They Wrote the Dam Story!

 

A drive down a dirt road overgrown with tall weeds, honeysuckle, and goldenrod revealed an old water and rust-stained dam, a deserted factory engulfed in vines, and a secret fishing spot. In all the quiet it was easy to imagine smoke billowing from the stacks, water rushing over the dam, and a line of workers standing in line to punch a time clock. Nevermore.

Nowadays, in addition to being the spot for catfishing, the off-the-beaten-path location is a breeding ground for fictional murder, macabre hiding spots for imaginary dead bodies, and an idea prompt for a popular 200-word short story contest.

 

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2013 Writers’ Police Academy Golden Donut Short Story Contest

 

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The rules were simple—write a story featuring the image we provided. The catch—the story must be told in exactly 200 words.

As always, we received a mountain of entries. And, each story we received was a nicely-told tale. But there could be only one winner.

So, without further ado, let’s bring Joe Bonsall of the Oak Ridge Boys to center stage to announce the winner of the 2013 Golden Donut Short Story Contest.

The Echo

by Nancy Sweetland

I told my psychiatrist I was coming back here to banish my demons, stop the bad dreams.

He said he’d come along.

I wondered why he cared.

Mama’s long dead, an unsolved homicide. But if I remember anything to identify her killer even after all these years, I know I’ll end my misery.

Inside the rusted, screechy gate, my psychiatrist says, “There’s nothing here to help you remember.”

But he’s wrong! I catch my breath. In this dingy, unkempt area behind the abandoned building the haunting memory of a deep, coaxing voice echoes off the stark cement walls.

I shiver.

“Look under the stairs,” I say. Someone huddles there, shaking, tears rivering down his face.

Me.

Six years old.

Hiding from the man that hit my mama, bloodied her face, twisted her arm, made her scream. I hear the echo of his voice, wheedling, “Come on out, Kid. I won’t hurt you.”

I know that voice, so familiar to me now. Fury boiling up from years of lies, I step toward my psychiatrist.

I know now why he cares about my memories.

Know who he is.

Know how I can banish my demons, make the bad dreams stop.

Nancy Sweetland

www.nancysweetland.com

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The 2016 Golden Donut Short Story Contest is OPEN! For details click the link below.

Golden Donut

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Friday’s Heroes: Remembering the Fallen

Friday's Heroes - Remembering the fallen officers

 

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Officer Scott Fitzgerald, 32

South Jacksonville Illinois Police Department

March 4, 2016 – Officer Scott Fitzgerald was killed in a vehicle crash while en route to a medical call.

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Trooper Sean E. Cullen, 31

New Jersey State Police

March 8, 2016 – Trooper Sean E. Cullen was killed when he was struck by a vehicle while assisting at a car fire with injuries.

He is survived by his 9-month-old son and fiancee.

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Literary Agent Scott Hoffman: Don’t Let A Glock Kill Your Book

When Lee asked me if I would do a guest blog entry for him and this fabulous site, I jumped at the opportunity. I figured that not only would it be a lot of fun, it would also be an opportunity to give readers a little bit of an insight into the mind of a publishing industry insider, and in the process, maybe pass along a little useful advice.

As a literary agent who represents a fair amount of both fiction and nonfiction that often deals with police procedure, crime scene investigation, and forensics—and as a reader obsessed with the genre—I often find fairly glaring errors in writers’ descriptions of the way things happen in the real world.

Here’s the question—Does it matter? Is it going to harm your chances of getting your book published if you don’t dot every “I” and cross every “T” when it comes to ensuring the accuracy of your work?

The answer: yeah, probably.

Here’s why. Publishing, to a large extent is a gigantic numbers game. Top literary agents get besieged by submissions. I would say that, on average, great agents get anywhere between 250 and 500 query letters a week. That’s a lot of letters. 500 query letters a week times four weeks in a month equals 2000 queries in a month. 2000 queries in a month times 12 months in a year equals 24,000 queries in a year.

