Beyond Hope? Michael S. East

One of the things I struggled with when writing Beyond Hope? was the overwhelming sense of despair within the book itself. Obviously, writing about being a cop in a city the FBI recently named as the most violent (per capita) in the United States, the content is going to be negative.

Some other book and movie writers, as well as actors, whom I had spoken to prior to writing Beyond Hope? always stressed that a book or movie cannot be totally negative (conversely, a comedy cannot be all humor - there has to be some sort of believable storyline to follow to break up the humor). “You have to give the reader a break,” one writer told me. “The audience needs a chance to catch their breath.”

Finding chances within Beyond Hope? for readers to “catch their breath” was not easy. I can count on one hand the clearly positive things that happen to me in the streets each month. And many of those memories are quickly washed away by the sights and sounds of the next shooting or homicide, which is waiting right around the orner.

The chapter titled “Frislee” told one of the most simple stories in the book. This brief, yet uplifting story revolved around one of those times when I stumbled across a mental oasis in the vast desert of despair which was my work day. It was a story I simply had to put on paper. And it served as a nice “catch your breath” spot at a good point (about 1/3 through the book) within Beyond Hope?

Meeting these three kids playing Frisbee on this day was truely, I believe, one of those days God looks down upon a person (me) and says: “This guy really needs a break.” And so my five-minute work repreive, chucking a frisbee in a most unlikely setting with three poor, urban kids, was born. The fact these kids referred to a fisbee as a “frislee” made the story, I believe, that much more endearing. Those few moments have remained cemented in my brain to this day.

While writing this chapter, I thought about my own childhood, where my escape from my own personal problems was found at the beach on the shores of Lake Huron. I felt it important to point out the differences - and the similarities - between my childhood surroundings and the surroundings of these young children.

The Author’s Note at the end of the chapter was an afterthought, which I added after the first rough draft of Beyond Hope? went to print. I added several of these Author’s Notes during this time to give some closure for important chapters.

By the way, local actor Alex Aleandrou read Beyond Hope? late in 2009 and said he would love to do a movie “short” about this very chapter. Nothing has been put together yet, but with any luck, “Frislee” might be brought to life at some point in the future.

Thanks for stopping by. Chapter eight - The Fall - will be the topic of my next entry.

During the course of writing my previous book, Burden of the Badge - A Year in the Life of a Street Cop, I found the diary format I had chosen for that book lended itself toward being somewhat monotonous. I was okay with that because that particular book was written with the intent of giving prospective cops a chance to see wat the job is like. Indeed, policework is made up of long periods of monotony punctuated by heart-pounding moments of intense action. To that end, Burden of the Badge achieved its goal of being truthfully informative.

Throughout the writing of Burden, the format offered few spots where, as a writer, I was able to get into meaty story telling. The homicides, serious shootigns and car chases in Burden gave me a chance to go into deep detail and tell a story, but there were relatively few of those stories in relation to the boring day-to-day stuff. Three stories from Burden were interesting enough and gritty enough that I thought they would make for good chapters in Beyond Hope? Trick or Treat is one of those chapters.

The call itself occured on Halloween night 10 years ago. Halloween night! How creepy is that when a life-and-death car-crash and shootout occurs on the scariest night of the year, and you and your best friend have to climb into a fiery automobile and try to save two guys from, literaly, burning to death?

I tried very hard to bring out the intensity and chaos of this call because that’s exactly what is was - intense and chaotic. From the point that we saw the vehicle on fire, to the point where we had both passengers extracted was nothing more than a blur that seemed to last only seconds. In reality, the scene stretched out for several agonizing, slow-motion minutes.

The best part about this incident was - and most cops have these moments several times during their careers - I was able to answer for myself the question of “Would I risk my life to save another?” Regardless of how much you are taught in the academy and how much you learn on the street, you just never know how you will react to a life-threatening situation until you are put in the middle of it. I was proud of the fact that, without hesitation, Matt Ward and I both reacted as we should have. But I like to think most people - civilian and sworn - would risk their life to save the life of another if presented with the opportunity to do so. Oddly enough, years later Officer Ward and I were on patrol on Saginaw’s north end when a call for a child trapped in a house fire was put out. We were only blocks away and arrived quickly. The house was nearly fully engulfed and the child was trapped in an upstairs bedroom. In desperation, neighbors were even spraying the house with garden hoses when we arrived. While Matt looked for a way to get the child out the window, I ran for the front door, entered and was immediately driven back by the flames. Through the flames, the heat and the heavy smoke, I knew there was no way I was going to reach that child alive. The fire department pulled on just at that moment, and a firefighter in full gear was able to get inside with the aide of his oxygen tank and his fireman’s equipment and retrieve the child from upstairs. I’m not sure I could have lived with myself had that Saginaw Fire Department not arrived at that moment to rescue that child where I clearly had failed.

