My Father's Gun: One Family, Three Badges, One Hundred Years in the NYPD [Paperback]

Brian McDonald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2000

In this powerful memoir about three generations of New York City policemen, Brian McDonald chronicles a hundred years of dedication, disillusion, heroism, and tragedy behind the blue wall of silence that separates a cop from the rest of the world. His grandfather, Thomas Skelly, entered the department in 1893, when the NYPD was little more than a brutal gang of organized enforcers and Tammany Hall a corrupt political machine that could make or break an honest cop's career. His father Frank's career would span World War II through the 1960s, taking him from street cop to squad commander of the Forty-first Precinct. Better known as "Fort Apache", it was a place from which few cops emerged whole. His brother Frank McDonald, Jr., went on to become a decorated officer, waging an undercover war on drugs and crime.

From turn-of-the-century Brooklyn to the South Bronx in the 1970s to the bedroom communities of upstate New York, My Father's Gun combines a rare and intimate family story with turbulent social history.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The day-to-day reality of life as a police officer comes through with unglamorous clarity in this scrupulously honest memoir. Yes, the author recounts some exciting stories of cases cracked and perpetrators nailed. But in recounting three relatives' careers in the New York City Police Department, Brian McDonald spends considerable time delineating personal relationships (particularly with their strong-minded wives) and their progress (or lack of it) within a bureaucracy as hidebound as any other branch of the civil service. McDonald's grandfather refused to participate in Tammany Hall corruption, and as punishment was constantly reassigned for the next 14 years; his father burned out as commander of the toughest precinct in the South Bronx. And his brother's troubled trajectory reflected the turbulent atmosphere of the post-Knapp Commission department, held in low repute by law-abiding citizens as it grappled with an increasingly brazen criminal population. The author is candid about his ambivalent feelings toward his tight-lipped father and the ethos that sees a world "made up of only two camps--cops and bad guys," but grateful for Dad's gift of an Underwood typewriter, which led him to journalism. McDonald's gift in return is a book that portrays policemen neither as heroes nor villains, but as recognizable human beings. --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

McDonald brings many sources besides received lore to bear in this affecting account of his Irish American family's involvement with the New York City police. Dating back to the 1890s, the Skelly/McDonald clan's war stories echo both the history of the force, from infamous crimes to investigations into police corruption, and the social history of the metropolis it served. That larger perspective elevates this memoir above average cop-talk stories, as the large urban forces--Tammany Hall in the 1910s, heroin in the '50s, white flight and black militancy in the '60s, crack in the '80s--impinge on the author's police relatives just as influentially as any dangerous chase and collar. His grandfather, father, and older brother are the memoir's central figures. Although the career of each is recounted separately, McDonald artfully conveys the connectedness through the generations created by the ambition of becoming an officer and then the striving up the departmental ladder, underlain by the perils inherent in the police occupation. A quality mixture of cop drama, social context, and personality portraiture. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Plume (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452279240
• ISBN-13: 978-0452279247
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #849,936 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

grew up in rockland county, ny, son of ny city detective and the youngest of four boys. i worked as a bartender for many years, dating all the way back to the disco era and nylon shirts. late in life, i went back to school obtaining my undergrad at fordham u., then my master's at columbia j school. at columbia I wrote the proposal for my first book 'my father's gun' and my life has been anything but boring since. i live in mahattan with bernie (my dog) where i write and try to scratch out a living. if you want more info on me and updated blog visit my website: www.brianmcdonald.info

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreaking, Accurate picture of a Law Enforcement Family, July 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: My Father's Gun: One Family, Three Badges, One Hundred Years in the NYPD (Paperback)

As another "cop's Kid" I wasn't sure I wanted to read this book. I put off buying it and then after buying it, I put off reading it because I was too afraid the author might actually succeed in portraying the Dualistic nature of Law Enforcement families: Passionate yet cold as ice, Caring and loyal but unable to reveal that to their own families, loving and yet painfully distant. Brian MacDonald captured all of this and it did break my heart at times to read this book but the reading of it was the cheapest Therapy I've ever paid for since by the end, I felt I had exorcised some of my own demons. However, don't let all this maudlin exposition fool you, this is a tight, very well-written and sparse memoir that succinctly encompasses three generations of "Mick Yorkies" or New York Policemen. As skilled as MacDonald is at presenting the details of how their involvement in the NYPD shaped the lives of his Grandfather, Father and Brother, he also shows with equal justice exactly how that Civil Service provided these Irish men with different social status from generation to generation. That he does so without resorting to the "Dirty Mick" cliches when discussing Tammany Hall is a remarkable accomplishment that most modern and rather Self-hating irishmen of our day cannot avoid in their haste to assert their own rising social status and to distance themselves from their Father's or Grandfather's hard choices after emigrating.

