Tuesday, May 01, 2007

May begins with New York and Texas

Police-Writers.com is a website dedicated to listing state and local police officers who have authored books. The first three writers added to the website in May 2007 come from New York and Texas.

Paul B. Weston had a progressively successful career in the New York Police Department on a "fast track" promotion examination system pioneered by New York Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia. When a new list of successful applicants for police officer was published, the Mayor hired the top two hundred, then the commission set the date for the next sergeant's examination to allow this group just enough seniority to qualify for the test. In turn, the top group of sergeants became eligible for the lieutenant's test, and likewise the captain's examination. It was a tough program as seniority could earn up to twenty points on the possible score of 200 and the "fast track" candidates had less than one full point of seniority.

Paul B. Weston placed on the top of each list and became a captain in twelve years and two months; far ahead of the more common 18 to 20 years. From the jump start, he moved through the appointed ranks to Deputy Inspector, Inspector, and Deputy Chief Inspector. The last two promotions were made by Police Commissioner Stephen P. Kennedy for good work in the traffic division

After retirement from the
NYPD, Paul Weston joined the Police Science faculty at California State College, Sacramento. Paul Weston played a large role in developing the university’s program to a full-fledged Division of Criminal Justice. During his career as a practitioner and academic, Paul Weston wrote at least twelve books on law enforcement and criminal justice. His titles include, The Police Traffic Control Function; Criminal Investigation: Basic Perspectives; Case Studies of Drug Abuse and Criminal Behavior; The Handbook of Handgunning; Combat Shooting for Police; The Administration of Justice; The Detection of Murder; Supervision in the Administration of Justice; and, Criminal Evidence for Police.

Marcus Fleck was a deputy sheriff for the Harris County Sheriff’s Office (Texas) for six years. His book, Legitimacy by Force, tells the story of the events leading up to his arrest and conviction for the attempted murder shooting of his neighbor, Glen Baker.

David McElligott was a senior investigator for the New York State Police. According to the New York State Police, “the special prosecutor investigating the Troop C evidence tampering scandal recently warned two New York State Police supervisors that they could face disciplinary action for their roles. The two, David McElligott and Karl Chandler, then retired. They supervised three investigators who admitted faking evidence.”

David McElligott co-authored Good Cop/Bad Cop: A True Story of Murder and Mayhem. According to the Publisher’s Weekly, “Two days before Christmas in 1989, Tony Harris, his wife, Dodie, and their children, Shelby and Marc, were murdered in their home in Ithaca, N.Y. This upper-middle-class family was killed by Michael Kinge, a black ex-convict who used and then had his mother use credit cards stolen from the Harris house. McElligott of the state police largely supervised the police work, although he was suspicious of fingerprint evidence adduced by investigator David Harding to prove that Kinge's mother was present during the slayings.” The author, “carefully document the unraveling of Harding's career as he confessed to falsifying evidence to win a number of prosecutions, including that of Mrs. Kinge, and advance his career.”

Police-Writers.com now hosts 512
police officers (representing 215 police departments) and their 1089 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.

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