There was an interesting side note to this chapter that presented itself a few years after this incident took place. My wife was taking classes to attain her Master’s Degree along with a couple other co-workers. The group they took classes with, if I remember correctly, consisted of 15 or 20 people. During one course, the class had to spend a half day watching what was then a new movie, titled Crash. Crash, if you have not seen it, is an intricately weaved story that tackles the topics of racism, stereotypes, urban crime, police ethics and a multitude of other underlying themes. The story presents perspectives several characters of several different ethnicities, and their views of each other and the world around them. In this film, Matt Dillon plays the part of a white LA cop with unmistakable feelings toward blacks. At one point, he basically sexually molests a black female passenger during a traffic stop in what appears to be his way of asserting his self-perceived superiority, in terms of both gender and race. In an ironic twist later in the movie, Dillon crawls into a flipped over SUV that has been involved in a crash on the freeway. The car is seconds from catching fire and exploding and the driver is trapped. As Dillon struggles to free the woman - yes the same woman he molested on the previous traffic stop - he is forced to put aside his personal bias and do his job. In the end, he pulls the woman from the vehicle and - in typical and predictable Hollywood style - gets her to safety just as the vehicle explodes.

After the movie, the class was asked to discuss, at length, the issues that presented themselves within the film. During the discussion, a group of black women in the class commented how that scene was not believable to them, and that there was no way that a white cop would risk his life for a black person.

My wife was understandably offended, and offered the story from this chapter as evidence that people (even cops) can put aside their differences and just do their job (the two passengers that Officer Ward and I pulled from this burning vehicle were black males in the age range of about 18-21). Apparently, the women refused to believe my wife and, for the most part, inferred that the story she told them -this chapter from my book - did not occur because they simply would not accept that a white cop would risk his life for a person of color. Certainly working where I have for the past 16 years, if I am going to risk my life to save anyone during my on-the-job experiences, that person is probably going to be of a different color than me. The area of Saginaw where I work, you see, is probably less than 5% white.

Looking back on my wife’s experience of debating this issue with her classmates - all grown adults enrolled in a Masters Degree program - there are a couple things evident to me: 1.) Many people tend to view those of a different ethnic background as not good people, or at least not as good as they believe they themselves are, and 2.) There still exsists, even among many educated minorities, a deeply ingrained distrust of the police, even to the point where they cannot fathom a police officer doing the right thing to help someone not of the same skin color as the officer.

Based on personal experience, and having seen heroic acts of blacks, whites and hispanics helping others of different enthnic backgrounds, I tend to think most people, if given the chance to save a life, even at risk to their own, would help any other person, regardless of their skin color.

I guess it’s a matter of believing that, in the end, good will triumph over evil. As a cop, if you cannot believe in that, why even come to work?

Thanks for stopping by.

Many things in my work life have changed since I became a cop in 1994. One of the more prominent of these is that I no longer enjoy car chases the way I used to. They’re just too damn risky, and not just for the cop and the bad guy, but for the general public as well. While maneuvering a patrol car in emergency mode at a high rate of speed is still a great fix for an adreneline junkie, it’s neither the speed nor the potential for a nasty, firey car crash that worries me now - it’s the liability.

I’ve been in dozens of car chases over the years, the most prominent of which was a 19-minute pursuit from Saginaw to Bay City where the bad guy, after fleeing from, eluding and then trying to smash into several police cars, simply pulled up into his driveway and straight into his garage with a dozen cop cars on his tail, as if his garage was a “safe zone,” like when you were young, playing some kids’ war game where you simply touched a tree and yelled “safe” when things got a little hairy. It didn’t work for this guy, however, as he failed to set up a mutually agreed-upon “safe zone” prior to engaging us in this ridiculous pursuit.

