Drop the Pen! What Every Writer Should Know About Real Police Work

Stop Making Real Cops Cringe

By D.L. Williams

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I met my wife at a murder trial. She was a journalist covering the hearings of a man who’d blasted a guy and his girlfriend for stealing his favorite gun, and I was a detective who’d worked on the case. I wasn’t the lead in that investigation, but I’d found the bullets matching the caliber fired from the murder weapon, along with a picture of the suspect holding his treasured “street sweeper” shotgun in his best gangland tough-guy pose, while helping out on the search warrant. 

I remained composed during cross examination when I spotted her from the witness stand, but she was flipping gorgeous. It took concentration to testify about the laundry-piled, old shoe-smelling closet where I’d found the ammunition and photograph, all while thinking about those eyes and the cute way her hair was tucked behind her left ear. Police work can be so rough.

Hollywood makes it seem like detectives hang out after their testimony to watch the drama through the remainder of the trial, but reality is that caseloads generally demand we go back to work on that stack of other cases waiting on our desks. That day, however, I stuck around, hoping for a chance to meet the woman taking notes in the second row. She was the consummate professional, however, and would have little to do with a cop involved in a case she was covering. It worked out, though. Sometime later we had lunch…and grandkids. 

Recently we were watching a mystery on one of the streaming services. It was more cozy than thriller, not our usual fare, but we like the lead actress from previous series and decided to give it a try. The storyline follows a civilian employee working for a metropolitan police department who solves a murder case by scrutinizing a conspiracy board when all the cops had gone home for the night. Think of a brilliant but flawed Matt Damon staring at a wall of math while holding a push broom, the only one able to solve the equation in Good Will Hunting. 

The show was fine until the middle of the second act when the protagonist was chastised by her detective mentor for taking items out of an evidence locker without permission, ferrying them to her own home so she could have a closer look, and then allowing her precocious ten-year-old son to help her sift through said evidence to get his take on things. The only question for my wife and I at that point was who was closer to the remote. 

Last year I was asked to read an Advance Review Copy for a mystery/thriller author. The story involved a street-savvy investigator, yet the protagonist routinely performed in ways that made him appear naïve. One glaring instance had him realizing his gun had been stolen, and he presumed the murderer was now in possession of his one and only available weapon. Despite this, he continued on to confront this shadowy menace without backup or a weapon of any kind. We get it; he’s a tough guy who doesn’t need any help and moves faster than bullets. He’s also an idiot. 

That kind of decision is counter to any logical response, yet the character had been nothing but disciplined and well trained up to that point. He was not thinking like a cop anymore, and many regular readers of mystery or real-life criminal justice professionals would raise an eyebrow and move on to the next book in the To Be Read pile. 

Readers and viewers may suspend some disbelief over iffy police or investigative practices for a cozy mystery, less so for darker thrillers, and not at all for police procedurals. It’s perfectly fine to fudge a bit while creating red herrings and crafting unusual characters. What is not okay is to simply omit or obscure good procedure for lack of research or to spackle over a plot hole. Frankly, it comes off as lazy, unimaginative, or a bit desperate. 

Oftentimes this creates work that feels like a copy of a copy, as if the writer learned all they know about police work from other writers of mystery or from watching old cop shows—lots of “just the facts, ma’am,” and “ten-fours,” but very little in terms of well-researched practice. 

This would never fly in historical fiction. Readers of that genre demand well-researched details in novels and films, and they tend to be something of experts themselves when it comes to a specific historical period. Writers of mysteries and procedurals should rise to at least that level of expectation when it comes to their own projects. 

You don’t have to be a beat cop or detective to write good mysteries, but you owe it to the story, your readers, and your own reputation to better understand the culture and practices involved. Unconstitutional searches and seizures, derivative suspect interrogations, and clueless practices by experienced professionals scratch across prose like a record needle bouncing over vinyl tracks. 

Of course, that may be exactly what you had in mind if you’re developing a sinister or incompetent cop character. You may want to portray a detective as inept or corrupt, in which case folding an unconstitutional search or an abusive interrogation into the storyline may be just the direction you need to take. Even then, I encourage writers to cultivate an understanding of how cops think, the mindset of predators, and basic victimology. The result will be more nuanced and compelling character arcs.

