Richard is the Chief of
Police the Wellfleet Police Department, Massachusetts, a town located halfway between the "tip" and "elbow"
of Cape Cod.
Before becoming Chief of Police in Wellfleet, Chief Rosenthal spent twenty years in the New York
Police Department, where he ran the Heavy Weapons and Undercover Weapons Training programs and, as a detective in the Bronx
dealt with homicide, narcotics, and armed robbery. Before joining the NYPD, he worked for U.S. Air Force military intelligence
as a Russian language specialist. In addition to being the chief of police, he is the author of four books.
His latest book, published in 2000, is titled “Rookie Cop: Deep Undercover in the Jewish Defense League.”
According to Kirkus reviews, it is "a
strange true tale of a Jewish NYPD cadet recruited into the department's elite intelligence unit to spy on the Jewish
Defense League, offering vivid portraits of a politically incendiary era and revealing secrets of intrusive police tactics.
This is a well-tuned portrait of the stress and acrimony that permeates such radical cliques, and of the lonely, paranoid
personalities at their centers - and it offers insights into the radically charged violence of the early 1970s. Rosenthal
has a fine eye for human detail and a cop's mordant sensibility. Altogether an exciting tale of unusual police practices,
and a solid portrait of a quintessential fringe radical group inhabiting insecure, volatile times.”
His other works
include two books on policing, “Sky Cops: Stories from America’s Airborne Police” and “K-9 Cops;”
and, one novel – “The Murder of Old Comrades.” According to the Wall Street Journal, his novel is "a
spicy police procedural about KGB assassins on the loose in Manhattan.”