In any case, the thing with pursuits now is they can still be fun and challenging in a demented sort of way, but there are way too many risks involved, and the potential for injury - and certainly for hefty civil litigation should somebody be badly injured or killed - often outweight the benefits of chasing and catchng the bad guy. I suppose if society is ok with cops letting most fleeing bad guys get away, them I’m good with it too. Plus, I try to think of my wife, child, mother or someone I care about coming home from a day at school or a shopping trip to Kroger and getting flattened by a bad guy the cops were chasing for shoplifting. That puts it into perspective.

But then there are times like the one described in this chapter where the alleged crime committed by the bad guy outweights the risk of injury in a car chase.

The report we received this day was that the man in this particular stolen car had just murdered his pastor in Detroit - shot him a few times after church - and had stolen the victim’s car. So certainly there was a clear need to get this guy off the streets.

The chase itself was quite a nail-biter, especially after we got onto I-75 amid the heavy Sunday southbound traffic. It’s funny, though, knowing there was a virtually unquestionable cause to pursue this guy, I felt totally relaxed throughout the chase. Only when it ended with the horrific crash of the suspect vehicle, did I actually get a little scrambly as I replayed the pursuit in my head through the rest of the shift. I would love to be able to talk to any of the motorists who witnessed the chase and the eventual crash that day. They certainly had a story to tell when they got back home to Metro Detroit and points beyond:

“Hey, Ed, I hear you caught a boatload of perch up North and sat next to Kid Rock at a restaurant in Traverse City last weekend!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . but listen to what happened on the way home just outside of Saginaw. . . ”

Not exactly Chamber of Commerce material for the greater Saginaw, area, but take your publicity where you can get it, I always say.

Looking back on this incident, the one thing that really stuck with me the most - and I wrote this as an aside to the chapter after it was finished - was, post chase, standing next to the suspect vehicle, watching all the cars on I-75 at a stand still and listening to the hum of grasshoppers and the songs of the early evening birds. It really was a gorgeous evening, all things considered.

In this line of work, sometimes you have to take your moments of inspiration where you can find them.

By the way, if you happen to be reading this and are inspired to do so, sign the guest book, or leave a comment. I’d love to know if anybody actually reads this stuff.

The next entry will be “Trick or Treat,” a recap of a night I still think about often . . . even 10 years later.

Thanks for stopping by.

I included “Crime Takes No Holidays” in this book because it is a perfect example of the type of “one of those days” that cops experience so often. This chapter could have been written about a hundred other crime scenes over the years that were worked by me or any of my co-workers.

When your career begins, these type of scenes mean something. They provide you with that sort of heart-pounding excitement that you knew policework would be all about - bullets flying, bodies dropping, screaming and crying bystanders, all those things you mistakenly think are cool when you’re a rookie. Homicide scenes are the places police recruits dream of when they’re in the academy. Alas, that novelty of dead bodies, blood and bullets fades quickly when you work a city that has 15, 20 or 25 homicides a year, and sometimes two or three in a single day (See the chapter titled “Ride-A-Long” for an example of that).

This homicide was a bit different in that it came on the heels of an excruciatingly long and violent Fourth of July shift the day prior. And, because I was gathering fodder for my book at the time, I tried to pay special attention to the details of this scene to recall later when the inspiration to write about it struck. Noting how one of our rookie officers was left at the edge of the crime scene to face dozens of angry bystanders was, I thought, of some interest. Also, the reaction of one of the ambulance crew staff - the one who would “freak” if she had to pick up a dead body - was an aside that I may normally have shrugged off. But in this case, I thought it would be of interest to readers . . . slackers don’t just reside in retail and office work environments, they thrive in many forms within the realm of public safety as well. Some are more noticeable than others, but I thought a paramedic who was afraid to touch a dead body was especially amusing - and frustrating - all at once.

One other important bit of detail, I felt, was pointing out that, prior to placing the victim into the body bag, a detective stopped us and removed a handgun from the victim’s pocket. This was later a point of interest in the trial of the suspect. More important to my writing, however, was displaying the irony of an otherwise innocent-looking teen having a handgun in his own pocket at the time he was shot and killed. It speaks volumes about the society in which we live, and the reality police officers deal with every day - the reality that quite often today’s victims are tomorrow’s suspects.

