Kate Flora: This weekend I’m moderating a panel for Sisters in Crime sistersincrime.org on the subject of writing cops right in our fiction. It’s a subject dear to my heart, since much of what we’ll cover is what I’ve had to learn for my Joe Burgess series. We have a fabulous panel, including our own MCW alum Bruce Coffin.

Prepping for the panel has made me think back on my own adventures learning to write about cops in a more credible way. With police, as with many challenges that come up in writing more realistic characters and situations, I started from the naïve “writers make it up” position, only to learn how critical and demanding our audience for crime fiction can be. I also started, with respect to writing cops, being very timid. I wasn’t one of those people who can just pick up the phone and cold call a source.

It began when I was introduced to our local police chief, who took me under his wing and read and critiqued my books. He also was the first reader who leaned on me to avoid sexist writing. Carl Johnson opened to the door a crack, and gave me the confidence to start asking other public safety folks my questions.

When I sold my first Thea Kozak mystery, back in 1993, at my publisher’s urging, I went to a mystery conference in Omaha. There I met a Chicago police captain, Hugh Holton, who became my second favorite police officer. Hugh was a big, African American man who’d grown up in the projects. He’d chosen not to write straight forward police procedurals in his Larry Cole series but also included elements of the supernatural. He was kind and generous and a fabulous writer, and the second public safety officer who encouraged my writing and made it easier for me to approach other officers with my questions. Hugh once paid me the supreme compliment of using my work as an example of someone who wrote cops well.

I needed to know about police procedure to write my Thea Kozak mysteries, both because police are always involved when there’s a suspicious death and because early on, while investigating her sister’s death, Thea becomes involved with a Maine state police detective. To write Thea more credibly, I took a citizen’s police academy and a women’s RAD safety course given by my local police department. For Death in Paradise, I even got an email penpal in a Hawaiian police department to answer my questions.

When my publisher decided to drop the Thea Kozak series, (and before it was picked up by another publisher) I decided I’d spent so much time learning about policing that I’d try writing a police procedural. Carl Johnson had left, so I turned to our new chief, Len Wetherbee, who took over as my advisor. One of my out of the blue calls, because I wanted to have my school teacher character arrested in Teach Her a Lesson, was to ask Len about getting arrested. He kindly arranged for me to be arrested and it was only when I was locked in a cell, without shoes and with bruises on my wrists from the handcuffs, that I realized I’d forgotten to ask how the experiment would end. I also started up an email correspondence with a lieutenant in the Portland police department. When he offered me a tour of the station, he introduced me to Lt. Joe Loughlin, who became my advisor for my Joe Burgess books and eventually, my co-writer on Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine, and Shots Fired: The Misunderstandings, Misconceptions, and Myths about Police Shootings.

 Along the way, and with the help of the Miramichi, New Brunswick police and the Maine Warden Service, I’ve had many, many adventures in my quest to learn how to write more credible public safety officers. I’ve gone on a stakeout where I spotted the bad guy. I’ve gotten lost in the woods so that trainee search and rescue dogs could find me. I’ve driven around late at night with police officers who shared what they were seeing, along with a  “crime map” of the streets we were driving.

I’ve attended the marvelous Writer’s Police Academy, https://writerspoliceacademy.com organized by Lee Lofland, where I went on a totally quiet ride along where I heard a most amazing story and got the see the video of the shootout. All of this has made me deeply grateful to the many public safety officers who have taken the time to answer my questions, whether smart or dumb, and helped me become a much better writer. I’ve asked questions from how would two cops enter a convenience store when the clerk is being held at gunpoint (And Grant You Peace) to what type of rifle the bad guy might use (Led Astray).

I still have a list of generous and long-suffering friends who are used to getting an email from me with Writer Needs Help in the subject line. I belong a crime writing organization, many of whom are public safety personnel, policewriters.org.

And they do help. Help me and help me make Joe Burgess and his team more nuanced and complex police characters, and shape the protagonists in my two new stand alone procedurals, The Darker the Night and Scarred.