The Washington Post said of Blue Blood, it is the “memoir of life in the New York City Police Department, Edward Conlon would seem just the man to keep his two worlds apart. Harvard-educated and a gifted writer, Conlon has been contributing the "Cop Diary" to the New Yorker under the name of Marcus Laffey. But anyone expecting a neat separation between officer and writer will be disappointed. Conlon is a cop's cop and his book, a dazzling epic of street life and rough camaraderie, is far more rewarding than any disgruntled Serpico-style tell-all could ever be.”

Amazon.com said of Blue Blood, “As a Harvard graduate and regular writer for the New Yorker, Edward Conlon is a little different from most of his fellow New York City cops. And the stories he tells in his compelling memoir Blue Blood are miles away from the commonly told Hollywood-style police tales that are always action packed but rarely tethered to reality. While there is action here, there's also political hassle, the rich and often troubling history of a department not unfamiliar with corruption, and the day to day life of people charged with preserving order in America's largest city. Conlon's book is, in part, a memoir as he progresses from being a rookie cop working the beat at troubled housing projects to assignments in the narcotics division to eventually becoming a detective. But it's also the story of his family history within the enormous NYPD as well as the evolving role of the police force within the city. Conlon relates the controversies surrounding the somewhat familiar shoo! ting of Amadou Diallou and the abuse, at the hands of New York cops, of Abner Louima. But being a cop himself, Conlon lends insight and nuance to these issues that could not possibly be found in the newspapers. And as an outstanding writer, he draws the reader into that world. In the book's most remarkable passage, Conlon tells of the grim but necessary work done at the Fresh Kills landfill, sifting through the rubble and remains left in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11 (a section originally published in The New Yorker). In many ways, Blue Blood comes to resemble the world of New York City law enforcement that Conlon describes: both are expansive, sprawling, multi-dimensional, and endlessly fascinating. And Conlon's writing is perfectly matched to his subject, always lively, keenly observant, and possessing a streetwise energy.”

From the History of the New York Police Department 

Watchmen were required by ordinance (July 13, 1829) to callout fires. The Captains of each Watch District were ordered to instruct the Watchmen under their direction to cause every alarm of fire to be made as general as possible, by crying aloud the mane of the street or post where the fire might be. Watchmen were allowed fifty cents for attendance as witnesses at Special Sessions, by ordinance, December 27, 1830.

When on duty, Watchmen wore a fireman's old-fashioned leather hat, bereft of it upright front plate. This hat was varnished twice a year, and soon became as hard as iron. From this they came to be called "Leatherheads." They were also dubbed "Old Charlies." They had no other badge of office than this hat, and a thirty-three inch club. For many years, like their Dutch predecessors, they called out the hours of the night, but this practice ceased long before the old Charlies has run their course. For over half a century the city was policed by these Watchmen. The system worked well enough while the city remained in its "teens;" but an ever increasing population, and constantly expanding area, in time called for a change in the management and organization of our public guardians. The jaded stevedore, teamster, or mechanic, could hardly be expected to display much enterprise or energy, when, on each alternate night, he sallied forth to patrol the streets. It is safe to assume that he performed his duty in a perfunctory manner, and that the "knights of the jimmy," and other midnight marauders, did not hold him in especial reverence or dread.

The only day police during the regime of the aforesaid Leatherheads, were the Constables, generally two from each ward, and the Marshals, who were assigned to the Courts, it was, then, the province of the Watchmen, or "Leatherheads," to protect life and property, to preserve public order, and generally to keep the criminal classes within proper subjection. He did not always succeed in doing his, it is true; but perhaps that was not entirely his fault. The young bloods of those days took liberties with this official personage which no young man of our time, who valued his health and reputation, would dare take with one of "The Finest." The old "Leatherheads" had often to suffer the pranks of wild young men about town, who, like their cockney prototype, thought that a night's spree would not be appropriately ended except they had played some practical joke on the City Watch, which took the form generally of upsetting a watch-box with a snoring Leatherhead in it, or t lasso the sentry-box with a stout rope, and drag it along with it imprisoned occupant. But these experiences did not seriously ruffle the temper of the Watchmen, and so nobody was much the worse off for those irregular pleasantries.

