Tales From the Blue: Adventures in Law Enforcement

In August of 2018 I completed a book my son had been after me to do for many years. “Tales From the Blue: Adventures in Law Enforcement”. The basic premise of the book is actual law enforcement incidents that happened to me or in my presence, told with a heavy touch of humor. If you can imagine about six veteran law enforcement officers sitting around a table with adult beverages telling stories you have the book idea. Except in this case, I am the only one at the table and I am drinking a Pepsi.

The stories are mostly from the early 1970’s in Pulaski County Missouri which is also the home of the United States Army base of Fort Leonard Wood. At that time, we had a record crop of pimps and whores in our area with houses of ill-repute running wide open. As a member of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, I was hampered by several Missouri statutes which prohibited members of the patrol from enforcement actions off of a public highway. (Those laws have since been repealed.)

And we also had a little war going on between organized mob factions from the St. Louis Missouri area Vs. mob factions from the Memphis Tennessee area for control of the vice, drugs, and other criminal activity in our area. Buildings were blown up with explosives and a lot of people came up with nasty bullet wounds. A daily dose of armed robberies, shootings, knifings, car chases, pimps and whores plus a lot of other action. If I tell you, it was an exciting time that would be the understatement of the year. All of the incidents covered in the book are true accounts. No embellishment was needed for these stories. Some of the incidents are so weird I have trouble believing they actually happened, and I watched them happen. It was a crazy and scary time in Pulaski County.

As an example, one story covers the day I responded to a real live bank robbery in progress while I was training a brand-new rookie Trooper who had just graduated a few weeks earlier from our MSHP academy. We thought it was a false alarm and had no idea we were going up against two veteran bad guys. I can assure you at the time this event was not the least bit funny. But a number of actions happened in the middle of the robbery that were funny. Thus “The Broken Bone Bank Robbery” story was born.
If you are looking for true-life law enforcement stories told with humor then “Tales From the Blue: Adventures in Law Enforcement” is a book you will enjoy.