For those folks who stop by to read this blog, I will try to keep up with recapping another chapter every 7-10 days, although I have an idea swimming around for a new fiction book that I would like to start soon. That may delay my blog entries just a tad, assuming I actually find the energy to start writing this new book (think Joseph Wambaugh takes a wring turn and visits Saginaw). By the way, thanks to Jackie Cresswell of West Branch for driving all the way to the Saginaw Police Department last month to drop off a copy of Wambaugh’s The New Centurions. I read it in 2 weeks and just bought his most recent book, Hollywood Moon. Thanks also for pointing out what a cretin I was for not being familiar with the works of such a great police writer. Your words and the book motivated me to read more, and have given me the idea for my next book, which will be my first stab at fiction writing.

Jackie, if you happen to read this piece, please sign the guestbook section of my website. I’d love to know that you received my thanks.

Thanks for stopping by.

Chapter 3 of Beyond Hope? was actually stolen from my first book, Burden of the Badge. The event which is the subject of this chapter was simply too important in the timeline of my cop career to be left out. Plus, since Burden of the Badge was written more in diary format, re-printing this chapter gave me a chance to expound a bit on the original version.

I believe every new cop thinks about the first time he will face someone in a life-and-death, shoot-don’t shoot situation. I assume every new cop visualizes the scenerio playing out the same way I did -with the bad guy falling in a hail of bullets and the cop is regailed as a hero for taking another bad guy off the mean streets. Real life, however, usually plays out far differently than what happens on the movie screen in our minds.

Like every streets cop in Saginaw, I had been in many dangerous situations prior to this evening, despite having less than 30 months on the job. Crime in the city of Saginaw moves quickly and there is little learning curve for newcomers. With less than 3 years as a cop I had already been chosen to be a Field Training Officer (FTO), a position I had no right holding with such little time on the job. But, for an extra $500 a month in wages, I gladly accepted the spot, inexperience be damned! There was a also such a shortage of FTOs at this time that many guys of my tenure held this position. I made a point of telling my new recruits that I was far from knowing everything . . . just so they knew where they stood in relation to their “trainer.”

The recruit I was training this night was, thank God, a mature, even-tempered guy named Dennis Bunch. Dennis, shortly after this event, moved on to work for the Lansing (MI) Police Department, where he is a successful K-9 officer. We still have lunch whenever I’m in Lansing, and we still re-live this evening from to time.

You get to know the gang houses pretty quickly in the streets and you know where to expect trouble. Having been at this particular house prior to this night for gang-related activity, my guard was up as we approached. I recall the moon reflecting brightly off the snow this night and when the kid came out of the back door of the house pointing a gun at me, I could see his face very clearly. Two things I remember distinctly about this event are that: A.) Time really does slow to a crawl - think of a scene from “The matrix” - during high-stress events and B.) Your training really does take over. I had my gun levelled on this kid without even knowing I had pulled it, but still time crawled and I could see every movement and hear every sound like I was rewinding a scene from a movie and playing it back, frame by frame.

I always felt that when this moment hit I would simply shoot . . . and shoot and shoot and shoot . . . until the “threat was neutralized” (academy talk for “the bad guy is dead.”). But this slowing of time gave me the opportunity to registered how confused this kid was, and how innocent he looked. I knew he was not going to pull the trigger, but yet not shooting him was quite a risk - one I am not sure I would take again.

After the kid threw the gun down and was taken into custody, my mind was racing as I kept questioning my reaction to the situation. Should I have shot? I was even more infuritated when I found out he had had nothing more than a pellet gun (I guess I should have been even more relieved to not have shot him, but that wasn’t the case).

I was fairly distraught the rest of the night as I second-guessed myself. Why hadn’t I shot this kid? Was it compassion? That could be a deadly thing for a cop. Was it confusion? Equally as deadly. Was it a racial issue? Saginaw is a hotbed for racial controversy and maybe the fact that the boy was black and I am white might have played into the equation and caused a delay in my trigger pull as I thought about the potential racial backlash. Whatever the answer, I had a very poor night’s sleep trying to come to grips with this event.

