late October, by a two-vote margin, he received the votes needed to end a filibuster. Confirmation followed.Southwick recounts the four years he spent at the Department of Justice, the twelve years on a state court, and his military service in Iraq while deployed with a Mississippi National Guard Brigade. During the nomination inferno Southwick maintained a diary of the many events, the conversations and emails, the joys and despairs, and quite often, the prayers and sense of peace his faith gave him--his memoir bears significant spiritual content. Throughout the struggle, Southwick learned that perspective and growth are important to all of us when making decisions, and he grew to accept his critics, regardless of outcome. In The Nominee there is no rancor, and instead the book expresses the understanding that the difficult road to success was the most helpful one for him, both as a man and as a judge.Crooked Snake: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard
Par Lovejoy Boteler. 2019
In 1968, during Albert Lepard’s fifth escape from a life sentence at Parchman Penitentiary, he kidnapped Lovejoy Boteler, then eighteen…
years old, from his family’s farm in Grenada, Mississippi. Three decades later, still beset by half-buried memories of that time, Boteler began researching his kidnapper’s nefarious, sordid life to discover how and why this terrifying abduction occurred.Crooked Snake: The Life and Crimes of Albert Lepard is the true story of Lepard, sentenced to life in Parchman for the murder of seventy-four-year-old Mary Young in 1959. During the course of his sentence, Lepard escaped from prison six times in fourteen years. In Crooked Snake, Boteler pieces together the story of this cold-blooded murderer's life using both historical records and personal interviews—over seventy in all—with ex-convicts who gravitated to and ran with Lepard, the family members who fed and sheltered the fugitive during his escapes, the law officers who hunted him, and the regular folks who were victimized in his terrible wake.Throughout Crooked Snake, Boteler reveals his kidnapper’s hardscrabble childhood and tracks his whereabouts before his incarceration and during his jailbreaks. Lepard’s escapes take him to Florida, Michigan, Kansas, California, and Mexico. Crooked Snake captures a slice of history and a landscape that is fast disappearing. These vignettes describe Mississippi’s countryside and spirit, ranging from sharecropper family gatherings in Attala County’s Seneasha Valley to the twenty-thousand-acre Parchman farm and its borderlands teeming with alligator, panther, bear, and wild boar.The Good Wife: The Shocking Betrayal and Brutal Murder of a Godly Woman in Texas
Par Clint Richmond. 2007
Roger and Penny Scaggs seemed a poster couple for family values. Evangelical Christians living in booming Austin, Texas, in the…
mid-1990s, they were respected leaders in their church and community. As Roger diligently worked his way up the high-tech corporate ladder, Penny kept a pristine home and coached similarly devout young women on how to be perfect wives. But on a windy March evening, this godly woman met the devil head-on. And when the police discovered her lifeless body—repeatedly bludgeoned with a lead pipe, then mutilated with a knife from her own spotless kitchen—they were shocked by the rage and savagery behind her slaying.The Good Wife is a startling true story of greed, hatred, betrayal, and an unimaginable murder—a tale of the dark decay that can be hidden behind a facade of saintliness when a marriage seemingly made in heaven descends into hell.Death Row Welcomes You: Visiting Hours in the Shadow of the Execution Chamber
Par Steven Hale. 2023
In the vein of Waiting for an Echo and Dead Man Walking, a deeply immersive look at justice in America,…
told through the interwoven lives of condemned prisoners and the men and women who come to visit them . . .In 2018, after nearly a decade&’s hiatus, the state of Tennessee began executing death row inmates, bucking national trends that showed the death penalty in decline. In less than two years, the state put seven men to death, more than any other state but Texas in that time period. It was an execution spree unlike any seen in Tennessee since the 1940s, one only brought to a halt by a global pandemic. Award-winning journalist Steven Hale was the leading reporter on these executions, covering them both locally for the Nashville Scene alt-weekly and nationally for The Appeal.In Death Row Welcomes You, Hale traces the lives of condemned prisoners at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution—and the people who come to visit them. What