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CORRIDOR OF NOIR |
DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 2, NO. 15 |
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reviews Gina Gallo's ARMED & DANGEROUS |
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It's a 16-year journey into the soul of a woman--and her troubled city
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Ordinarily, TheColumnists.com would not permit one of its columnists to review a book by another. I've made an exception in this case because I believe Gina Gallo's "Armed & Dangerous" is a special book that not only gives us extraordinary insight into the frustrating life of a police officer in a modern urban setting, but also into the soul of an extraordinary woman. I should point out that even though I communicate with Gallo almost daily by email and function as her editor at this website, we have never met face to face nor spoken on the telephone. Though we are colleagues in a cooperative online enterprise, neither TheColumnists.com nor this writer have any financial interest in her book. --Ron Miller |
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
WHEN SHE became a Chicago police officer in 1982, Gina Gallo believed she was taking up a noble profession--one that might give her a rare opportunity to make a living helping others and serving her community. When she left the force 16 years later, she wasn't much concerned about idealism because she had to spend every waking hour concentrating on personal survival.
Gallo's new book, "Armed & Dangerous: Memoirs of A Chicago Policewoman" (Forge/St. Martin's Press, $24.95), is both a mesmerizing account of her 16-year tour of duty as a lady in blue--and a very personal journal detailing the toll such a job can take on a person's life, if not her very soul.
"It's not just a job--it's a life," she tells us. "One that's tough on your body, bad for your soul, murder on your heart."
Gallo wasn't born to be a cop, even though her dad had spent his life as one, also in Chicago. A son might have felt the pull of the family tradition, but not a girl, not in those times. Gallo trained in psychology and was working as a therapist when she was attracted by the police department's recruitment program in 1982. Divorced and the working mother of two young sons, she was impressed by the good pay, benefits and the notion that, with her special training, she might be of true value to the police.
She had no idea, of course, that she one day would kill another human being in the line of duty, that she would barely survive a savage beating with a baseball bat by a kill-crazy young ghetto punk, that she would daily witness horrors that almost defy the human imagination. Though she was prepared for sexism on the job, she wasn't ready to face the extent to which it was built into the Chicago police system. And, though she always knew you had to have nerves of steel to be a beat cop in urban America in the late 20th century, she had no idea how much damage the cumulative weight of years of it could have on the soul.
Though there is enormous humor scattered through "Armed & Dangerous"--readers of this website already have sampled some of Gallo's funniest police stories--the things that stick in your mind are the things that probably still wake her up in the middle of the night, shaking. The picture she leaves us with is that of a major American city, rotting at its core, overrun by savages who no longer care about anything but self-gratification. Babies are beaten, raped and abandoned to die of starvation. Children kill children without reason. Everybody steals.
You're going to read things in "Armed & Dangerous" that you'll never see on even the hardest of TV cop shows. And I don't just mean the kinky sexual stuff, though there's plenty of that to go around. In her early years on the force, for instance, Gallo was riding patrol with another officer, who was rushing to a crime scene when he ran into another vehicle, propelling Gallo face-first through the windshield. Here's what she saw just before she lost consciousness:
"The squad-car bumper flies up, a gleaming, twisted saber that slashes through the Grand Am's windshield, severing the hand the woman has thrown up in last minute defense. Slowly, slowly, the bloody hand arcs into the air with fingers trailing before it lands with a muffled splat on the hood of our car."
Even more haunting, though, is Gallo's account of how the job is changing her. First, she loses contact with most of her civilian friends. The shifts she works, their perceptions of her work and many other things drive a wedge between them. More and more, she discovers she can only be with other cops. "Regular" guys have a hard time dealing with a woman who busts people for a living and carries a firearm, so soon her only romantic options are cops. It's like being in the military, only worse, because nothing changes when you go on leave. You're still a cop.
"Suspicion replaces trust as our circles of intimacy grow smaller," she writes. "We see on the job what love does, how it hurts and kills, and begin to question it in our own lives. Any relationship becomes suibject to scrutiny."
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I've read many police memoirs. I've never read one that takes us more deeply into the mind of a cop than this one. You wind up understanding a lot of the things you may not like about the police--and may find yourself growing as frustrated as some cops like Gallo have become, trying to cope with the aftermath of our society's absolute unwillingness to deal with such inner city problems as gangs, drugs and guns.
Gallo is a very persuasive writer with a finely-tuned ear for street dialog and a heightened sense of humor--and drama. Her stories are absorbing and, when they're not depressing, very entertaining. While she's telling them, though, you also come away with a very warm feeling for this woman because it's obvious she cares about others, often at great risk to herself.
I guarantee no young woman who reads this book will ever want to follow in Gallo's footsteps and do any of the jobs she undertook for the Chicago PD. But I hope some influential people who read her book will do what they can to bring about some of the changes it's so obvious are needed in urban law enforcement today.
Speaking as editor, colleague and fan, Gallo is a very talented writer who's still at the cusp of what should be a very important career. This, though, is a very mature work-- one of those books you just can't put down until you've survived the end with her. But here's the best part: Once you've put it down, you're not going to forget it.
© 2001 by Ron Miller. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master/Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
Returnn to the Home page for a full list of the places where Gina Gallo will be discussing and/or signing copies of her book over the next two weeks.
You can comment on this column or contact Ron Miller with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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