Gina Gallo

A fine book to read if you want to know about the cop's life - especially those in Chicago. I was left admiring them and yet wanting to avoid them. You never know whether you're dealing with a good one or a bad one.

Gallo is a fine writer, and this memoir is funny and sad by turns. She captures the first strange days of the rookie, the daily maneuvering of politics (something women must pay especially close attention to if they want to survive), and the numbing horror of seeing evil day in and day out. Eventually her cop career ended due to a suspect beating her with a bat. Her partner, a rookie, ran out the door without firing a shot, leaving Gallo to shoot the man who was trying to kill her. By that time, it seems she was suffering from PTSD, something cops in the big city cannot escape.

But most of all, I think, her memoir is full of compassion for her fellow compatriots, the women and men out in the trenches who are basically dealing with scum every day. The stories got a little wearing after a while, but if she could live it, I could read it. I can only imagine what she went through when she served the city of Chicago. After reading this, I'm looking at Chicago politics in a much more skeptical light.

… (lisätietoja)

Interesting book that is a collection of anecdotes arranged loosely by topic and chronologically, from being a rookie, to being on patrol in a dangerous neighborhood, to being one of the first women to be assigned to a tac squad (plainclothes street cops targeting criminals in high crime areas). It's very good at providing insight into the reason the blue line is so hard to cross - the 'nobody else could possibly understand' is very clearly demonstrated, as are the physical and emotional injuries inflicted on a daily basis - but at the same time she doesn't soft-pedal the fact that there's a fair amount of bad behavior among cops, such as lifting cash and valuables from the homes of dead people or divvying up the clothes of people who have been taken to the morgue. Some of it's pretty distressing, and some of it seems almost callous - the indifference and stupidity and mindless violence of the residents of the poor and crime-ridden neighborhood where she works is not contextualized or excused, which makes it seem as if she takes it as a given that these communities contain a high proportion of worthless human beings. But it's an honest account and does a good job of conveying one woman's perspective in a very brutal and macho world.… (lisätietoja)