Customer Reviews

Extreme Cop: Chicago PD

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This is the worst book I ever read. Ever. The only thing extreme about this book was the author's unbridlled love for himself, as well as how impressed he was with himself in his short, less than 5 year police career.

The manner in which the author portrays himself as a one of a kind, and that there has never been anyone like him before in the CPD is a false hood. Plain and simple. Cops like the author were a dime a dozen in the 1970's in police departments across the country, to imclude CPD. When it comes to the authors uses of force (baton, chemical irritants, saps, and shooting dogs) big deal. That happens today.

What I read was a story about a routine 1970's police career, that was extrememly over stated by the author in the way of leading one to believe that he was one in a million, when in fact, he was just another cop.

Near the begin of the book; the author describes how he was rejected from the hiring process because of his background, but that he used his family's connection to hire a big-money lawyer and get into the academy. Gasp...arp..gasp, who would have thought he would become a punk with a badge. The book was a WASTE of money.

I don't think I have ever read an autobiography of the day to day workings of a police officer, whether it be the Chicago police or anywhere else. This book is a keen insight to the Chicago police back in the late sixties early seventies. For those of you who remember the Democratic Presidential Convention of 1968, this story has a very familiar ring to it. Most police stories rely upon a single event or a series of related events building to a climax. This book has so many major events in it that they almost seem mundane after awhile. Ardolino's story goes so fast, it takes your breath away. You take one of these incidents today and you have a major police scandal.

Ardolino's Bio reads like an adventure novel. So much so, that I decided to investigate. By telephone, Internet and e-Mails I found out that if anything, he has omitted some of his other accomplishments. It is no wonder that this author writes well and holds a reader's interest. Especially in the way Extreme Cop is written. The Preface mentions that the book was done uncut and in the way that the author would tell it while it was happening. What I found out was that the typos, wild punctuation and terse prose are in there because the author transcribed from actual diaries, and napkin notes he kept during the incidents. Yes, there are some typos but, there are typos in The Sun Also Rises, The Odessa File and in My Wicked, Wicked Ways to name only a few of the hundreds of books with typos or sentences that lead to nowhere. In no way does the grittiness and uncut form [obviously purposely done] detract from the flow of the powerful narrative in Extreme Cop: Chicago PD. The sex scenes are explicit and will wake anybody up. The violence is to me, very real.

The cops back in the 1970's and before may have been a law onto themselves; however they kept the streets clean of petty street gangs and thugs. Now we are overrun by the lawless and the legal system. To prevent one innocent victim, we have a legal system that goes out of their way to protect the criminals in order to make sure there is not one innocent person among hundreds is convicted. I live in Tokyo and it reminds me of my Illinois home town back in the fifties and early sixties. The cops did not mess around back then and people were safer. Although the author may appear to be brash and unfeeling at times, I think he comes across as a very sincere and to-the-heart Chicago cop. Very entertaining.