And remember—it’s not a literary agent’s job to read query letters. An agent’s job is to sell books for his or her clients. To the extent we read query letters at all, it’s only when we have extra time, and there’s room on our client lists. Some agents like me will only sign one or two new clients a year. So when we’re looking for a needle in a haystack, we don’t have much time to spend on writers who aren’t experts in their subject.

Here’s a dirty little secret about the way I (and most of the other people in the publishing industry) read material from people we don’t have a preexisting professional relationship with, whether it’s query letters, sample chapters, or an entire manuscript from a client we’re considering taking on.

Basically, we read until we CAN stop—and then we do.

So, if your initial letter to us has a typo in the first line, that’s easy. Pass. And onto query number 12,467.

The same goes for technical details. I can’t tell you how many writers have their studly main characters using their thumb to “flip the safety off” on their Glock 17 before wasting a bad guy or “breaking open” a “Mossberg pump-action” shotgun to reload it.

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These are just the mistakes that *I* catch. I’m hardly a firearms expert; I shudder to think how many errors I *don’t* see that people who read this blog shake their heads over.

So how can you use this phenomenon to your advantage?

Well, readers of crime fiction like to feel smart. To the extent that you can debunk closely-held myths in the course of your writing, agents, editors, and ultimately readers will love it. If you can tell readers how things REALLY happen—as opposed to the way they look on TV, it will give your work a feeling of authenticity that’s often missing in crime fiction (and nonfiction.)

So—here’s my challenge to you, faithful blog readers. When you read crime fiction, what are your pet peeves? What do writers get wrong? What are the most glaring errors you’ve seen? Who are the most egregious offenders?

Scott Hoffman

FOLIO Literary Management, LLC

www.foliolit.com

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A refugee from the world of politics, Scott Hoffman is one of the founding partners of Folio Literary Management, LLC. Prior to starting Folio, Scott was at PMA Literary and Film Management, Inc.

He has served as Vice-chairman of the Board of Directors of SEARAC (the only nationwide advocacy agency for Southeast Asian-Americans), a Board Member of Fill Their Shelves, Inc. (a charitable foundation that provides books to children in sub-Saharan Africa) and a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Young Associates Steering Committee.

Before entering the world of publishing, he was one of the founding partners of Janus-Merritt Strategies, a Washington, DC strategic consulting firm. He holds an MBA from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, and a BA from the College of William and Mary.

*This article is a Throwback Thursday repost from 2008.

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Using Pine Trees to Solve Murders

 

Killers often hide the bodies of their victims in dense, wooded areas. To further conceal the remains, they often cover them with brush, leaves, dirt, and other handy material and debris. They use leafy tree branches to erase their footsteps and tire tracks. They drive stolen cars with stolen license plates attached to mask their identities while delivering the bodies of their victims to their hidden grave sites. And, of course, they sometimes wear masks while committing their crimes.

However, no matter how well-hidden those bodies may be, they’re often discovered by hunters, hikers, and even kids playing in the woods. A quick phone call to the police brings out the detectives, the medical examiner, and a gaggle of crime scene investigators. Soon the names of suspects begin to float among the officials and, as a result of intensive clue-gathering, the list is narrowed down and the key players are questioned.

Sometimes, investigators have a difficult time connecting a suspect to the place where the victim’s body was discovered, which, of course, is the final piece to the puzzle. The piece that nails the door shut for a conviction.

Here’s where “Detective Pine Tree” enters the picture.

Obviously a pine tree cannot become an actual police detective. For starters, they have no hands for holding donuts and coffee cups. Nor will their size allow them inside a Denny’s restaurant for a half-price meal of Moons Over My Hammy.

So here’s how it works.

1. Suspect kills someone and takes the body out to a wooded area to hide it.

2. He digs a shallow grave, covers it with soil, branches, and leaves.

3. The killer covers all traces of having been there—brush away tracks, etc.

4. He goes home, changes clothes, and returns to his job as a meat cutter at the local Piggly Wiggly.

5. Police investigators are called to the scene after the body was discovered by a group of tie-dyed-shirt-wearing mushroom hunters. Two members of the group, a Mr. Cheech and a Mr. Chong, drove directly to the police station to report their discovery. Before heading to the PD the pair instructed their friend Tim Leary to stand guard and to not eat any mushrooms within a 20-foot radius of the body.