brought them—the visitors and convicted murderers alike—to death row?The visitors are, for the most part, not activists—or at least they did not start out that way. Nor are they the sort of killer-obsessed death row groupies such settings sometimes attract. In fact, in most cases they are average people whose lives, not to mention their views on the death penalty, were turned upside down by a face-to-face meeting with a death row prisoner.Hale&’s access to the people that make up that community afforded him a perspective that no other journalist has been granted, largely because Tennessee&’s Department of Correction has all but shut off official media access.Combining topics that have long fascinated readers—crime, death, and life inside prison—Hale writes with humanity, empathy, and insight earned by befriending death row prisoners . . . and standing witness to their final moments.Until You Are Dead, Dead, Dead: The Hanging of Albert Edwin Batson
Par Jim Bradshaw, Danielle Miller. 2014
In 1902, on a prairie in southwest Louisiana, six members of a farming family are found murdered. Albert Edwin Batson,…
a white, itinerant farm worker, rapidly descends from likely suspect to likely lynching victim as people in the surrounding countryside lusted for vengeance. In a territory where the locals were coping with the opening of the prairies by the railroad and the disorienting, disruptive advances of the rice and oil industries into what was predominantly cattle country, Batson, an outsider, made an ideal scapegoat. Until You Are Dead, Dead, Dead tells the story of the legal trials of Batson for the murder of six members of the Earll family and of the emotional trial of his mother. She believed him innocent and worked tirelessly, but futilely, to save her son's life. More than two dozen photos of Batson, his mother, and the principals involved in his arrest and convictions help bring this struggle to life.Though the evidence against him was entirely circumstantial, most of the citizenry of southwest Louisiana considered him guilty. Sensational headlines in national and local newspapers stirred up so much emotion, authorities feared he would be lynched before they could hang him legally. Even-handed, objective, and thorough, the authors sift the evidence and lament the incompetence of Batson's court-appointed attorneys. The state tried the young man and convicted him twice of the murders and sentenced him each time to death. Louisiana's governor refused to accept the state pardon board's recommendation that Batson's final sentence be commuted to life in prison. A stranger in a rapidly changing land, Batson was hanged.Blood Trail
Par Steven Walker, Rick Reed. 2005
&“Every page crackles with authenticity and truth. This is the kind of true crime that grabs you by the throat…
and never lets go.&” —Gregg Olsen, #1 New York Times bestselling author In this classic true crime book, veteran journalist Steven Walker and decorated police detective Rick Reed delve into the disturbed mind of a sadistic serial killer. The murderous crimes of serial killer Joseph W. Brown first came to light in October 29, 1997, when Andrea "Slick" Hendrix's beaten and strangled naked body was discovered in a roadside ditch near Stewartsville, Indiana. With no leads for police to follow, the case went cold, but it wouldn't stay that way. In 1999 Brown, an ex-con with a brutal history, met Ginger Gasaway, 53, at a Gambler's Anonymous meeting. She didn't know that when she took up with him, she was gambling with her life. On August 30, 2000, Brown murdered and dismembered Gasaway and scattered her remains across three Indiana counties. Detective Rick Reed of the Evansville Police Department was on the scene when Brown led investigators to his ex-lover&’s body parts. Reed was again present when Brown later confessed that during the past five years, he had indulged in a seven-state rampage of torture and murder, including Andrea Hendrix among more than a dozen victims. For Gasaway&’s grisly death, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole. But being behind bars did not end his murder spree. On June 19, 2011 Brown strangled his cellmate, Charles Miller, to death, then called to the desk sergeant to come and get the body. Blood Trail tells the twisting, fascinating true story of a monster who killed at whim—and the dedicated law enforcement professionals who brought him to justice. Includes 16 pages of photosUntil Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case
Par Stuart Taylor Jr., Kc Johnson. 2008
What began that night shocked Duke Universityand Durham, North Carolina. And it continues to captivate the nation: the Duke lacrosse…