The biggest bright spot of this story came the next day when Jerry Schneider, the weekend duty detective, made the phone call I referenced in this chapter and showed me the understanding and compassion only 20+ years as a cop can bring. Jerry is a court officer at the Saginaw County Governmental Center, so I see him quite often. He is still a common sense guy who provides good advice. His words carried me later in the day when a shift supervisor and several other cops (who were nowhere near the scene and had nothing to do with the previous evening’s events) provided ample Monday morning quarterbacking of my encounter, criticizing me for not killing the teen and telling me how they “would have killed him in a heartbeat.”

As far as the kid with the gun, I have not recalled his name since the day of his pre-trial. I do not know if he still lives in Saginaw, or even if his is alive or dead, for that matter. All I know is that I did not kill him. For this I am thankful.

One of the things I often hear about cops is that they’re impersonal and hard to get to know. I’ve also often heard: “I hate cops; they’re a bunch of assholes!” Certainly, the above average rates of divorce, suicide and alcoholism within the police fraternity bears out that most cops live a life that borders on self-seclusion, where the only people they trust enough let into their inner circle are other cops. Sometimes cop’s spouses are not even given the trust given to other police officers. I firmly believe that this “Us-versus-Them” attitude is a defensive mindset which is almost necessary to a police officer’s survival. In a world where criticism of police actions and cop bashing seem to always be popular, how could one not expect cops to develope and nurture the mindset of looking after their own. At many levels in society it is natural for persons who are under seige to “circle the wagons,” surround themselves with allies and find support from others most like themselves. Cops are no different than anybody else in that regard.

Okay, back on track. When it came to the Chapter titled “Mick,” I really wanted to break down that Joe Cop-versus-Joe Citizen” mindset. I also wanted to do it within the early chapters of Beyond Hope? so I could open up the minds of the readers to the human side of law officers. The basic purpose of this chapter was to provide some insight into my childhood years so the reader could see me as the sum of my experiences and not just a cop with cop thoughts, cop attitudes, cop actions and cop paranoia (Yeah, I think cops, by nature, are a bit paranoid because we’re so overwhelmed with negative interactions day after day after day).

Taking a page from my friend, police author Randy Sutton (A Cop’s Life), I decided to open the door to the most intense years of my life. Sutton gutted himself emotionally within the pages of A Cop’s Life and that gave me the courage to do the same. The best I had to offer was my story of growing up in an abusive household where alcoholism and late night beatings were a way of life.

I would like to mention here that I am in no way trying to gain sympathy through this story. Quite the opposite. While I hated the things I endured during my youth, I have grown enough to understand that walking this road during my younger years has made the road I now travel that much less bumpy. Because I have personal experience with many of the things I see teens dealing with today in Saginaw, I can easily relate to them and the suffering they endure. And, I can also show them that life is not over simply because they are suffering now. The truth is quite the opposite. As detailed in “Mick,” I grew up in a very rough household and yet me and both of my brothers all went on to graduate college and prosper in our professional lives (Despite the overt negativity of Beyond Hope? I do consider my career to be a prosperous one). The success of her three sons, by the way, is a direct result of my mother and her will to survive and overcome the obstacles in her life.

“Mick” is intentionally the shortest chapter in Beyond Hope? Maybe my trip down that particular memory lane was painful enough that I only wanted to remember enough to get the point across. Maybe I just didn’t want the focus of the book to stray too far from its law enforcement theme. Maybe it was a combination of the two. Either way, just writing the few pages it took to complete “Mick” left me emotionally exhausted.

There were three main people whose permission I sought before publishing Beyond Hope? - Gregory and Linda King . . . and my mother. Clearly my mother had a stake in what I’d written. After she had finished the manuscript, she gave it her blessing, but not without some insight. “You know I guess I never realized exactly how much hurt I put you kids through when all this was going on,” she said over the phone in a heavy voice. “Mom, now that it’s over I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I’m a better person for the experience,” I told her. And as much as she might not buy that line, it is the truth. Do I have regrets about my childhood? Of course. However, I firmly believe I am a better person - and a better cop - for having experienced the past that paved the way for this present day.
We are all the sum of our life’s experiences and, for better or for worse, I think that’s all part of God’s plan.

