The Soul of a Cop

Ragonese, Paul; Stainback, Berry

ISBN 10: 0312045778 / ISBN 13: 9780312045777

Published by St Martins Pr (edition First Edition), 1991

With dust jacket. It's a well-cared-for item that has seen limited use. The item may show minor signs of wear. All the text is legible, with all pages included. It may have slight markings and/or highlighting. Seller Inventory # 0312045778-8-1-29

Synopsis:

Offers an inside account of life as a cop, describing what it is like to be a rookie on a graveyard shift, to rescue would be "jumpers," to defuse dynamite, and other hazards of police work

Reviews: By 1987, when Ragonese retired from the NYPD after 17 years of service, he'd won over 100 awards, making him the city's most- decorated cop. He won't win another for writing--even with the help of old-hand Stainback (Snake, 1986, etc.)--but his no-frills memoir does deliver plenty of action and a few sharp opinions. What Ragonese doesn't deliver on is the promise of the title. The soul of this cop is plumbed only uniform-deep (a typical reflective passage: ``Like most cops, I've gotten a bang out of arresting bad guys, but it would be nothing like I knew I'd feel rescuing good guys''). What we get instead is a fast-moving stream of the author's exploits, beginning with his most celebrated, keeping alive a woman trapped beneath a toppled construction crane in 1985. A flashback to his working-class Brooklyn boyhood follows, then a tracing of a glittering career in three divisions of the NYPD: an anticrime unit, where Ragonese caught bank robbers, shot a felon, and bucked for a detective's gold shield; EMS, where he grappled with ``jumpers,'' shot a crippled horse, helped a man crushed by a subway train to die with dignity, and finally got his gold shield; and the bomb squad, where he made two discoveries ``I've never been able to reveal publicly until now''--that, at Staten Island's infamous Willowbrook mental institution, he found (and was forced to cover up) a ``chamber of horrors'' strewn with body parts, and that he witnessed the NYPD using its Bronx firing range as a toxic-waste dump. The criticism of the NYPD implicit in both revelations is shadowed throughout, from bald accusations (``The NYPD has always denied that cops have to meet a quota of traffic summonses. That's a lie'') to gripes about office politics and potshots at fellow (pseudonymous) officers, adding spice to an otherwise straightforward chronicle. Meat and potatoes for hard-core cop fans. (Sixteen pages of b&w photos--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The story of Ragonese's 17 years with the New York Police Department reads like parts of Harvey Rachlin's The Making of a Cop ( LJ 2/1/91), Anthony Schiano's Solo: Self-Portrait of an Undercover Cop ( LJ 1/15/74), and Mark Baker's classic Cops: Their Lives in Their Own Words ( LJ 8/85). His is an exuberant tale of police training, camaraderie, and life on the job--from foot patrol to bomb squad to anti-terrorism to elite anti-crime. It was while working Emergency Services in 1985 that Ragonese added to New York City folklore by attending to a woman pinned dangerously under a crane. The medal he got for that episode was just one of many; promotion, however, was harder to come by. Ragonese speaks openly about this and other dissatisfactions, adding depth to his "as told to" account. For popular criminal justice collections.
-Janice Dunham, John Jay Coll. Lib., New York
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Soul of a Cop
Publisher: St Martins Pr (edition First Edition)
Publication Date: 1991
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
Edition: First Edition.