I hear from writers across the country asking questions about specific passages in their stories, and I’m always honored to discuss ideas on how they can generate more authenticity into their works in progress. They often lament what they perceive as a lack of resources for learning more about police practices and culture. Many have a great premise but no clear direction on how to make the story ring true. 

There are many books on the subject of professional police work and best practices in criminal investigations. My suggestions for getting started include Criminology Goes to The Movies (Nicole Rafter and Michelle Brown), Walk the Blue Line (James Patterson), and Malicious Intent: A Writer’s Guide to How Murderer’s, Robbers, Rapists and Other Criminals Behave (Sean Mactire). 

Additionally, I encourage you to explore writing conferences offering speakers on topics related to the mystery genre. Time and finances for travel don’t need to hold you back. There are several online seminars devoted to teaching real police work for authors. Writers’ Police Academy, for example, offers an online version of their in-person conference. Better yet, go directly to the source. 

You may already know a cop or have access to one by a degree or two of separation. Set up coffee or lunch and pick that officer’s brain about scenes you’re crafting. Certainly, ask them questions pertaining to your plot, but I encourage you to take things a step further once you’ve developed some rapport. At that point you can try to open them up about their scariest day, a case they’re most proud of, or how they came to the profession. You’re likely to be amazed, and your notebook is going to be filled with new, adventurous ideas on where your story or series can go next. 

Consider riding along with a local police or sheriff’s department. Many agencies welcome members of the community to ride out with a patrol officer or deputy, allowing you to see, hear, smell, and sense real police work up close. The officers picked for such assignments tend to be more experienced, and most have demonstrated a willingness and ability to talk about their profession in vivid and frank terms.

Explore a citizen’s police academy if you want an even more immersive experience. This is a modified version of a real academy where you get hands-on experience with forensic techniques, clarity on constitutional concerns related to policing, a sampling of various services offered by the department, and some self-defense and firearms training. You’ll have a ball, make new friends, and add experts to your writing network.

I was an English Lit major, which means I wrote good police reports (extra points if I could work in a metaphor). It also means I will forever be in awe of great writing. I feel kinship with and reverence for storytellers and want each of us to rise beyond our own perceived abilities. The expectation I hold for myself is that I will treat our craft with the same discipline as a surgeon would for medicine or a dancer for music. That means we’re in a practice, where we acknowledge we will never learn enough, yet we can never stop trying to learn more. 

Writers shouldn’t prescribe paths for other writers. Voice is all about telling our stories in our own cadence and combinations. That said, I’m asking you to honor my former profession by learning about it, then honor yourself and your work by weaving what you’ve learned into extraordinary stories we celebrate and remember. Onward!

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David “D.L.” Williams is a public safety veteran with assignments including paramedicine, patrol in high-need areas, helicopter rescue, mental health liaison, and violent crime investigations as a detective. During his thirty-year career, Williams was twice named Officer of the Year by the Fraternal Order of Police, and he has been recognized by Rotary Club, the American Legion, and the National Coalition Against Sexual Violence for his work with families and children in crisis. He now teaches criminology at the University of Arkansas, and he is the bestselling author of Fighting for Her Life: What to do When Someone You Know is Being Abused and Textbooks, Not Targets: How to Prevent School Shootings in Your Community. He and his family have settled in the Ozark Mountains where they offer a haven for donkeys and horses who previously endured a rough life.

The Real Professor Moriarty

By Bradley Harper

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Professor Moriarty

Batman has the Joker, Superman battles Lex Luthor, and Sherlock Holmes faced Professor Moriarty. A hero is often defined by their nemesis, the villain who is their equal in every way and who, given one or two different choices in their life, could have been the hero.

During a transatlantic crossing, Arthur Conan Doyle fell into conversation with William Pinkerton and first heard of the real “Napoleon of Crime,” Adam Worth, though he bore many names during his life. Worth was a German American who fought briefly for the Union Army during the Civil War, faked his death during the second Battle of Bull Run, and for the remainder of the war enlisted in one regiment after another, pocketing the enlistment bonus of $1,000, then deserting to enlist into another regiment.