I want to share one final story regarding this chapter. I referenced the character Mick (I was called Mick sometimes as a child) several times in Beyond Hope? but I did not identify myself as Mick until the next to last chapter. I thought this would be a good way to keep the reader guessing a bit, but while writing Beyond Hope? I wondered if I had disguised Mick’s identity well enough. A friend of mine, Cynthia Pape, who is also a teacher (Cynthia runs the Stone School Mentoring Program that I referenced in Beyond Hope?) offered to read my manuscript prior to Beyond Hope? going to print. Of course I accepted. Having a teacher review your work is a great way to get some quality (and free) editing. After Cynthia completed the manuscript, she caught me after a mentoring session one day and raved about the book, saying she absolutely loved it (Cynthia’s reviews of my work are always an ego boost, even though I suspect they are a tad exaggerated for my benefit). After complimenting me about the book for a moment, Cynthia asked: “I have one question, though - whatever happened to Mick?” I sat back and studied her for a moment to see if she was kidding. She was not. “He’s doing great,” I replied. “He became a cop and he likes to write.” The light bulb went on about 5 seconds later, followed by a wave of flush-faced embarassment. To this day, Cynthia gets red in the face when I re-tell that story. At least I know Mick’s identity was fairly well hidden.

My next entry will be about the chapter “A Second Chance,” which is the story of my encounter with the first person I had the legal right to kill.

Thanks for stopping by.

When I came up with the idea of writing Beyond Hope? I just started writing chapters in no particular order. “Just write. Worry about organization later,” is what a writer friend once told me. Oddly, “Knock, knock . . . ” was the second chapter in the original draft of Beyond Hope? The book actually started with parts of “Final Thoughts,” which is the last chapter in the book. After a close friend offered to read Beyond Hope? and offer some editing and insight, it was suggested that I talked about “The Fight” quite often in the beginning. I thought talking about “The Fight,” which is my view of a cop’s career and the struggle to maintain sanity and continue to do the right thing, would be a nice set-up to the book. My friend, however, thought that all the references to “The Fight” seemed choppy and clumsy because the reader had no yet learned what “The Fight” entailed. They were just two words that carried little meaning. After thinking this through, I agreed. Why not show people what “The Fight” really is before actually referencing it. So I decided to do things the traditional (boring?) way and start at the beginning. As it turns out, I think this is a much better set-up and helps give the entire book some structure in the form of a loose time line. Thank you, Lori, for the idea.

Having lived in a few different towns - Port Huron, Big Rapids, Mt. Pleasant, Ypsilanti, Bellevile - I was always excited about moving on to my next place of residence and my next job. It was with some trepidation, however, that I travelled to Saginaw on this cold, November day in 1993. Nobody I had talked to had a good thing to say about Saginaw. I was, however, at wit’s end in terms of trying to land a police job. I had tested and/or interviewed in departments in Ann Arbor, Taylor, Dearborn, Grand Rapids, Toledo, Ypsilanti, and a number of other places with little luck. The early ’90s were a bad time to be searching for police jobs. Most municipalities where I applied were posting a handful of jobs and getting hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants. To make matters worse, I was working a job where I was making a decent wage (about $35,000/year) with a company car, and a full benefits package. I needed to find employment with a police department which would sponsor my spot in a police academy. I was not certifiable at the time, which is to say I had not completed a law enforcement training academy, and would still have to attend one, to the tune of about $3,500. I wanted badly to become a police officer, but leaving a good paying job with a company car was one thing. Doing the same, and coughing up $3,500 without the promise of a job after completion of a police academy was a whole different animal.

I had been looking for work for a couple years and was on the late end of 28 when I made the drive North from Belleville to Saginaw in 1993. I had given myself until I turned 30 to make it as a cop. I had less than a year and half left on that deadline and the clock was ticking, especially considering the application process at most departments took anywhere from 6 - 12 months to complete.

