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Tag: Beyond Hope?

  • “At some point we got numb to the violence”

    After a couple weeks of extreme violence, including one night with a fatal accident, three shooting, the homicide of a 9-year-old as he slept in bed, and another suspicious death, the religious community is challenging Saginaw’s citizens to become angry about violence.

    I am sure this message is full of good intentions. The problem is that I have, over the past 16 years, heard it all before. The demanding of public outcry, marches for peach, rallies, old-fashioned, outdoor church revivals, public forums on violence – they are all great, but when you have them over and over and over, year after passing year, it all becomes lost on deaf ears.

    I guess, as sad as it is, my personal opinion is that when you have to demand public outcry against violence, it’s too damn late — apathy has already taken hold and the words, at that point, are just words — they are not followed up with tangible action.

    In an email, so writes Saginaw Police Officer Michael S. East. He’s the author of Beyond Hope? One Cop’s Fight For Survival in a Dying City. Go buy a copy. You’ll be happy you did.

  • Beyond Hope?

    Beyond Hope?

    The glorious genre of Cop Lit has many notable contributors. The writing ranges from the driest academic tome to the cheesiest pulp fiction. There a pretty extensive list of police books at police-writers.com. A lot of them are crap. But many are good.

    Two of the best older police books are Jonathan Rubinstein’s City Police and Joe Poss and Joe Poss and Henry Schlesinger’s Brooklyn Bounce. The former was an academic who went native (nobody knows whatever happened to Rubinstein–rumor was he retired and ran a liquor store in Philadelphia). Poss and Schlesinger are doing just fine, living in NYC.

    Bad Cop and Badges, Bullets & Bars are two more good police books.

    (And of course there’s my book, soon to come out in paperback with a brand new chapter.)

    Now add veteran police officer Michael East’s Beyond Hope? to the list. It’s good. Very good.

    The best police books, whether academic or pop, have a few things in common: a confidence in the writing, a good voice, an awareness of one’s surroundings, humility in knowing one’s limitations, the ability to link the personal observation to greater truths, courage to face uncomfortable truths, and the ability to tell a good yarn. In other words, a good police book needs many of the same qualities of a good police officer. But most cops don’t write good books.

    Michael East has written a good book. Beyond Hope? is his story policing Saginaw, Michigan. I’ve never been to Saginaw, but it sounds grim. Kind of like a smaller, poorer, f**ked-up Baltimore.

    Beyond Hope? is finally for sale. I was able to read an advanced copy so that’s how I know it’s good. Buy it today! If you like cop stories (and if you’re reading this you do) or have a thing for cities in decline, this is a book for you.

  • Beyond Hope?

    Michael East is a veteran police officer in Saginaw, Michigan. He’s also an excellent writer. He has a new book coming out. Beyond Hope?

    Saginaw, not that you’d know, is a pretty messed up place of rusted industry and abandonment. It’s lost about half its population. Even Habitat for Humanity is helping tear it down.

    Mike’s book is great. I read an early draft. But it won’t be on sale for a few weeks.

    This isn’t even in the book. It’s from an email from Mike. But it gives you a good feel:

    Last Devil’s Night, a few thousand volunteers roamed the city to help prevent Saginaw’s residents from burning down these houses. We had numerous cops on overtime. My partner and I were assigned an East Side district and were told to check every abandoned house we could find and make sure the arsonists weren’t setting them up to burn (wood piles, gasoline, etc). At one house we opened the door, saw most of the floor missing and said: “Fuck this, let’s just do an outside perimeter check.” We did and moved on.

    Three days later some kids playing in the neighborhood went into the same house and found a woman who had been reported missing the week prior. She had walked inside, fell through the open floor, but her leg caught on a floor beam and it snapped her leg. She hung there, upside down, for God knows how long and died a slow death. She was inside, dead, the night we decided to skip that house. Creepy.

    Good stuff.