Recommended reading for life as a small-town cop?

September 7, 2014 1:33 PM

For a creative project I'm working on, I'm looking for good things to read about life and work as a small town US police officer. So far, I've only found romance novels and self-published Amazon memoirs. Any well-written non-fiction books I could be perusing?

Note: given recent tragic events in Ferguson, I should note that this project I'm working on does not deal with any tough issues of race or violence -- I'm looking for something admittedly more vanilla than that, filled with true-to-life detail.

posted by HeroZero to Law & Government (13 answers total)

There's a lot of mystery and detective series set in small towns. Tony Hillerman, Steve Hamilton's Alex Mcknight series, set in Michigan's UP, Longmire by Craig Johnson. Here's a list at City-Data. GoodReads recommendations.
posted by Ideefixe at 1:51 PM on September 7, 2014

Home Town centers mainly on a police officer, and the entire book paints a beautiful, engaging portrait of Northampton, MA.
posted by missmary6 at 1:54 PM on September 7, 2014

Midnights is about spending a year as a cop in a quiet town on Cape Cod.
posted by nicwolff at 2:30 PM on September 7, 2014

Seconding Home Town!
posted by dayintoday at 3:01 PM on September 7, 2014

Thirding Home Town - I was just trying to recall the title when I saw missmary6's post!
posted by clerestory at 3:58 PM on September 7, 2014

Some good recommends here, if you're interested in an outside-of-America experience.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:17 PM on September 7, 2014

Heh. I was just reading this yesterday. It's a short memoir by a writer who spent the summer working as a seasonal cop in Ocean City, Maryland, back in 1962, when he was 21. It might fit the bill, might not.
posted by Opposite George at 4:55 PM on September 7, 2014

Population: 485 -- Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time describes life as a small town volunteer firefighter, if that would also help.
posted by slidell at 5:37 PM on September 7, 2014

Well, they're fiction, but Donald Harstad has written several novels about the life of a deputy county sheriff in rural Iowa, clearly drawing from his many years of experience being a deputy sheriff in rural Iowa.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:44 PM on September 7, 2014

Jim Thompson
Although I admit I'm a little thrown by your RFP: "does not deal with any tough issues of race or violence -- I'm looking for something .. filled with true-to-life detail."
What do you think real life is for cops?
posted by LonnieK at 8:10 PM on September 7, 2014

What do you think real life is for cops?

For small town cops in the US? A lot of mouthy teenagers, lost pets, random firearms complaints and sometimes drunk driving or domestic abuse issues. Safety checks. Traffic stops. You might like MeFite lelilo's Bar Harbor Police Beat which he assembled from many many years of police beat columns in the local paper. I've read it and his small town cops seemed to be a lot like my small town cops.
posted by jessamyn at 9:09 PM on September 7, 2014

There are lots and lots and lots of ethnographies of police work, some of them very good. The only ones I've read are of urban policing, but a basic google search shows that there are plenty of non-urban or small town ethnographies. Books should be easy to get hold of but you may need academic library access for some journal articles.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:21 PM on September 7, 2014

Although I admit I'm a little thrown by your RFP: "does not deal with any tough issues of race or violence -- I'm looking for something .. filled with true-to-life detail."
What do you think real life is for cops?

I'm regretting my word choice, here. I should clarify: I'm playing a cop in a play that centers on the interpersonal foibles of small town cops. It's cuddly and light-hearted. So, the very narrow political scope of my research has to do with the content of the play and not with my point of view about how the world works.
posted by HeroZero at 5:00 AM on September 8, 2014