Narc tales and corruption

Police-Writers.com, a website dedicated to listing state and local police officers who have authored books, has added four police officers whose true stories of undercover narcotics work, near-corruption and outright corruption provide a trip into big city police work of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Jack Kelly probably knew more about narcotics trafficking in America than any other person. From the time he joined Atlantic City Police Department at the end of World War II to his retirement from one of the highest enforcement positions in the United States Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, Kelly spent his life in pursuit of the world’s largest, most cunning, and dangerous illicit drug suppliers. Along the way, he earned a reputation from peddlers and junkies, as well as federal and local law enforcement officials, as "the toughest narc of them all."

According to the book description, “On the Street is Jack Kelly's story. It is also the story of drugs in America and of the people who become enmeshed in its widespread, complex network. As Kelly unfolds the story of his career, we learn what makes a good cop-and a bad one. He discloses in considerable detail the psychology of developing informers and of keeping them; how suspects used to be-and are-interrogated; and how evidence is handled. He shows how a set-up is arranged and an arrest made, and he tells what it's like to work undercover, as he did for much of his career, on numerous occasions almost losing his cover-and his life.

Kelly is brutally frank. He tells not only of informers who, after being loaned money by agents to set up a purchase, run off with the loot, but also of policemen who, finding large quantities of cash at the site of an arrest, report only a small portion of it and pocket the rest. He narrates with compassion the story of the elderly medical doctor who gave heroin to his junkie patients because he truly couldn't stand to see anyone suffer. And he tells in sorrow of the narcotics agents who became junkies themselves.”

Stephen Del Corso and Bill Erwin were narcotics detectives in the New York Police Department. They co-authored the true story, Blue Domino. According to the book description, “Blue Domino is a cop's-eye view of a narcotics case so big and so successful that it resulted in the conviction of 86 major heroin dealers. It is also the story of the "Lady in Pink," a beautiful Puerto Rican drug courier who turned out to be the key to the case. And it is the story of the biggest bribe ever offered a detective in the history of the New York Police Department.”

Edward F. Droge of the New York Police Department authored two novels, In the Highest Tradition and The Honor Legion, and his own autobiography - Patrolman: A Cop's Story. According to the book description, “Edward F. Droge, Jr. made headlines with his testimony about police corruption before the Knapp Commission in New York. Now he has decided to tell the whole blunt, hard-nosed truth about himself and the system that made him and broke him. This is the story of his career from the beginning to the end. It is the story of fighting crime in the savage ghettos, of collaring hookers on the nighttime streets, of breaking up murderous family quarrels and risking his life and limb in hair-raising chases and gun duels. It is also the story of pocketing money and bending regulations and losing every ideal. And finally it is the story of how one cop's undercover activities implicated his fellow officers.”

Police-Writers.com now hosts 346 police officers (representing 145 police departments) and their 777 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.