Books
The Chieftain
Victorian true crime through the eyes of one of Scotland Yard’s first detectives
by Chris Payne
The History Press 2011 http://www.thehistorypress.co.
Paperback, 288 pages, $19.95
ISBN 978-0-7524-5667-6
Reviewed by G C Thorburn
The Chieftain by Chris Payne is an excellent read as well as being an authoritative and well researched historical document. The book shows the day to day life of one of the first eight Detectives in Scotland Yard, George Clarke who was the author’s great, great, grandfather. Its historical accuracy and detailed descriptions of public hangings, murders, scams and fraudsters give a vivid snapshot of what life would have been like in Victorian London between 1818 and 1900.
A Policeman today would be astonished at the authority and responsibility these officers had. Although there were rules and regulations the force then was an organisation that relied on dedication, long hours and hard methodical police work as well as a fair amount of intuitive insight. Clarke was locking up murderers and chasing Fenians and dealing with arson and the blowing up of buildings. His work took him to New York in a "dash" across the Atlantic in the new steam ship City of Manchester in pursuit of a murdering German who was travelling by Victoria, a sailing ship which took 20 days longer than the steamship to cross the pond.
His work also took him to Hamburg, Amsterdam and all over Great Britain, something that very few policemen would do nowadays. The fraudsters and sharp betting men encountered shows that many of the scams would fit into the 21st century as easily as they did the 19th. In fact dealing with fraudsters and dodgy bookies got Clarke into serious trouble and almost got him sacked.
Clarke was a remarkable character born into a humble countryman background and at the age of 21 joining the London Metropolitan Police in 1840. He was a beat officer for 13 years when the average beat was between 2 and 7.5 miles long. He was then promoted to sergeant and in 1862 at the age of 43 he became a Detective Sergeant.
Any serious scholar of policing and life in Victorian England as never seen before should read this book.
The Chieftain would also make a great fiction/faction character along the lines of a real live Sherlock Holmes or modern day Morse.
For more information, see the author's web site at www.chrispaynebooks.com
Code Blood
Author Kurt Kamm has experienced wildfire first hand, not as a firefighter but as a resident of Malibu, California, where his experience in several devastating local wildfires have colored the subject matter of his writing. By attended classes at the El Camino Fire Academy as well as training sessions in arson investigation and hazardous materials response, Kamm has educated himself in firefighting technology and operations which have given his books a strong degree of verisimilitude.
Kamm’s first novel was a wildland firefighter’s story called One Foot in the Black, a story about a helitack firefighter struggling to overcome traumatic stress. The book was quickly followed by Red Flag Warning, a mystery novel about a serial arsonist setting the parched Los Angeles hills aflame while LA County arson investigators struggle to find the fire-setter and stop the devastation. Kamm’s latest novel is Code Blood, an engrossing mystery about of a fire paramedic searching for a woman's foot, stolen after it was severed in an automobile accident. Moving from the rural wildlands to the urban world of downtown Los Angeles, Code Blood is an exciting noir mystery that immerses the reader in a world of emergency medicine, stem cell research, and the black market for body parts, a very intriguing canvas for this fast-paced story to spread across.
Kamm writes informally but grippingly, with a cinematic narrative style in which choice words and punctuation become the editing and focus of his literary camera. The book is a compelling mystery with the added bonus of a sense of credibility for the public safety professional reader. Enthusiastically recommended
Click here to read our exclusive interview with Kurt Kamm about the writing of Code Blood.
Self-Reliance during Natural Disasters and Civil Unrest, Revised & Updated Edition
When a disaster or civil disturbance occurs, firefighters, police officers, and paramedics can quickly become overburdened with too many requests to handle simple emergencies – emergencies that most of us should be able to handle ourselves. During a major disaster, communities will have to be self-reliant, including the public safety community, since emergency responders will be unable to respond to every request for assistance. This newly updated and comprehensive book provides the knowledge to handle nine basic crises that typically follow a disaster and motivates readers to assist their families and neighbors should a large-scale catastrophe strike their community.