6. Investigators arrived and went about the usual business of evidence collection. One detective, however, noticed two pine trees in the immediate area. Aha, she thought, and set about the task of collecting pine pollen (the yellow dusty stuff found in the male cones, aka catkins). The savvy detective sent the pollen samples to the lab for DNA testing.

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7. As the investigation progressed, detectives narrowed their suspect list down to one individual, a meat cutter who worked at the local Piggly Wiggly. They were able to obtain a search warrant for his home where they collected various items of potentially-related evidence, including a few articles of dirty clothing.

8. Our super-sharp detective sent the clothing to the lab for DNA testing. One particular item, a cotton shirt, was of particular interest.

9. A few days later the detective’s hunch was proven to be correct. Pine pollen was found on the cotton shirt and its DNA was a perfect match to the pollen collected from the pine tree at the spot where the victim’s body was discovered.

10. Case solved.

Yes, researchers have indeed developed a testing procedure that makes it possible to use pine pollen to place bad guys at a particular location, such as the one in a fictional tale above. Pine pollen, according to Dr. David Gangitano, one of the researchers and author of the study report, remains testable, comparable, and stable on cotton clothing for up to 14 days. Therefore, it is indeed possible to link a suspect’s clothing to a particular geographical area, such as a clandestine burial site near a particular pine tree.

In a similar study conducted by the same researchers, pollen from marijuana can be tested (DNA) to match samples that could link across several cases. In other words, the test could prove that I.M. High’s bag of pot came from the plants grown by Mr. Carter Cartel in the mountains of western Mexico.

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* Regarding the evil pair of villains pictured in the top photo. Well, that’s Lee Child of Jack Reacher fame and Marcia Clark (yes, that Marcia Clark) at the Writers’ Police Academy. They did not kill the poor non-human victim, nor did they bury the faux body. And they’re certainly not evil. They did, however, have  fantastic time at the WPA while learning about shallow graves and other extremely detailed and exciting hands-on workshops.

Now, here’s some wonderful news. You, too, can have a fantastic time at the 2016 Writers’ Police Academy because we have squeezed out a bit more room. Therefore, registration is open so hurry and grab the few remaining spots before they’re gone!

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Castle: The G.D.S. – A Good Cop/Bad Cop Review

 

“I knew I should never have partnered with a screenwriter.” ~ Murderer Du Jour
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Melanie Atkins

The latest episode of Castle disappointed me yet again. I’m getting tired of this. Lee asked me to blog with him back when the Castle-Beckett relationship first began to heat up because I write romance, and he wanted someone to cover that aspect of the show while he tackled the police procedure. He did not need my services last night. No Beckett equals no Caskett, equals no romance. Not that we’ve gotten much of it this season, but Rick, Alexis, and Hayley, whom I still cannot accept as part of the show, in L.A., with no explanation of Kate’s absence? Pu-leeze.

To top it off, we had to endure the silly back and forth between Ryan, Esposito, and Lanie that ended with her going after the boys with a fire extinguisher. How juvenile is that? Where is the show we know and love? Because it certainly wasn’t on last night.

My friend Donna, who watches Castle every week almost as religiously as I do, texted me after the episode saying: …they’ve completely forgotten the style and charm that set this show apart to begin with. Unfortunately, she is correct. Another fan said on Twitter: …the show I fell in love with was abt a writer and his muse solving crimes. Not Castle PI w/Hayley and Alexis. She’s right, too, and I retweeted her. Sigh.

The preview of next week’s show (episode 15) shows Kate telling Rick know she “can’t do this anymore”, and I believe she means she’s had enough of living apart and their stupid fake break up. All of that ridiculousness, plus LokSat and the storyline involving Rick’s missing time, is supposed to end by episode 16. So maybe, just maybe, the show is about to get back to normal.

I certainly hope so.

The higher ups at ABC haven’t renewed Castle yet, probably because of sinking ratings, and I hope they wait to see if Rick and Kate getting back together for good helps before they give the show the ax. I’d like for them to give us at least a short season next year to tie everything up, and maybe even give us a Caskett baby. Only time will tell.
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Lee Lofland

Give me a minute to stop shaking my head. For now, though, I’m hoping the rapid side-to-side movement will erase all memory of what I just watched.

