Charles Fleming

Excerpt: My name is Charles A. Moose. I am a police officer. I have been a police officer, at the writing of this book, for more than twenty-eight years.That's more than half of my life. It's the only real job I ever had. I didn't start out wanting to be a police officer. In the town where I grew up, at the time when I grew up, all a young black man wanted from the police was the be left alone. This book is the story of how a black boy from the segregated Deep South became the police chief of two predominantly white communities. It's the story of how a person raised in a town where a black man could be beaten or killed for even looking at a white woman could grow up to be happily married to a white woman. It's the story of how a rookie police recruit with no plans to become a police officer became the head of the largest single manhunt in American police history. It's the story of how I went from being lionized for helping bring the snipers to justice to being vilified for writing a book about it …