Once the war ended, he initially turned to pickpocketing and became quite accomplished. Not lacking in ambition, however, he soon branched out to bank robbery and became so successful he began planning and bankrolling the robberies himself. After breaking into a Boston bank from an adjoining shop, however (which calls to mind the plot of The Red-Headed League), and stealing cash and securities valued at $200,000, he fled to England with the Pinkertons in hot pursuit. 

Adam Worth

Worth adopted the name Henry J. Raymond, settled in London, and lived a lavish lifestyle which included running a string of racehorses and sailing in his steam yacht. His home became the meeting place of the leading thieves of America and Europe and a clearing house, or “receiver,” for most of the big robberies in Europe. In the latter 70s, and all during the 80s, one major theft followed another that implicated Adam Worth, but his involvement could never be proven.

Worth’s greatest crime was the theft of Thomas Gainsborough's painting of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, painted in the mid-1780s. It had been stolen before, but resurfaced in the 1830s and, after passing through various owners, was purchased in 1876 for 10,000 guineas by art dealer William Agnew. Agnew put it on display in his gallery, from where Worth and his henchmen stole it on the night of Thursday, the 25th of May 1876.

Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

When Worth saw the painting, he fell in love with it and decided to use it to bail an associate out of jail.  He intended to either sell the portrait or use it to force the owners of the gallery from which it had been stolen to pay the bail for his colleague. 

But the prisoner was released before Worth had a chance to contact the gallery, and Worth was left holding a portrait too well known to sell and that he wanted to keep for himself anyway. At the time, nobody knew who had taken the picture, though rumors pointed the finger at Worth. In 1892, he was arrested in Belgium for a botched robbery and sentenced to seven years hard labor.  While in prison, he was approached with offers of freedom if he would return the Gainsborough, but he always denied any knowledge of the painting. 

In 1899 after being released from prison, broken in health and penniless, Worth contacted William Pinkerton, agreeing to meet with him in America to discuss the disposition of the portrait, and ultimately it was returned for $25,000. When the picture was put up for sale in London shortly thereafter, J. P. Morgan purchased it for $150,000.  In 1994 it was purchased by the llth Duke of Devonshire and Georgiana now resides "at home" in the Chatsworth House collection.

After his return to England, Worth lived a quiet life with his two children until his death in 1902.  Unlike Holmes' Moriarty, Worth was completely opposed to violence. William Pinkerton described Worth in a posthumous pamphlet (Adam Worth, alias ‘Little Adam’, 1904) 

In all his criminal career, and all the various crimes he committed, ... he was always proud of the fact that he never committed a robbery where the use of firearms had to be resorted to, nor had he ever escaped, or attempted to escape from custody by force or jeopardizing the life of an official, claiming that a man with brains had no right to carry firearms, that there was always a way, and a better way, by the quick exercise of the brain.

Whether Worth was the model for Moriarty, it is clear that he was, like Doyle's creation, a master criminal sitting at the center of a web of crime in London.  Unlike Moriarty, he spent time in prison and was loyal to friends.  As Pinkerton comments in his pamphlet, "this man was the most remarkable criminal of them all."

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Bradley Harper is a retired US Army Colonel and pathologist who has performed over two-hundred autopsies and some twenty forensic death investigations. A life-long fan of Sherlock Holmes, he did intensive research for his debut novel, A Knife in the Fog, which involved a young Doctor Conan Doyle in the hunt for Jack the Ripper, including a trip to London’s East End with noted Jack the Ripper historian Richard Jones. Harper’s first novel was published in October 2018 and was a finalist for a 2019 Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel by an American Author and is a Recommended Read by the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate.

Knife went on to win Killer Nashville’s 2019 Silver Falchion as Best Mystery. The audio book, narrated by former Royal Shakespearean actor Matthew Lloyd Davies, won Audiofile Magazine’s 2019 Earphone award for Best Mystery and Suspense. The book is also available in Japan via Hayakawa Publishing.