Why, Castle? Why’d you do it??? Why’d you go there? Haven’t you seen enough TV shows to know that leaving your hometown, with your entourage in tow, as an effort to generate interest in your show is an action that often induces the final blips on the heart monitor before flatlining? Do you not recall Fonzie’s shark-jumping, the Bradys in Hawaii, and the Clampetts in England. I’m sort of expecting to see some strange little kid showing up as Castle’s cousin, a youngster who suddenly moves in to assist with further tanking the declining ratings (Cousin Oliver on the Brady Bunch, homeless kid Luke on Growing Pains, and Stephanie on All in the Family).

Okay, enough of that. Let’s move on to the meat of my review, the police and forensics (this will be easy).

1. Lividity Lanie – Stupid stuff as always, and even more so this week.

Lane, bless her heart*, was able to determine the exact make, model, size, color, and chemical composition of a murder weapon—a hunting knife—merely by looking at photos of dead people. WHAT. THE. *&%!.

2. Police officers running a background check for any purpose other than a police-related issue is taboo. I’m not saying it hasn’t been done before, because it has. However, the act has resulted in disciplinary actions, including the loss of jobs.

3. Strange people wandering in and out of crime scenes does not happen, especially in well-organized departments.

4. Remember the screenplay Castle saw where the killer wrote “THIS IS STUPID” in the margin?

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Well, that was pretty darn ironic because while taking notes earlier during the episode, this (below) is what I scribbled about the scene where Hayley (why is she in this show??) told her far-fetched story of being Castle’s secret guardian.

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Hmm… I guess Lanie’s Voodooish psychic powers are contagious.

Therefore, based on lividity, I believe that’s all I have to say…

~

* Bless your heart – a Southern phrase used as a polite means to deliver an insult. Transforms a positive comment into a negative. “Her baby is really cute, bless her heart.” In the region of the South where I lived and worked for many years, this typically means the little one is basically stomp-down, butt-ugly.”

Therefore, if you’ve queried an agent who resides below “the line,” and their response to your manuscript submission was, “Your writing is wonderful, bless your heart,” well, it might be a good idea to re-think your career choice.

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Writers' Police Academy Highlight Video…and 2016 Reminders!

We hope you enjoyed the brief video. It’s just a small sample of what’s in store for you at the 2016 Writers’ Police Academy. We’ve definitely outdone ourselves this year and we’re anxious for you experience the highly anticipated WPA in Green Bay.

Here are a few gentle reminders regarding your 2016 WPA experience.

1. If you haven’t already done so, please, please, please reserve your hotel room. Once our block is filled we will not be able to add more rooms. You can make your reservations by calling the hotel directly, at 920-494-7300. Be sure to ask for the WPA room rate.

2. Sign up to receive the latest updates and announcements. The link is at the bottom of the right sidebar of the WPA website.

3. The majority of WPA workshops are hands-on, but they’re designed to allow attendees to do as much or as little as they desire while still receiving the full benefit of the sessions.

4. Yes, the WPA is actual academy instruction, but without the hard stuff, such as running, push-ups, and sit-ups.  If you feel the need to drop and perform 100 push-ups, please do so in the privacy of your hotel rooms so as to not make the rest of us feel uneasy and more out of shape than we already are.

5. The Golden Donut Short Story Contest is open! Please go here for details. The contest winner receives the coveted Golden Donut Award AND free registration to any 2017 WPA event.

6. Fun facts, photos, and WPA details and announcements are often posted on this blog, my Facebook page, and the WPA Facebook page. In fact, I post lots of fun WPA stuff on Facebook nearly every day, so please visit when you have the chance.

My page – Lee Lofland Facebook page

Writers’ Police Academy Facebook page

7. WPA Twitter hashtag is #2016WPA

8. We’d like to welcome and thanks our brand new corporate supporter, The Killion Group, who is sponsoring the Long Gun: Live Fire workshops. For those of not familiar with The Killion Group (as if that’s possible), The Killion Group can help you with everything from branding you as an author to designing your book cover or series, to formatting your ebook and print book and then helping you market your book. They even edit content and have a selection of royalty-free stock images at www.HotDamnStock.com.

*WPA sponsorships are a fantastic means of advertising your books, product, brand, businesses, and more. WPA ads are viewed by a worldwide audience. To learn how you can become a WPA sponsor please visit our “Become a Sponsor” page. Your support is greatly appreciated!

9. Yes, our hands-on workshops include driving actual patrol cars during real emergency situations, such as performing PIT maneuvers and learning to correct your vehicle as it spins out of control.

Those of you participating in the PIT workshop will be doing THIS (see video below) while your fellow workshop buddies go for a wild ride in the suspect vehicle!

 

10. What can you expect to see and do at the 2016 WPA? Well…car chases, shooting, fire, drones, high-risk building entries, K-9’s in action, ballistics/hands-on examinations (live-fire) with one of the world’s leading experts, blood spatter investigations, fingerprinting, testifying in an actual courtroom, an insider’s examination of the Steven Avery case (“Making a Murderer”), live action demos, you as an ER doctor treating an interactive trauma patient, real time shoot/don’t shoot scenario training, martial arts training for writers, hands-on with special ops equipment and vehicles (SWAT, etc.), tactical EMS where you learn and perform lifesaving techniques to wounded officers and citizens, collection of trace evidence, and much, much more.

In fact, there’s so much to see and do at the WPA that, well, you cannot see and do everything in a single weekend, or two…or three.

See for yourselves!

2016 WPA Schedule

Finally, we’re fortunate this year because we have a bit of extra space. Therefore, I’m pleased to say that the opportunity to join the hundreds of writers who’ve already signed up is now here. Yes, there are a few available spots for THE event of the year, so hurry before they, too, are gone!

Register here!

See you soon!

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Friday’s Heroes: Remembering the Fallen

Friday's Heroes - Remembering the fallen officers

 

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Officer David Stefan Hofer, 29

Euless Texas Police Department

March 1, 2016 – Officer David Stefan Hofer was shot and killed after responding to a suspicious person call in a local park. As he and another officer approached the park the suspect opened fire, fatally wounding Officer Hofer. His partner was able to return fire, killing the suspect.

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Deputy Sheriff Travis Russell, 44

Los Animas County Colorado Sheriffs Office

March 1, 2016 – Deputy Travis Russell was killed in vehicle crash while on patrol.

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* So far this year, 12 officers have lost their lives to gunfire—one officer killed every five days.

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The 2016 Golden Donut Short Story Contest is OPEN!

 

The Writers’ Police Academy is pleased to continue the Golden Donut short story contest in 2016. The rules are simple—write a story about the photograph above using exactly 200 words, including the title (each story must include an original title). The image in the photograph MUST be the main subject of the story. We will not provide clues as to the subject matter of the image, or where the shot was taken. That is for you and your imagination to decide. Remember, though, what you see in the image absolutely MUST be the MAIN subject of your tale.

*Again, the photo above absolutely MUST be the main focus of the story, not just a mere mention within the text. 

All stories are to be polished and complete, meaning they must have a beginning, middle, and a twisted surprise ending. Again, all stories must be exactly 200 words. Not 201 or 199! So read the word count rules carefully. Over the years, we’ve seen some excellent tales disqualified due to an incorrect word count.

The Golden Donut contest is judged blindly, meaning each entry is assigned a number prior to sending it to the judges. Therefore, judges do not see the writers’ names.

All entries will be screened by a panel of readers who will select their twelve favorite stories and then forward their picks to the contest judge (To Be Announced). All decisions are final and may not be contested or appealed. After reviewing each of the entries, the judge will notify the Writers’ Police Academy of the winning entry. While the winner will be announced at the WPA banquet, the winner need not be present to win. The contest is open to everyone, not just WPA attendees.

The contest winner receives the prestigious Golden Donut Award AND and free registration to any 2017 WPA-hosted event!

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Submission Guidelines:

Please read carefully!