Source:

Our Police Protectors

Holice and Debbie

Blue Blood Edward Conlon  More Info

One reader of Blue Blood said, “I am a New York City Police Department sergeant with a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Dartmouth College and a master's from Harvard University. I attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City prior to college. You could imagine that the release of this book was intrigued me, and I bought it to see how Ed Conlon's experiences compared to mine.

Having worked in many of Brooklyn's busiest areas since 1997 (East Flatbush, Flatbush, Crown Heights, Brownsville, etc: the 067, 070, 071 and 077 Precincts), I can say that Conlon's relation of New York City street life is both colorful and accurate. He expertly relates the boredom of endless waiting for something to happen, the general futility of most of our efforts, and a mistrust of the public that stems from its inability to feel, firsthand, what a cop feels when he has to make the most important decisions of his life, with the future of citizens in his hands.

One thing that is missing from the book is the life of the patrolman, which has yet to be adequately covered by any good, recent nonfiction work. When I wrote to The New Yorker in 1999 in response to one of Conlon's magazine pieces, I expressed that Conlon seemed to elevate his street-level drug enforcement exploits at the expense of the dignity of the officers who answer two dozen 911 unpredictable calls a day in the most dangerous parts of the city. These officers see the full range of the urban drama, and their stories are always disjunctive: they solve the problem and leave, be it a false burglar alarm or domestic homicide. The story ends for them as it gets passed off to the next group of specialists. It is one of the most frustrating things a person can do.

Now that the book is out, we see that Conlon has chosen the particular track he has because he never served in a patrol precinct and this is foreign ground to him. Before I say anything else that sounds negative, I have to clearly state that given his chosen career track, Conlon's relation of police life there and in general is largely flawless. While it is not complete, it does not have to be to be excellent nonetheless. My differences with Conlon are largely philosophical and in the end, biased: I believe that urban precinct sector and beat patrol is the most raw and meaningful story of policing from almost any perspective, and I would not trade it for a lifetime of narcotics enforcement.

These are the things that other reviewers are right about: It is certainly the best cop book written yet, but critics are still free to wonder exactly what this means in the larger context of the nonfiction memoir genre. It is indeed a bit long, but if you are patient it will reward you with its broad, historical grounding. Yes, that Colon went to Harvard is certainly the gimmick that enabled him to undertake this project, but this is more of a testament to the problems with The New Yorker than with Conlon. If a cop with a degree from CUNY showed up at the New Yorker's door with the exact same manuscript as Conlon's, they would have had their security escort him out; life in the Conde Nast building is designed to be free of the sight and scent of the common person from the outer boroughs (unless she is your secretary). Conlon used Harvard to get attention, and it worked. If there are better non-Ivy-League police writers out there, he has opened doors for them as a result.

There are moments where his choice of nonfiction memoir limits the book. By luck and fate, Conlon wasn't at Ground Zero on the morning of 9/11, so he is stuck telling an ancillary story of working to separate out the human remains from the wreckage at a dump in Staten Island. He was never shot at, so he tells a story of bullets whizzing by him on a project rooftop. If this is getting shot at, then every cop who has worked a few years of nights in Brooklyn North has been shot at. The truth of the matter is that most cops in bad areas draw their guns often, fight it out with the bad guys regularly, and see things that for them are commonplace, but that would make a true blue blood wet his pants. But most do not fire their handguns or get shot at in the course of their career. This is because we have an excellent, safe department, but it deflates the story a bit.

In the end, I am probably not such a good reviewer for this book, except by an indirect means. Nothing in it surprised me, because when you do this job long enough, you can see a person impaled on a spiked fence from a three-story fall--writhing and dying as firefighters saw the fence out around him--and you can go home and eat dinner and tell your wife that nothing interesting happened at work that day. So, indirectly, the fact that nothing surprised me means that Conlon writes about the things that cops forget every day.

In remembering these things, Conlon has given readers enamored with urban policing a book that will not be soon forgotten. We are witnessing a transformation of policing from a vocation into a profession, and cops like Conlon are the leaders. He will not be the last well-educated cop to join the Job, and as they do, the life of the police officer will be brought into sharper public focus with, among other things, great books such as these.

If you peruse this book for a few minutes, you will know if it is for you or not. If you get the feeling that it is, then buy it; you know who you are and the cop's life fascinates you. Conlon will certainly not let you down.