Originally published in 2007, the author, retired fire department captain George R. Bradford, has thoroughly upd
ated the book with additional tools and guidelines for the civilian “immediate responder” - ordinary citizens operating at their own homes or businesses who are willing and able to provide the most timely action during those critical first few moments following an emergency, before the availability of government public safety responders (which, during a major event, may be delayed).
Bradford, who is retired from the San Jose Fire Department, helped developed the agency’s incident dispatch team, is a long-time advocate of mutual aid training. The book is packed with hundreds of hands-on techniques and tips for disaster firefighting on your own, civilian search and rescue with light tools, vehicle rescue and firefighting, controlling utilities to prevent new problems, salvage and decontamination for home and business owners, and evacuation do’s and don’ts.
This is not just another book on stockpiling food and water. It is a crash course in the types of tasks normally handled by professional emergency-response personnel. Intended for a lay audience as well as emergency responders seeking to be self-sufficient when off the job and at home, Bradford shows readers how to evaluate each situation rationally and confidently and decide when to handle the emergency on their own and when to call the authorities for help. The new material added to this revised edition increases its value to civilians, neighborhood emergency service coordinators, emergency managers, and public safety personnel. New segments include instructions for sandbagging, guidelines for clearing rubble with chainsaws, protecting health during salvage operations, incorporating modern options into post-disaster communications plans, handling traumatic injuries without professional medical assistance, coordinating the longer-term efforts of citizen teams, police and firefighters, and government disaster-response personnel in the days and weeks following the event.
In these time of ongoing and potential disasters both natural and human-caused, it is becoming increasingly evident that, at the very least in the short-run, civilians will need to assume responsibility for the safety and welfare of their own homes and neighborhoods; public safety first responders are going to be stretched thin and will be forced to prioritize their emergency response. Thus, prepared citizens will need to be self-reliant in many areas of post-disaster mitigation an
Also available as a companion booklet is a pocket-sized Emergency Action Guide, a condensed guide that serves as a checklist and/or reminder for the many key points needed to address the most common problems encountered following a everyday accident or a natural disaster. This 90 page (4”x 6”) guide is not intended to replace the full text of the book, but simply act as an easy to carry, quick reference checklist for the key points of typical operations. The covers are laminated to protect the booklet during harsh use.
The Emergency Action Guide is $19.00 each.
To order either or both, see: immediateresponder.org
Former police commander's memoir explores issues of race, age discrimination in Sacramento law enforcement system
Middle Aged White Boy
In "Middle Aged White Boy Michael Shaw tackles the controversial subjects of race and age discrimination, and its evolution from the 1960s to today. Based on his own experiences, readers follow the former Sacramento police commander's adventures in the dangerous world of law enforcement during this tumultuous political period.
When Shaw started his law enforcement career on September 13, 1965, he had no idea how the rising tide of political change would affect his career. He explains his involvement in the violent protests for equal rights and how he, along with the entire Sacramento Police Department, worked extensively to keep peace in the community. He saw how heated discussions and demands for civil rights resulted in a rapid increase in crime and street rioting which injured both men and women and brought the entire community to its knees.
Shaw never thought that 28 years later he'd be fighting for his own rights and fair treatment from the department to which he had dedicated his life. He describes how as the result of an election for mayor in June of 1992, high-ranking politicians and city officials were replaced in the city of Sacramento. Under the guise of affirmative action, Shaw contends, ethics and fairness were destroyed by the new administration's attitude of ethnocentricity and unrealistic policies.
"Discriminatory practices and harassment were used in tactics that caused the replacement of older Caucasian male officers with younger officers and/or minorities. Any fairness," says Shaw, "was torn apart and the entire police department spiraled into chaos."
