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About the Fort Lauderdale Police
Department
The Fort Lauderdale Police Department
serves the City of Fort Lauderdale, which is a diverse city, located in the heart of Broward County. Situated on the Atlantic
Coast between Palm Beach and Miami, Fort Lauderdale encompasses an area of more than 33 square miles, has seven miles of beach,
165 miles of waterways and 3000 hours of sunshine. With a year round population of approximately 165,000, Fort Lauderdale
is Florida’s seventh most populous city.
On March 27, 1911, Fort Lauderdale was
incorporated as a town with a population of 250. One of the first actions taken by the newly formed town council was the appointment
of Kossie A. Goodbread as the first City Marshall at a salary of $40.00 per month and $1.00 for each arrest.
The Fort Lauderdale Police Department
has over 495 sworn and 240 civilian employees, the Department serves three police districts, which include residents and visitors
of all socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. The Department is structured into three bureaus: Operations, Investigative Services,
and Support Services. The department provides patrol, canine, mounted, bicycle, marine and many other forms of uniform services.
In addition to other traditional services such as investigations and crime prevention, the Department provides a variety of
special programs designed to encourage our partnership with our community.
The Department handles nearly 200,000 calls
for service annually. In 2000, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department investigated over 14,000 Part I Crimes, issued more than
60,000 traffic citations and made nearly 14,000 arrests.
Source:
ci.ftlaud.fl.us/police/intro
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After completing military service in Viet Nam, Cherokee
Paul McDonald joined the Fort Lauderdale Police Department in 1970. Rising to
the rank of sergeant, he left the department in 1980, becoming a full-time
essay writer. In addition to his fiction novels, Cherokee
Paul McDonald has written two books about his life experiences. One reader comments
on Paul’s In Blue Truth: Walking the Thin Blue Line-One Cop's Story of Life in the Streets,
“I was about sixteen years old when I first read this book. Twelve years later, I am a cop myself, and have read and
re-read this book at least twenty times since then. This book is the real deal...it doesn't glorify our job like other books
have done...just the real and the raw. It gets to the bottom of what cops have to put up with every day.”
Cherokee Paul McDonald explores his military service in, Into the Green: A Reconnaissance by Fire. In 1968, he arrived in Vietnam a U.S. Army second lieutenant, assigned as an artillery forward observer. After a year service, he fell victim to malaria and was evacuated. According to the
Library Journal, Into the Green: A Reconnaissance
by Fire, “speaks volumes about the stress and terror of war while also reminding the reader of the touching
humanity of the erstwhile civilians called upon for military service. In place of an exhaustive, day-by-day account of the
war, McDonald introduces Vietnam through a series of vignettes on life in and out of the firing line. This is Vietnam as it
has rarely been described, and each short narrative offers an eloquent testimonial to the conflict.”
In addition to his autobiographical accounts, Cherokee Paul McDonald has written
one true crime novel, Under Contract: The True
Account of a Cop Hired to Kill. This work is the tale of Al Smith, a
Fort Lauderdale Police Department detective who posed as a hit man. According
to Kirkus reviews, “What terrifies here is the repeated verification of the old saw about the banality of evil. In one
memorable case, a sweet, petite, under-20 blond, answering an ad placed in the personals by a love-hungry bachelor, makes
a request for the murder of her husband; short of cash, she wants to finance the crime on the installment plan.”
Cherokee Paul McDonald’s fictional works include Summer’s Reason, Gulf Stream and The Patch.
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