team members‘ alleged rape of an African-American stripper and the unraveling of the case against them. In this ever-deepening American tragedy, Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson argue, law enforcement, a campaigning prosecutor, biased journalists, and left-leaning academics repeatedly refused to pursue the truth while scapegoats were made of these young men, recklessly tarnishing their lives. The story harbors multiple dramas, including the actions of a DA running for office; the inappropriate charges that should have been apparent to academics at Duke many months ago; the local and national media, who were so slow to take account of the publicly available evidence; and the appalling reactions of law enforcement, academia, and many black leaders.Until Proven Innocent is the only book that covers all five aspects of the case (personal, legal, academic, political, and media) in a comprehensive fashion. Based on interviews with key members of the defense team, many of the unindicted lacrosse players, and Duke officials, it is also the only book to include interviews with all three of the defendants, their families, and their legal teams. Taylor and Johnson‘s coverage of the Duke case was the earliest, most honest, and most comprehensive in the country, and here they take the idiocies and dishonesty of right- and left-wingers alike head on, shedding new light on the dangers of rogue prosecutors and police and a cultural tendency toward media-fueled travesties of justice. The context of the Duke case has vast import and contains likable heroes, unfortunate victims, and memorable villains—and in its full telling, it is captivating nonfiction with broad political, racial, and cultural relevance to our times.In American Roulette, Richard Marcus tells his never-before-heard story, of ripping off casinos. The book follows Marcus, along with several…
of the world's great professional casino cheaters, as he travels from Las Vegas to London and Monte Carlo, pilfering large sums of money from casinos by performing sleight of hand magic tricks with gaming chips. As skilled cheaters, they back up their moves with psychological setups to convince pit bosses that they're watching legitimate high rollers getting lucky, while in fact they're being ripped off blind. With the exploding growth of casino gambling, heightened by Indian reservation and riverboat expansion, more and more elaborate casino cheaters are illegally assaulting the green-felt, getting rich off of novice casino personnel. Richard Marcus's insider story is a window into the hidden world of intriguing personalities and tense situations he encounters as a member of expert casino-cheating teams who use their wits to turn the odds upside down and "earn" millions. American Roulette is a fascinating story not only for those who occasionally casino-gamble, but for everyone with a little larceny in their heart.A Lawyer's Life
Par Johnnie Cochran, David Fisher. 2002
The most famous lawyer in America talks about the law, his life, and how he has won.Johnnie Cochran has been…
a lawyer for almost forty years. In that time, he has taken on dozens of groundbreaking cases and emerged as a pivotal figure in race relations in America. Cochran gained international recognition as one of America's best - and most controversial lawyers - for leading 'the Dream Team' defense of accused killer O.J. Simpson in the Trial of the Century. Many people formed their perception of Cochran based on his work in that trial. But long before the Simpson trial and since then Johnnie Cochran has been a leader in the fight for justice for all Americans. This is his story.Cochran emerged from the trial as one of the nation's leading African-American spokespersons - and he has done most of his talking through the courtroom. Abner Louima. Amadou Diallo. The racially-profiled New Jersey Turnpike Four. Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. Patrick Dorismond. Cynthia Wiggins. These are the names that have dominated legal headlines - and Cochran was involved with each of them. No one who first encountered him during the Simpson trial can appreciate his impact on our world until they've read his whole story.Drawing on Cochran's most intriguing and difficult cases, A Lawyer's Life shows how he's fought his critics, won for his clients, and affected real change within the system. This is an intimate and compelling memoir of one lawyer's attempt to make us all truly equal in the eyes of the law.Undercover Cop: How I Brought Down the Real-Life Sopranos
Par Mike Russell, Patrick W. Picciarelli. 2013