In addition to providing the reader with a whirlwind education in the history of the NYPD as well as the history of the Irish in the NYPD, Macdonald also does something quite mystical: He successfully evokes all those Irish Cop Archtypes we grew up with and gives them the weight of real names, true war stories and personal remembrance. At one point I noticed there were tears on my face when something he wrote caused me to vividly recall the smell of my Dad's gun belt and the crinkly sound of its leather as he slid it off and up unto a shelf in a locked closet each night. He also caused me to cry in the last few pages as he offers a faint but sincere apologia for the distance that Cop's keep from their own children when he relates a gut-wrenching incident from his own Brother's troubled relationship with his daughter.

All in all, this book is a love-letter I could never write to all the men, and there are many, in my own family that had to leave in the middle of family gatherings to handle some case and to the men who didn't tell us they loved us very often until after they retired because their upbringing and their career-path propelled them in a direction away from open expression of joy and robbed them of some of the contentment that they earned. If you're are a proud son or daughter of a Cop, you'll love this book. If you're an angry son or daughter of a Cop, this book might help you see into their world. That it was written by the son who didn't become a Cop makes it only more poignant since there is no locker-room pride in the Job to distract from the stark but hopeful memoir of the story of thousands of our childhoods.

I'd like to thank Brian MacDonald for this, his first book, and beg him to write some more about our peculiar social milieu. I really did think my family must have been the only one who self-segregated into associating only with other Cops' kids and such for a very long time. I also thought my family was the only one to be so two-faced about Law Enforcement where they revere it at all costs but beg their kids not to follow them into it as they had followed their dads. MY FATHER'S GUN gives an overdue voice to this perpetual struggle to live, love and survive within Law Enforcement. With a hankie in hand, I must admit I am glad I allowed myself to be drawn into this book far enough to finish it. If you are at all considering buying this book, do. You will not regret it.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars enjoyable, interesting, October 19, 2001

By 

PO Robinson (stony point, ny United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Father's Gun: One Family, Three Badges, One Hundred Years in the NYPD (Paperback)

As a member of NYPD, I have heard alot of talk on this book. also living in Rockland county,(also where the author lived) I can relate to differents points of interest in the book. I living a civil service family life, can compare the different aspects of "the job". My father being an officer of FDNY, me being the first cop. This books goes from the changes in the dept. through scandals and also working now shows what things havent changed. I highly recomend this book to anyone not just cops, it puts in perspective a cops life and what the family endures also. Once you start reading it is a hard book to stop reading, it isn't hard reading the book flows very smooth. I am not reader and for me to read a complete book is good.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's all in the family., September 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: My Father's Gun: One Family, Three Badges, One Hundred Years in the NYPD (Hardcover)

The subtitle of McDonald's new nonfiction book says it all: "One Family, Three Badges, One Hundred Years in the NYPD."

But his family wasn't always a part of the book. At first, McDonald, a 45-year-old Manhattan writer, wanted to compose a traditional history of the NYPD with just a slight twist. "I wasn't going to do it about my family," he told APBnews.com. "I was going to do it about New York City policing being the last bastion of careers handed down over generations."

Then he went to an NYPD retirement party where a detective asked the crowd of about 150 how many of them were third-generation officers. About half raised their hands, and a whopping 15 said their police department heritage went back four generations.

"I knew I was on to something then," McDonald said, and he decided to turn to his own family as subject material.

At the time of his grandfather's service, corruption in the NYPD was epidemic. My Father's Gun is perhaps most vivid in its descriptions of an era at the turn of the century when many lawmen were criminals.

Devery, the crooked police captain who owned the city's baseball team, eventually was promoted to chief of police. His inspiring advice to his troops: "When ye're caught with the goods, don't say nothin'."

Brutality wasn't uncommon. Police Capt. Alexander "Clubber" Williams once put the law enforcement ethos into words: "There is more law at the end of the policeman's nightstick than in all the decisions of the Supreme Court."

"Little things like that give you some idea of what things were like," McDonald said. The NYPD "was unbelievably corrupt and incredibly colorful."