All submissions MUST be submitted electronically via email to 2016goldendonut@gmail.com. Write Golden Donut 2016 in the subject line.

 Click the link below to enter!

Golden Donut Short Story Contest

Please include your story within the body of the email. Attachments will not be opened.

 Additionally, a twenty-five dollar ($25) entry fee must be submitted via Paypal PRIOR TO emailing the entry. In other words, click the link to register your entry and then follow the directions listed. Next, submit your payment (Paypal link is on the entry form), and THEN email your story(s). You do not need a Paypal account to enter.

Submission Deadline: July 1, 2016

– Any entry not meeting the exact 200 word requirement will be disqualified. You will not receive notice of disqualification. Please be sure your word count is accurate and that all words are counted.

– Hyphenated words, for the purpose of this contest, will be counted as two words, or three, etc., depending upon how many words make up the hyphenated phrase/word. Contractions will be counted as two words (it’s, don’t, etc.).

– Every single word will be counted as a word. This includes: “a,” “and,” and “the.” To be very clear…if it’s a word, count it. If it’s part of dialog and you think it may be a word, count it. If it’s a stand-alone letter or group of letters, count it as a word. If it’s a number, count it as a word. If the number would include a hyphen if written out as a word, then count it as a hyphenated word. Social media and texting abbreviations will be counted as individual words. For example: OMG = three words. LMAO = four words. 2Nite = one word (tonight). AIAMU = five words (Am I a monkeys uncle). TCIC = 4 words (This contest is cool).

– Entries submitted after the July 1, 2016 deadline will NOT be judged.

– Any entry not meeting the exact 200 word requirement will be disqualified.

No refunds for any reason!

Again, all entry fees and stories must be received on or prior to July 1, 2016. No exceptions. There is normally a mountain of entries, therefore, it is a time-consuming process for the judges. We need time to process the entries and to have the award properly engraved and shipped to the WPA.

– Be sure to include your name, address, email address, telephone number(s), and title of your story in an opening paragraph above your story. Then, please include your story, headed by the title.

– There is a $25 entry fee, payable via Paypal. Entries received without the appropriate entry fee will be excluded from the contest. No refunds.

– Each author may submit up to three entries. Each entry must be accompanied by the corresponding entry fee ($25 per story).

– Each author can enter up to three stories. But each individual entry must be accompanied by its own $25 entry fee. (One entry = $25. Three entries = $75, etc.) You must indicate how many stories you plan to submit when you register.

– By submitting an entry to this contest authors agree to allow The Graveyard Shift/Lee Lofland, the Writers’ Police Academy, Sisters in Crime, and affiliates to publish/reprint the story as a part of The Graveyard Shift blog and/or as advertisement for the Writers’ Police Academy or Sisters in Crime, or in other publications and media, including, but not limited to, Writers’ Police Academy books, magazines, newspaper, blogs, ebooks, online outlets, etc.

*Sisters in Crime is not a part of the Writers’ Police Academy.

*All rights to all work/short story shall remain the property of the author. The Writers’ Police Academy reserves the right to exclude or delete any entry without cause, reason, or explanation.

– ABSOLUTELY NO profanity or erotica.

Please send questions to Lee Lofland at lofland32@msn(dot)com

So there you have it. Now get busy and take us on a journey that’d scare the pants off Poe himself.

Good luck!

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Size Matters…sometimes

 

“Cops are wimps. Some are scrawny, wiry, and geeky-computer-nerdish, and they certainly aren’t big and strong enough to handle the often much larger and stronger criminals they face on the streets. That’s why they’re so quick to resort to weapons and/or deadly force. What happened to the beefy, no-necked officers that once patrolled our streets. They never used their guns against unarmed people. We felt much safer back then,” said Mr. Nevell Satisfied.

Well, things changed when Ms. Ima Scaredashadows, Nevell’s aunt, began complaining about her town hiring big, tough guys to work as officers. Many citizens said they’d prefer cops who were less intimidating and scary-looking, and perhaps who’d earned a higher GPA in high school and college. You see, Ida, like many other people, believe that all large, muscular men are uneducated and mentally challenged.