When I pulled into the hotel parking lot on the corner of E. Holland and Outer Drive, it didn’t look too bad (it looks much worse today). I had traversed many rough areas in Detroit, Inkster, Ecorse and the like, as a District Loss Prevention Manager for the Arbor Drug Store chain where I employed at the time. But there was something more about the Saginaw area that I picked up on immediately - there was a sense of despair and hopelessness that hung heavy in the air. Maybe it was because of all the negative things I had heard about the town, maybe it was because of the gloomy weather that day, or maybe, just maybe, some cities have been beaten down so badly by fate that an outsider can literally feel the pain of its past and present. Maybe it can be read on the faces of the people in the cars and in the tone of the drive-thru girl at Arbys. Maybe it’s the apathetic way the hotel desk clerk hands you your room key without a smile or the courtesy of friendly small talk. I’m not sure why, but Saginaw that day seemed like the most unfriendly place I had ever visited.

My jog that afternoon was borderline surreal. I had never, until this day, seen poverty and despair so up-close and for so long as I did on my run through Buena Vista Township. Many cops have asked me since reading Beyond Hope? if I was nuts, going for a jog in the neighborhoods where I did. Knowing now what I did not know then, I would not repeat this route.

When I ran past the Buena Vista Township police officer whom I referenced in this chapter, he gave me the same look I would give today if I were he and I were looking at me. My good friend, Saginaw Township Police Officer Russ Uphold, worked in Buena Vista at this time and was able to narrow down for me, based on my physical description, who the officer was that passed me that day. I cannot recall the officer’s name right now, but Russ, at least, got a laugh out of Chapter #1 if only for those few lines.

The day quickly changed to night and I recall getting to sleep pretty quickly after the day’s travel and my eye-opening jog through Buena Vista Township. I was exhausted. When the pounding on my door came in the middle of the night, I was nothing short of panic-stricken. Today I might handle the whole event differently, given my experiences since that night. Today, I might open the door and confront the guys on the other side. Today, I am seldom without a gun, however, so it’s easy to talk the talk now. Back then, I was petrified that I was going to killed (or at least badly beaten) - just one anonymous death at some dumpy anonymous hotel. I thought about my mom for a fleeting moment. This was going to suck for her, burying one of her kids at such a young age. Those thoughts did not linger long, however, as the pounding stopped and I was able to make my way to the door and listen. Little did I know I was also filing away a great story for a book some 16 years down the road. When I heard the guys ramble off to look for the right room (and the right guy to beat up or kill), I was relieved to no end that I would survive this night, or so I hoped. I may have dozed a few times during the rest of the night, but slept very little. Fear has a way of making sleep seem like a luxury you can do without.

The next day, my drive into downtown Saginaw was so surreal that it is forever seared into my memory. When I drove up E. Remington Avenue and turned right onto E. Genesee, it seemed every building was boarded up, vacant or burned out. I could not believe how bad Saginaw looked. What the hell was I doing here? But I pressed on, keeping an eye on the 11-story-high Feige Building in the distance. I wondered how many cops a city like this could possibly employ. Who the hell pays their salaries? Where does anybody work in this town? This was actually a very fun part of the chapter to write, if only because the memories were so vivid I had no problem re-living that drive on paper.

When I got to the Saginaw Police Department, it had a very early-70s dusty brick feel to it, which, sadly, was much more modern than anything else I had seen the past 10 minutes. The interior was very drab and cold. I am not sure who the desk officer was that day, it may have been retired sergeant and then-officer Gil Walton, but there was no smile when I asked where to report for my interview. He silently pointed toward the stairs, probably worn down by the dozens of people who asked him that question every 15 minutes for the past several days. My nervousness faded quickly and was replaced by the thought that not getting this job was not the worst thing that could happen to me.

When my interview started, I felt strong, I felt confident. Most questions, as I expected, were based on racial attitudes and integrity issues. Police employment interviews back then were all very similar, almost to the point of being interchangeable. I made sure to make good eye contact and project my voice while keeping good posture. I was sure my interview panel bought what I was selling until the Deputy Chief on the interview panel told me, ominously (or so I thought) to “Keep working on those communication skills.” I was, as I said in the book, horribly deflated. When I left the SPD that day, I truely thought I would never be back . . . and I was truely not bothered by that thought. Having been called back for more testing, however, and having gained the life experiences I have working the streets of Saginaw, I am glad now they gave me a chance. There were 1,600 applicants for the jobs availble at the SPD in 1993. In May of 1994 only 26 of those applicants, myself included, were hired.