One moment, New Jersey state trooper Mike Russell was working undercover, playing the role of an up-and-coming mobster hoping to…
infiltrate a Mafia family crew. The next, he was lying facedown in an alley after being ambushed and shot in the back of the head by a mobster over a dispute.Russell miraculously healed, and rather than press charges, he maintained his cover. Soon he had a stroke of good luck when he saved a man from an attack by two street thugs. The man he saved turned out to be Andy Gerardo, one of the ranking captains of the Genovese crime family. Quickly earning the trust of his new friend, Russell would orchestrate one of the biggest Mafia takedowns of all time.Urged by his police handlers, Russell used his cover story---an ex-cop fired for excessive force who now made his living from an oil-delivery business---and street skills to assimilate into the Genovese crime family in New Jersey, ultimately leading to more than fifty arrests of mobsters, corrupt prison officials, and even a state senator. Straddling the thin line between collecting evidence and participating in the very crimes he was leaking to the cops, Russell consistently placed himself at risk—especially when his police handlers disregarded his wishes and his well-being, conducting premature raids on the gangsters. With his marriage suffering and his family in danger, Russell took extraordinary steps to ensure his financial security and safety, demanding better terms from the police and allowing a film crew to document the final moments of the epic bust for a documentary that was later sold to HBO.A real-life version of The Sopranos, Undercover Cop immerses readers in the colorful yet harrowing trials of a standout cop who faced the mob on his own terms, crippled organized crime in New Jersey, and forever redefined undercover law enforcement.Alphaville: 1988, Crime, Punishment, and the Battle for New York City's Lower East Side
Par Michael Codella, Bruce Bennett. 2010
A raw, gritty memoir—part true-life cop thriller, part unputdownable history of a storied time and place—that will grip you by…
the throat until the explosive endAlphabet City in 1988 burned with heroin, radicalism, and anti-police sentiment. Working as a plainclothes narcotics cop in the most high-voltage neighborhood in Manhattan, Detective Sergeant Mike Codella earned the nickname "Rambo" from the local dealers, as well as a $50,000 bounty on his head. The son of a cop who grew up in a mob neighborhood in Brooklyn, Codella understood the unwritten laws of the shadowy businesses that ruled the streets. He knew that the further east you got from the relative safety of 5th Avenue, Washington Square Park and NYU, the deeper you entered the sea of human misery, greed, addiction, violence and all the things that come with an illegal retail drug trade run wild. With his partner, Gio, Codella made it his personal mission to put away Davie Blue Eyes—a stone cold murderer and the head of Alphabet City's heroin supply chain. Despite the hell they endured—all the beatings and gunshots, the footchases and close calls—Codella and Gio always saw Alphabet City the same way: worth saving. Alphaville, Codella's riveting, no-holds-barred memoir, resurrects the vicious streets that Davie Blue Eyes owned, and tells the story of how Codella bagged the so-called Forty Thieves that surrounded Davie, slowly working his way to the head of the snake one scale at a time. With the blistering narrative spirit of The French Connection, the insights of a seasoned insider, and a relentless voice that reads like the city's own, Alphaville is at once the story of a dedicated New York cop, and of New York City itself.A Good Month for Murder: The Inside Story of a Homicide Squad
Par Del Quentin Wilber. 2016
Bestselling author Del Quentin Wilber tells the inside story of how a homicide squad---a dedicated, colorful team of detectives—does its…
almost impossible jobTwelve homicides, three police-involved shootings and the furious hunt for an especially brutal killer--February 2013 was a good month for murder in suburban Washington, D.C.After gaining unparalleled access to the homicide unit in Prince George's County, which borders the nation's capital, Del Quentin Wilber begins shadowing the talented, often quirky detectives who get the call when a body falls. After a quiet couple of months, all hell breaks loose: suddenly every detective in the squad is scrambling to solve one shooting and stabbing after another. Meanwhile, the entire unit is obsessed with a stone-cold "red ball," a high-profile case involving a seventeen-year-old honor student attacked by a gunman who kicked down the door to her house and shot her in her bed.Murder is the police investigator's ultimate crucible: to solve a killing, a detective must speak for the dead. More than any recent book, A Good Month for Murder shows what it takes to succeed when the stakes couldn't possibly be higher.ConBody: The Revolutionary Bodyweight Prison Boot Camp—Born from an Extraordinary Story of Hope