Amidst the growing darkness, the author's Christian faith and his wife Linda became his only safe harbor. With friends and family still working in the department, they turned to the courts to battle against the discrimination that had claimed Shaw's health and destroyed the upper management ranks of the department. Win or lose, they decided to take the issue all the way to federal court.
"Middle Aged White Boy" is available for purchase at Amazon.com and other channels.
For more information, www.middleagedwhiteboy.com
About the Author: Michael Shaw is a retired police commander who worked for nearly 30 years in Sacramento, California. Throughout his career, he held the positions of officer, sergeant, homicide supervisor, SWAT lieutenant, narcotics division captain and commander of one half of the department's patrol forces. He was involved in keeping the peace in the city during the civil rights movement, and throughout the rest of his career working in many capacities with all segments of the Sacramento community. He worked primarily with victims on the streets of the city. He is now retired and lives with his wife, Linda, and dog, Mr. Murphy, near Placerville, California.
- Books/9-1-1magazine.com (via Michael Shaw, 10/5/11)
How Your Words and Actions Affect People in Medical Distress
Brian E. Walsh, PhD of WalshSeminars.com has produced a valuable handbook designed to help emergency response professionals sharpen their professional communication skills.
Professional emergency responders well trained to handle an extensive array of crises. Their intense and stressful work environment can cause depersonalization of casualties and victims, with potentially negative consequences. During an emergency, rescue training can save lives. An often unrecognized element is one of the most powerful: the responder’s interpersonal communication skills.
The public safety responder’s words have a much greater influence on the welfare of patients and other public contacts than they may ever realize. What is said and how it is said can either help or hinder your patients’ recovery.
With Walsh’s book, emergency responders will:
The book is a short and easy read, which makes it ideal for quick reference and review. It’s focused on EMS issues but much of what he says can be applied to other aspects of emergency response and field incident management. Walsh’s advice is equally of value to those members of the response community for whom words is especially essential: the responders’ 9-1-1 telecommunicatiors and radio dispatchers.
See: www.ercommskills.com
By Kelly R. Rasmussen, MS, ENP
By Anthony DePalma
This scientific, medical, political, and legal scope of the 9/11 disaster in NYC has not hitherto been examined in this amount of comprehensive detail. DaPalma shares the personal experiences of responders and local New Yorkers alike whose lives and health have been affected by the dust ever since that bright Tuesday morning. From a public safety standpoint, the hundreds of local and federally-activated responders who poured into Ground Zero after the attacks to attempt rescue and recovery are still dealing with potentially long-term health effects of their service, and the term “World Trade Center cough” has, sadly, fallen into the public safety vernacular, making DePalma’s book, and its suggestions for change when it happens again, especially relevant.
By Gina Russo with Paul Lonardo
By Mike Smith
From early attempts to forecast and develop means to warn communities of potential tornados in the 1930s and 1940s to the latest forms of satellite radar and intricate computer storm analysis that have been employed for Hurricane Katrina and since, Smith delineates the confluence of technology and training that make up the modern storm spotter. Understanding makes a thing less threatening, so by understanding weather’s capacity for fury, Smith is able to accommodate insights into keeping meteorology and public safety alike one step ahead of the deadly winds, and allow science and safety to keep communities protected. Smith is a masterful storyteller and his narrative is both readable and gripping; Warnings is a perfect storm of history, insight, and advice as interesting for the meteorologist as for the first responder and emergency manager.
By Janice Hudson
By Bryan Conner
By Mike Kinkaid
By Kurt Kamm
MCM Publishing www.mcmpublishing.com, January, 2012.
Paperback, 232 pages, $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-9798551-2-2
By George R. Bradford
Paperback, 202 pages, 242 pictures, 41 illustrations.
Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 2011. $26.95
d recovery. This book is the first step in educating the prepared and willing immediate responder. It is well-illustrated and easy to follow, both as an invaluable and across-the-board overview of personal, family, and community disaster preparedness, and an important reference to keep handy and refer to. Public safety personnel as well will find this a useful resource for the safety and proactive self-reliance of their families in times of disaster.
