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| Serious clowning
When it comes to the Drug Awareness Resistance Education program, former Corrales, N.M., police officer Nick Bachis doesn’t clown around, even though he wore greasepaint makeup and big shoes for a recent fundraiser aimed at sustaining the DARE curriculum at two area schools.
These days, Bachis is the leader a 13-member clown troop, the Funnie Bizness Clowns of New Mexico, which has performed at the Corrales Police Department’s DARE Magic Day every year since 1991. This year’s event took place in August during International Clown Week, and raised more than $1,700, said Officer Walt Heaton, the department’s DARE officer...
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| Too smart
If New London, Conn., doesn’t want him, then Robert Jordan, the man who scored so high on an intelligence test that it disqualified him as a police recruit, may try his luck in San Francisco, where Police Chief Fred Lau has invited him to apply for a police job.
Jordan lost a three-year battle with New London officials in September when a Federal judge upheld the city’s contention that a highly intelligent person does not necessarily make an effective police officer. Federal District Court Judge Peter Dorsey ruled that the department was reasonable when it rejected Jordan because he scored significantly higher on a preliminary screening test than the average police candidate...
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| Shipped out
A Federal judge has ordered New York City officials to prove in court that if 22 minority police officers had not been forcibly reassigned in the wake of the 1997 Abner Louima brutality scandal, massive civil unrest would have erupted throughout the city.
The decision on Sept. 20 by Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan stems from a challenge to the transfers by the officers, who claim they were sent to the troubled 70th Precinct in Brooklyn solely on the basis of their race. A trial date had yet to be set...
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| Spicing things up
With the retirement of Delaware State Police Supt. Alan Ellingsworth in September, the reins have been handed to Deputy Supt. Gerald R. Pepper, a 24-year veteran of the agency.
As Ellingsworth’s second in command, Pepper, 45, had overseen the operation of the DSP’s internal affairs bureau, training academy, canine unit and legal office since his promotion to the No. 2 post in 1994. He joined the force, the state’s largest, in 1975, working his way up through the ranks from deputy road trooper...
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The write stuff
Ex-cops turned writers reveal secrets of their craft
Police work is a strange business, says Ed Dee, a retired New York City cop turned author. It’s all in between the lines, flying by the seat of your pants and gray areas. Arguably, the same could be said of writing fiction in the mystery genre, as does Dee. Rarely, he concedes, can an author know how he will resolve his plot or his characters’ dilemmas until well into the story.
That was just one of the secrets of the craft revealed by Dee and other current and former police professionals who took part in a symposium, presented last month by the alumni association of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, on the art of writing fiction and non-fiction about the world of law enforcement...
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