Par Coss Marte, Brandon Sneed. 2018
“When Coss Marte went to prison 10 years ago, he was faced with not one, but two big challenges: lose…
weight and discover a legitimate career upon release. Luckily for him, overcoming the first obstacle helped him find the answer to the other.”—NPRAs a teenager, Coss Marte was flying high on New York’s Lower East Side as a drug dealer, making money hand over fist. But after watching his life and those of his loved ones fall apart, he realized things had to change. That change occurred when he was sentenced to prison.Within the space of his own cell and without workout equipment, Coss took the initiative to improve his circumstances and created ConBody, a bodyweight-only approach to fitness. This plan helped him drop 70 pounds from his dangerously obese frame, reversing a negative health prognosis of surviving the next five years. Once he saw that his workout plan was not only effective, but accessible, he knew he’d found a pathway to health and ultimately to a new life—and designed a regimen to train his fellow inmates.When he left prison, he returned to the Lower East Side, but not to his criminal career. Instead he worked out in his old hangouts and gained a small following that turned into an acclaimed business, winning entrepreneurial awards and the support of Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran.Coss’s method works. These exercises are for anyone, anywhere. All you need is yourself and the space of a jail cell to get started. It’s perfect for busy lifestyles on the go and can be done in hotel rooms, small apartments, and in your backyard.With fun, engaging exercises, ConBody: The Revolutionary Bodyweight Boot Camp will help give you the extraordinary hope and resilience to improve your health and life.Vice: One Cop's Story of Patrolling America's Most Dangerous City
Par John R. Baker, Stephen J. Rivele. 2011
9 square miles. 10,000 criminals. 130 cops. A riveting memoir by Baker, California's most-decorated police officer Compton: the most violent…
and crime-ridden city in America. What had been a semi-rural suburb of Los Angeles in the 1950s became a battleground for the Black Panthers and Malcolm X Foundation, the home of the Crips and Bloods and the first Hispanic gangs, and the cradle of gangster rap. At the center of it, trying to maintain order was the Compton Police Department, never more than 130-strong, and facing an army of criminals that numbered over 10,000. At any given time, fully one-tenth of Compton's population was in prison, yet this tidal wave of crime was held back by the thinnest line of the law—the Compton Police. John R. Baker was raised in Compton, eventually becoming the city's most decorated officer involved in some of its most notorious, horrifying and scandalous criminal cases. Baker's account of Compton from 1950 to 2001 is one of the most powerful and compelling cop memoirs ever written—an intensely human account of sacrifice and public service, and the price the men and women of the Compton Police Department paid to preserve their city.Convictions is a spellbinding story from the front lines of the fight against crime. Most Americans know little about the…
work of assistant United States attorneys, the federal prosecutors who possess sweeping authority to investigate and prosecute the nation's most dangerous criminals. John Kroger pursued high-profile cases against Mafia killers, drug kingpins, and Enron executives. Starting from his time as a green recruit and ending at the peak of his career, he steers us through the complexities of life as a prosecutor, where the battle in the courtroom is only the culmination of long and intricate investigative work. He reveals how to flip a perp, how to conduct a cross, how to work an informant, how to placate a hostile judge. Kroger relates it all with a novelist's eye for detail and a powerful sense of the ethical conflicts he faces. Often dissatisfied with the system, he explains why our law enforcement policies frequently fail in critical areas like drug enforcement and white-collar crime. He proposes new ways in which we can fight crime more effectively, empowering citizens to pressure their lawmakers to adopt more productive policies. This is an unflinching portrait of a crucial but little-understood part of our justice system, and Kroger is an eloquent guide.