Michael Shaw
Create Space, 2011
394 pages, paperback, $19.95
ISBN 146361778X
Emergency Responder Communication Skills Handbook
By Brian E. Walsh, PhD
Victoria, BC: Walsh Seminars, 2010.
Paperback, 80 pages. $14.95
9-1-1, Who Will Answer the Call?
Charlotte, NC: OMNI Book Publishing, 2009
Paperback, 140 pages, $18.95.
Involved with the 9-1-1 industry since 1986, Kelly R. Rasmussen rose through the ranks from 9-1-1 dispatcher to director and is now an international speaker and author and CEO of Success Communications, Inc., a notable provider of 9-1-1 related training courses. 9-1-1, Who Will Answer the Call takes Kelly’s two decade’s worth of experience behind the 9-1-1 console, as a 9-1-1 Center manager, and as a 9-1-1 trainer and boils it down into 140 pages of entertaining, educational, and often inspiring reading. Public safety telecommunicators will surely recognize the types of calls Kelly relates while gaining insight into communication skills, which are shared through anecdotes, training exercises, and examples of calls both hypothetical and real. The names of Rasmussen’s chapters give an idea of the book’s format and the type of communication skills she feels are most important: Courage, Compassion, Resolve, Endurance, Companionship, Empathy, Fear, Hope, and the like. The book exemplifies the types of calls dispatchers answer and gives readers an overall view of the career of the 9-1-1 dispatcher while also outlining advancements in 9-1-1 call-taking technology. It’s both a funny and heartwarming recollection for the veteran and an inspiring and instructional guidebook for the recruit and the advancing dispatcher – and their managers.
City of Dust: Illness, Arrogance, and 9/11
Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press, 2010
340 pages, hardcover, $25.99
Of the many books focusing on the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center (the attack on the Pentagon, BTW, being neglected to just one or two books), this new volume from New York Times reporter Anthony DePalma is the first to fully account of the environmental disaster that flew in on the wake of those hijacked airplanes. Beginning with the respiratory impact the massive clouds of dust did as they lingered through the weeks of search and rescue in the immediate aftermath of the towers’ collapse, DePalma focuses on health issues (“Even with the most advanced science, we do not yet know what the wicked concoction of dust, ash, and toxic materials did when it landed deep inside the heaving lungs of responders…” he writes in his introduction) and, perhaps more significantly, local and federal government decisions made to minimize the potential danger in order to restore New York City to full operation (“a long sequence of individual decisions – some made in haste, some made with arrogance – favored the recovery of the city over the recovery of its people.”). By seeming necessity, recovery was put ahead of precaution in order to restore New York City and resume a sense of normalcy, with "no time for the great city to dwell on what the long-term impact of the dust might be."
From The Ashes: Surviving the Station Nightclub Fire
West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing, 2010.
190 pages, paperback, $14.95
The fire at The Station, a flam metal night club in West Warwick, Rhode Island, that occurred on February 20, 2003, is considered the fourth deadliest nightclub fire in American history, killing 100 people and pyrotechnics set off by the performing band’s tour manager ignited flammable materials. Gina Russo was there that night, and was one of the lucky ones in the crowded club to escape with her life. Joined by writer Paul Lonardo, their book describes the events of that night in a riveting narrative that makes the book both a quick read and an exciting true-life drama. While 100 people lost their lives, including the band’s lead guitarist, many more were physically or emotionally scarred by the flames; Russo and Lonardo examine what happened from a tactical standpoint, as Russo saw it, which is perhaps the book’s most interesting angle for the public safety community; but by personalizing the victims – both deceased and surviving – From The Ashes honors the dead and becomes Russo’s personal story of tragedy and triumph as she seeks to find some meaning within the events of that February night. It’s a moving and powerful journal.
Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather
Austin, TX: Greenleaf Book Group LLC, 2010.