So changes were made to satisfy public demand. Departments were also forced to change their hiring standards to include smaller and shorter officers. And, the smaller sizes of the new officers sometimes meant they couldn’t compete with the larger candidates in some of the physical standards for new hires (exercising, lifting, etc.). Therefore, those standards were also reduced.

The new, more inclusive and size friendlier standards, attracted some officers who were less than five-feet-tall and, while nicely educated, were not in the best physical condition due to twenty years of constant pre-career video game marathoning. As a result, the size- and strength-challenged officers faced the difficult tasks of physically restraining big and powerful and unruly and combative criminals. Sure, the new brand of officer was able to complete numerous common core math problems in their heads while being pummeled by a 300 lb. crook, but only until they lost consciousness.

I know, times change and new things, ideas, techniques, and standards are needed. But some things never change—big, strong, violent bad guys are going to fight with cops, and like it or not and/or understand it or not, a beating from a large powerful man can and has indeed killed people. So yes, an unarmed person who’s 6-foot-three, weighing 280 is within himself a deadly weapon. This is especially so when the victim/officer is 5-foot-two and weighs 135 (male or female).

The video below is good example of how size and strength differences are factors in physical altercations that officers across the country encounter many times every single day. All, of course, aren’t as violent as the one in the video, but many are.

I know, cops knew what they were in for when they signed up for the job, and I agree to a certain extent. But they didn’t sign on to stand down while violent people do violent things to them, such as mayors and other city officials forcing officers to allow people to pummel them with rocks and bottles. Nor did they sign on to be someone’s punching bag while their own administration stands by doing nothing. And they certainly deserve the respect of their supervisors, especially after being shot and bleeding to death. A supervisor who clocks out and goes home while knowing one of his officers is fighting for her life in the ER after being shot several times…well, some things are best left unsaid.

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* Top photo – Taken by Elf | Talk Sept 6, 2004, Sunnyvale, CA

*Parts of the above article were meant to be tongue-in-cheek. However, the points made were not.

Officer line of duty deaths by gunfire are up 1,200% this year.

The latest incident occur last night when a Euless Texas police officer was shot and killed when he responded to a suspicious activity call in a local park.

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Castle: And Justice for All – A Good Cop Review (the bad cop is away on assignment)

 

Castle used to be about a bestselling mystery writer who played poker with Michael Connelly, and he tagged along with a tough-as-nails female detective as she and her team solved murders. Could someone please tell which channel and time THAT show is on because I’d love to watch it again. ~ LL

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Melanie Atkins

Last week’s episode of Castle surprised me by being one of the best this season, with great writing and directing in true classic Castle form. This week, not so much because the crazy case bounced from here to there and back again. What happened to the stellar writing? I did not peg the ESL teacher as the murderer, probably because the show had so many characters that I got confused early on and stayed that way.

So many parts of the case were unrealistic, and I just couldn’t get past it. Rick going undercover as an ESL student? Please. Parts of the scenario humored me, to be sure, but weren’t ha-ha-laugh-out-loud funny. And now he’s having flashbacks from the time he went missing way back when? Are we really going to have to revisit that craziness again? Ack! Of course, the explanation of what happened during that time left a lot to be desired, but I’d rather they simply dropped it and forgot it ever happened.

And LokSat. No one mentioned that elephant in the room, but Kate and Rick are supposedly still “separated”, even though they worked the case together and are together in private. Ho-hum. I’m so ready for this aspect of the show to disappear. Seriously. It’s silly and nobody believes it. How could they, with them together all the time?

On a whole, I did not like this episode. I hope next week’s will be better, but I won’t be totally satisfied until the entire LokSat and missing time plotlines are put to rest in episode 16. That can’t happen fast enough for me.

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Lee Lofland

Unfortunately, I was not able to watch the episode, the first time since I started this review back in season one. Therefore, I have nothing to say. However, based on Melanie’s portion of the post, I don’t believe I missed much. So I guess I’ll sit in here in the corner and listen to your comments about the police procedure, forensics, etc. Could someone help us out by sharing your thoughts? What did you see that was right, or wrong? Anything?

 

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