His second novel, Queen’s Gambit, involving a fictional assassination attempt on Queen Victoria, Won Killer Nashville’s 2020 Silver Falchion Award twice, once for Best Suspense, and again as Book of the Year.

Truth Meter for Murder: The Interview

By Stephanie Dickinson

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"In real-world situations, it's very difficult to know what the truth is.”

Israeli psychologist Gershon Ben-Shahar

At the heart of Razor Wire Wilderness, my soon-to-launch true crime memoir, stands Krystal Riordan, then a 20-year-old prostitute who witnessed a horrific murder, and now a 35-year-old inmate. In July 2006, at the end of a hot, steamy night, her 36-year-old pimp/boyfriend Draymond Coleman brought Jennifer Moore, a teenage girl stranded after a night of underage drinking, to the seedy Weehawken, New Jersey hotel room that the two shared. Krystal saw her boyfriend punch Jennifer when she refused his sexual advances, and then continued to watch the escalating violence, the beating, the strangling, and the rape. Was she a willing accomplice, or was she too a victim? Draymond Coleman pled guilty to first degree murder and received a 50-year sentence. His release date: January 23, 2049. Krystal pled guilty to kidnapping and hindering apprehension and received a 30-year sentence. Her release date: October 25, 2027. 

Now, almost 15 years later, the question remains unanswered. Perpetrator or victim? Was she a willing accomplice, or was she too a victim? Or was she both accomplice and victim? Perhaps it’s not the right question or series of questions. Draymond Coleman refuses to be interviewed, although he occasionally writes Krystal: You never turned your back on me. You’re where you are because of my stupidity. And then, most disconcerting: Even after our arrest, your letters were always–I love you, I love you, I love you… What truth lies behind those words? Or the following from Krystal: I froze. I thought I would be next. Does truth smell like sweat and Clorox? He snapped, and then he snapped back. The sweat of the murderer and the Clorox used to wipe DNA from the body. I froze. 

Finding the truth for the writer is ultimately not the same as the truth-seeking done by the police or by a prosecuting attorney; the writer is looking for a more nuanced truth, something that works toward explaining the inexplicable. Often, those who know the perpetrator, the character witnesses, are interviewed not to corroborate evidence but to shift the focus, to introduce us to the variegated person they know, to render a fuller, more intimate picture. Draymond babysat for my daughter. He was a big teddy bear. For more substantiation, the police reports are scrutinized. Police look for certainty in either the circumstantial evidence or a confession that will lead to a conviction. Writers want to know what lies behind the corroborated, adjudicated truth. The interior, the unadorned, the bone truth. 

How are we to interview an inmate about the crime they were sentenced for? Must they exonerate themselves to themselves? Are they running through a mental checklist of what and who they have revealed the truth to? It matters less how we interview the subject, whether in person or via video/audio or email, than providing a safe emotional space that puts our subject at ease. Krystal, my subject, is an eyewitness as well as a perpetrator. She underwent 14 hours of initial interrogation. Eyewitness testimony often leads not to truth but to misidentification and falsehood. The Innocence Project points out that inaccurate eyewitness testimony is the leading cause of false convictions. We are running up against the notorious tricks of memory. Perhaps the telling and re-telling opens the door to creating false memories. 

“Can we believe that she was remorseful? Not after viewing the video. She left the room at will numerous times.” 

–Candida Moore, Victim Impact Statement

The grainy hotel video captures Krystal leaving the murder room on numerous occasions. I always did what he told me to do. I was weak-minded. No one who witnessed the crime is independent. The video camera turns out to be the most credible witness, free of bias and emotion. The truth meter grapples with I saw it with own eyes. Human memory is porous, the holes plugged with filler. Experts tell us we can’t possibly take in all the minutia around us, so the brain fills in the details. 