312 pages, hardcover/paperback, $24.95
Author Mike Smith, a pioneering meteorologist and the CEO of Weather-Data Services, Inc. (see his story on “Storm Spotting” in our Sept/Oct 2008 issue, and his new article on “The Importance of Storm Spotting” posted on our Web Portal), traces the evolution of weather forecasting and advanced warning systems, illuminating the scientists whose breakthroughs have led to such technological advances and measuring systems such as the Fujita Scale for tornados. The book takes a journey into the hearts and minds of those who – like Smith – have dedicated lives and careers to the study and understanding of storm spotting and methods to predict and
Trauma Junkie: Memoirs of an Emergency Flight Nurse
Updated & Expanded Edition
Richmond Hill, Ontario: Firefly Books Ltd.
272 pages, paperback, $19.95
Emergency flight nursing is said to be one of the most gruesome and emotionally draining jobs in the world, but the adrenalin rush of being in the air, racing to an emergency, the exhilaration of saving a life are the highs of the job; while the emotional lows of seeing a life slip through your fingers are among its lowest lows. The men and women who gravitate to this kind of work, like other species of public safety and emergency response, call themselves “trauma junkies” because they thrive on danger and stress, and they do their best in the midst of chaotic, critical, and high-pressure environments. Janice Hudson has spent a career in these kinds of environments, ten years as a flight nurse with CALSTAR (California Shock/Trauma Air Rescue), one of the nation’s leading medevac services; even longer as an ER nurse. In this expanded version of her original 2001 edition, Russo brings the reader along in her shoes for a ride-along in the trauma ward and the jump seat of the CALSTAR helicopter, experiencing the job first hand from the author’s recollections; it’s both her personal story into and (eventually, due to her own battle with multiple sclerosis) out of the life of a trauma junkie, and an examination of the team environment that, with military precision, keeps emergency rooms and medevac flights saving lives.
Tales from a Blue Box: Tales from a Black Country Copper
Central Milton Keyes, UK: Authorhouse, 2010.
326 pages, paperback, $17.66.
Soon-to-be retired police officer Bryan Connor recounts a successful thirty year career with the British Police Service in this entertaining and insightful novel, providing a fascinating look at the day to day life of a British copper, based on selected extracts from the more interesting and humorous stories he noted down following his tours of duty. While police work is police work, Britain has had a unique history of law enforcement which is vividly relayed in this journal-based narrative. Connor, in a very informal and fireside chat-style of writing, relates some of the tricky situations, embarrassing moments and uncomfortable episodes that quite often arise when locals and visitors alike in the busy Borough of Sandwell in the West Midlands of England decided to breach the laws laid down by Her Majesties Government. Through hearty humor tinged with just a hint of sarcasm and infused with a wealth of peculiar characters, Conner extracts some of the more notable episodes in his past, letting readers in on some of the more unique incidents that he and his British colleagues have had to deal with over the years.
Alaska & Beyond
Fairbanks/Coeur d’Alene: Adventurous Books, 2009.
260 pages, paperback, $17.50
A former state trooper with the Alaska Department of Public Safety, Mike Kinkaid brings the insight of his experience into this exciting detective novel taking place on his home frontier. Second in a series of adventure-mysteries build around his character of Alaska Trooper Jack Blake (the first was 2007’s Alaska Justice), Kinkaid expands his Alaskan horizons to parlay a murder mystery beyond our 50th State’s boundaries while focusing on what makes law enforcement so unique in Alaska. Kinkaid maintains an informal, easy-going writing style that takes off with the speed of a 1930’s movie serial and all the plot twists and turns that such storytelling would imply. Alaska & Beyond captures a whirlwind cinematic pacing and the personal experience of a real Alaskan law enforcement officer to make sure the adventures of Trooper Blake ring true. Equal parts investigation and action, Alaska & Beyond is tons of fun – an exciting ride and a compelling mystery.
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