People often ask, usually after reading one or both of my books, if I regret taking this job. It would be easy to assume so considering the negativity of much of my writing about policing Saginaw’s violent streets. I do not regret taking this job for one minute. While I would love to see some improvements in both my city and my police department, and while I have had to deal with a lot of gory things and a lot of truely evil people, I have gained the ability to see the world as it really is, and I have learned how to deal with people at their worst. My job at the Saginaw Police Department has afforded me a wonderful middle-class lifestyle, a lifetime’s worth of memories, and the opportunity to experience life for all it offers, both good and bad. There have been a couple people who have claimed that I made up much of what is found within the pages of my books; they do not believe things such as these could ever happen; they do not want to believe pure evil exsists in this world. Being an urban cop has, more than anything else, blessed me with the opporunity to know the truth about good, about evil, about life and how fragile it can be. I thank God for that every day.

By the way, the Deputy Chief who blind-sided me with the “Keep working on those communications skills” comment the day of my interview at the SPD, was then-SPD Deputy Chief and current Saginaw Circuit Court Judge Darnell Jackson. I ran into him recently. He asked for a copy of Beyond Hope? and said he couldn’t wait to read it. I told him to look for himself on page 14. Funny how life works.

My next entry will cover the chapter known simply as “Mick,” which was one of the most personal chapters in Beyond Hope?

Thanks for stopping by.

I’ve been saying for a couple months now that want to write a chapter-by-chapter dissection of Beyond Hope? on this blog space. Since today is New Year’s Eve, it is a good jumping off point. I’ll try to post a few times each month and get through the book by the end of the year. Hopefully, this series will provide some interesting insight into the thoughts and the writing process that went into Beyond Hope? Please feel free to comment and/or ask questions as we move through this process.

Today’s entry will be brief as it only covers the Foreword to Beyond Hope? I thought it extremely important to “set the table” for Beyond Hope? by providing some background about the book and its author. And, while I thought it important for readers to know about me and where and how my views on life have been formed, it was even more important to open the door a little and let readers take a quick peek at Saginaw before shoving them head-long into this place I often find to be so surreal.

Unless you’ve been to Saginaw, Michigan, for an extended period of time, I think it is hard to understand the educational and economic dynamic that has made this city such a violent and often racially divided palce. There are other cities in Michigan and around the nation - Flint, Detroit, Gary, Indiana, and others come to mind - that I am sure rival Saginaw in terms of violence and desperation. I had never lived in any city like Saginaw prior to moving here. My views were formed in cities like Port Huron (similar economics, but few racial issues), Mt. Pleasant and Big Rapids (towns driven by the universities which call them home) and Ann Arbor (an educational and cultural experience all its own). My move to Saginaw - ranked #1 in the country for violent crime among cities with 40,000+ populations in 2006 - was as jolting as a lightening bolt to the head.

At the very least, the foreword of Beyond Hope? takes the reader knee-deep into the ocean of violence in which I am trying to let them swim.

The other main point I wanted to make in this Foreword can be summed up in one word: Humility. Cops are often perceived by the public as self-center jackasses who like to boss around and harass folks simply for the sake of doing so. Even within cops circles, egos can become titanic in size. One thing I did not want to do while writing this book was paint myself as a hero to civilians or other cops. That’s just not me. I am what I would like to consider an average cop. I take my calls for service, I do some pro-active policing and I have tried in recent years - as a Field Training Officer, as a Departmental Recruiter, as a Background Investigator and now as a Patrol Sergeant - to give guidance and advice to younger officers coming to the department like I did some 16 years ago. There are many other officers around the country, around the state of Michigan and within my own department, who are much better cops than I might ever be. So, just because I like to writerabout my experiences, I did not want to come across as some self-glorifying ego-maniac. I have been recognized with some awards from the Saginaw Police Department during my career. But those were more circumstances of being in the right place at the right time and having to act than they were any heroic acts of bravery. Most cops I know simlply want to do their job, do it as best they can and maybe along the way save a few lives and help some people out. Oh, and the steady paycheck is nice too.

But for me, the helping people part has extended to the keyboard. I want to help people who are interested understand this world of violence, hatred, fear and self-doubt where urban cops work every day.

The next entry on this blog space will start . . . well, at the beginning, as we go through “Knock, knock. . . .” the story of my first night in Saginaw.

Thanks for stopping by.