Trauma degrades the clarity of memory. I was mugged inside my building, and afterward, I rode with the police through the neighborhood, looking for the perpetrators. I had described two men, the taller one wearing a red sweatshirt. On the police radio, we learned that two men had been apprehended after another mugging, minutes after mine had occurred, and were being held on Greenwich Avenue by the arresting officers. The taller man stood under the streetlights, and I saw he wore a brown jacket, not a red sweatshirt. Instead, he had on red sweatpants. The chrome handgun tossed into the bushes linked the men to a series of muggings, including mine. Why had I been so sure of the red sweatshirt? The men had pushed me down in the stairwell, and I was at eye level with the red sweatpants. I saw red. But what if someone’s future depended wholly on the accuracy of that red sweatshirt?

The interview, including the self-interview, has always fascinated me in its many hybrid forms. I conducted a fictional interview with a noir actress from the 1960s in my book Heat: An Interview with Jean Seberg. (New Michigan Press). Seemingly chronological, the questions evolved into something more circular, i.e., the actress interrogating herself and colliding with the existential question of whether or not you can even know your own truth. My friend Andrew Kaufman’s poetry collection The Rwanda Poems will soon appear, and since he had conducted extensive face-to-face interviews in Rwanda with a number of genocide survivors, rape victims, perpetrators falsely accused, and perpetrators convicted of horrifically murderous acts, I asked him about his technique. Considering he spoke to both victims and perpetrators, was the testimony itself the sought-after truth? The speech? Did his approach differ when it came to perpetrators? He approached both initially the same in a kind of getting-acquainted approach, asking about the subject’s childhood, family, life experiences, school, work, and favorite activities. Then, in the case of perpetrators, the questions would narrow, becoming more pointed and specific. 

Perhaps we should all try interviewing exercises, a self-interview, we become our own mock lie detectors. We can look at memory not as something fixed but a fluidity, often a matter of perception. 

In reviewing my first letters to Krystal, I discovered that my technique and Andrew’s initially followed a similar path. Tell me about yourself: What is your favorite color? Do you like animals? What kind of music do you listen to? What are your favorite foods? I then told her all my favorites. 

Later, I could ask:

Q: I know you and Draymond have a child together. Do you have any contact with the child? 

Q: Did having a child with him make it difficult for you to testify against him?

Much later:

Q:  Could Jennifer have left the room alive if she had stopped resisting Draymond?

A:  Jennifer was no match for Draymond.

Q: Did Jennifer walk into the room willingly, or did Draymond carry her in?

A: Jennifer was doing cocaine.

I questioned the validity of both answers. In Jennifer’s last cell phone call to her boyfriend, she states, “A man keeps following me, and he’s offering me drugs.” What I don’t question in Krystal’s answers are the deeper truths about her inner world that her few words reveal. In the beginning, I could not fathom how a young woman who had the ability to leave the murder room would not run for help. Now I understand I do not condone or excuse, and it is not my place to forgive. Through interviews, I know Krystal both as perpetrator and victim. Never did she consider testifying against her ex-boyfriend, the now-convicted murderer. Although Draymond Coleman has promised on numerous occasions to give his statement to exonerate Krystal, he never has.

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Stephanie Dickinson, raised on an Iowa farm, now lives in New York City with the poet Rob Cook and their senior citizen feline, Vallejo. Her novels “Half Girl” and “Lust Series” are published by Spuyten Duyvil, as is her feminist noir “Love Highway.” Other books include “Heat: An Interview with Jean Seberg” (New Michigan Press); “Flashlight Girls Run” (New Meridian Arts Press); “The Emily Fables” (ELJ Press); and “Big-Headed Anna Imagines Herself” (Alien Buddha). She has published poetry and prose in literary journals including Cherry Tree, The Bitter Oleander, Mudfish, Another Chicago Magazine, Lit, The Chattahoochee Review, The Columbia Review, Orca and Gargoyle, among others. Her stories have been reprinted in New Stories from the South, New Stories from the Midwest, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. She received distinguished story citations in Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays and numerous Pushcart anthology citations. In 2020, she won the Bitter Oleander Poetry Book Prize with her “Blue Swan/Black Swan: The Trakl Diaries.” To support the holy flow, she has long labored as a word processor for a Fifth Avenue accounting firm.