Research Catalog

My father's gun : one family, three badges, one hundred years in the NYPD

Title: My father's gun : one family, three badges, one hundred years in the NYPD / Brian McDonald.
Author: McDonald, Brian (Brian Vincent)
Publication: New York : Dutton, [1999], ©1999.

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Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	HV7911.A1 M33 1999	Off-site

Description

309 pages; 24 cm

Summary

In this memoir about three generations of New York City policemen, Brian McDonald chronicles a hundred years of dedication and disillusion, heroism and tragedy behind the "blue wall of silence" that separates a cop from the rest of the world.
His grandfather, Thomas Skelly, entered the department in 1893, when the NYPD was little more than a brutal gang of organized enforcers and the city was run by Tammany Hall, a corrupt political machine that could make or break an honest cop's career. His father Frank's career would span from World War II through the sixties, taking him from street cop to squad commander of the 41st Precinct. Better known as "Fort Apache," it was a place from which few cops emerged whole.
His brother, Frank McDonald, Jr., went on to become a decorated officer, waging an undercover war on drugs and crime that would ironically lead, in 1987, to the most agonizing choice a good cop can make. McDonald also talks about the women: the mothers, wives, and daughters who took extra jobs to help make ends meet - while waiting for the phone call that would tell them the worst. And he shares his own struggles with the personal demons that nearly destroyed him.

Subjects

ISBN

052594396X (alk. paper)

LCCN

98051156

OCLC

ocm40444021

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries