Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Paul Bacon

Former NYPD patrolman Paul Bacon is the author of Bad Cop: New York’s Least Likely Police Officer Tells All (Bloomsbury USA). Booklist called his memoir, “wonderful…a vivid and insightful tale,” and the NYC Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association Magazine said it’s “riotously funny and deadly accurate.”

A few days ago I asked him what he was reading. His reply:
I’m currently reading Circle of Six: The True Story of New York's Most Notorious Cop Killer and The Cop Who Risked Everything to Catch Him by NYPD Detective Randy Jurgensen and Robert Cea. It’s a gut-wrenching account of how city and police officials in 1972 stymied an investigation into the murder of patrolman Phillip Cardillo, who was shot in the line of duty inside a Harlem mosque. Many of the events took place in the same beleaguered command where I worked, the Two-eight. More than thirty years after Officer Cardillo’s death, I saw unauthorized “Remember Cardillo” stickers plastered around our station house, a show of eternal solidarity and defiance that I am only now beginning to understand thanks to Jurgensen’s brilliant reporting.
Learn more about Bad Cop and its author at Paul Bacon's website.

--Marshal Zeringue