The Crime Fighter: How You Can Make Your Community Crime Free [Paperback]

Jack Maple (Author), Chris Mitchell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Jack Maple was a former NYPD transit cop who found himself appointed deputy commissioner in 1993. Upon assuming his new office, the erstwhile Don Quixote of urban crime led a charge to reform the way cops go about their everyday business--namely, busting the bad guys. Amazingly, Maple succeeded, and New York's crime rate--previously spiraling out of control--took a 39 percent tumble within two years of his ascension to policymaker, with murders alone falling an astounding 50 percent.

The Crime Fighter is the story of a regular beat cop with big ideas, and Maple's fast-paced, two-fisted tone helps punctuate an often madcap assortment of recollections. Maple's an unusual character to say the least, a somewhat rotund dandy who sports a bow tie and derby in public and nurtures a reputation as a gourmand. He takes the lion's share of credit for NYC's reduction in crime, but almost in an offhand, good-sportish way, rather than incessantly beating his own drum. He'd rather tell tales about the time he chewed out the chief ("I'll be damned if I'm going to start looking over my shoulder because of a guy down here wearing Ricky Nelson suits") or the time he played up his hemorrhoid problems to goad a prisoner into making a confession. Once he gets past his active days on the beat, Maple settles down into a steady rhythm, systematically laying out the obstacles he faced in trying to get his department to fight crime in an orderly, sensible manner, and then explaining the process whereby he went right ahead and did it. (The COMSTAT system he devised for storing and tracking crime information is now standard operating procedure in many police departments across the country.) The Crime Fighter never gets bogged down in its own grandeur--on the contrary, parts of Maple's look back read like good Elmore Leonard-type crime fiction, and several passages are so beautifully absurd that it takes a supreme effort of will to remember that, yes, a cop really wrote that. --Tjames Madison --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

With a mixture of autodidactic erudition and street smarts, Maple reflects on what he learned about effective policing in a career that started on the lowest rung of New York City law enforcement, as a transit cop patrolling underground subway tunnels. Maple worked his way up to deputy commissioner of the NYPD under Commissioner William Bratton in the early 1990s, and became a well-known fixture in the city. In 1993, Maple writes, he mortgaged his house and blew the money on $400 suits, fancy hats and bottles of Dom Perignon, which he drank over ice at the trendy restaurant Elaine's while formulating the four basic principles of policing that would guide the city's successful assault on crime (in two years, murder rates dropped by 50%). Maple favors military analogies, dropping names like Rommel and Sun Tzu as influences, but behind his swagger is an obsessive dedication and attention to detail. He offers a paddy wagon-full of examples from his career in New York, and later as a police consultant in New Orleans and other cities, of how police departments need to track data and of how cops often work against each other unnecessarily. Maple is at his most compelling when he illustrates his theories with war stories that recount the careers of notorious criminals, like a hit-man nicknamed "Freddy Krueger," and the real-life police work that nailed them. With Mitchell's help, Maple writes with almost as much mischievous style as he dressed when he wore his homburg and spats to Elaine's. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (October 17, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767905547
• ISBN-13: 978-0767905541
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #355,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For Those Who Believe the Cops Can Make a Difference, December 6, 1999

By	Gregory Berg (Cerritos, Ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Crime Fighter: Putting the Bad Guys Out of Business (Hardcover)

For those of us in the policing business who grew up being taught that police performance made little difference to criminals and the crime rate, Maple's book is an ice cold beer in the middle of the desert: wonderful and refreshing. He has an important message not only to empty suit police executives, but also to city managers and local elected officials who spend and enormous amount of tax dollars without having a clue is it produces any meaningful results in terms of public safety. By monitoring crime patterns daily, using timely intelligence, used rapidly to develop strategies and deploy people in the right places, the 20 percent of the criminals who commit 80 percent of the crime can be tracked and captured. Unfortunately, most police departments are evaluated on their ability to respond efficiently, solve an occasional high profile crime, and talk in vague terms about community policing an partnerships. What Maple has shown us is that what police departments need are leaders who know how to lead and manage, but also know about street policing and about investigating crime. This book not only challenges police leaders, but also provides them instruction on how to lead the crime fighting efforts of their police departments. The enormous costs of municipal policing might be justified if more departments followed some of Jack Maple's advice. This book is a "must read" for those in the police business who believe the primary mission of police departments is to fight crime and the number one goal is fewer victims.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do you want to fight crime?: Then read this book, November 12, 2001

By	Glen Mills (Boston area, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Crime Fighter: Putting the Bad Guys Out of Business (Hardcover)

This is the best book on policing that I have ever read. It is not some boring textbook written by some college professor who has never made an arrest or even ridden in a police car. This book is informative, humorous and entertaining. Maple lays out a crime fighting strategy in an easy-to-understand, common sense manner. He also gives a few tips on the tactics to be employed using his strategy.

The main point of his strategy: Map out the crime in your jurisdiction by location and time and deploy your forces to those locations. "Put cops on dots" and then hold people accountable for the crime rates in their areas of responsibility. It is a simple idea but it has hardly been employed by police agencies in the United States.

Maple tells police managers how to proceed and how to get past problems in implementing the strategy. He then gives the reader tactics to use to catch even more crooks, including systematically turning each arrest into an opportunity to find other criminals, drug dealers and illegal guns.

This book should become part of every police academy curriculum and added to every police promotional reading list. It is really that good.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Common Sense Approach to Policing and Managing, November 9, 2000

By	andres j. ledesma (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Crime Fighter: How You Can Make Your Community Crime Free (Paperback)

Jack Maple's book is both informative and fun reading. with his professional experience as a valuable resource, Maple's book is full of examples of how to lower crime and boost police/community morale. this book explains how to simplify the complicated and bureaucratic approach that many police departments take.maple's book raises many management theories that are important for any successful organization to be familiar with. (i.e. micromanaging vs. macromanaging in " The One Minute Manager", to a degree,and the breaking ball plus theory, a relative of the broken windows theory and other common sense theories) Maple also expounds on the need for managers to be leaders and not coaches and how leaders must allow for innovation in the lower ranks while letting subordinates know their bosses are familiar with their plight. Maple asserts that settling for less can become a cancer on any organization. for example, Maple argues that 10% of cops do 90% of the crime fighting. The Crime Fighter is an educational " page turner". To read it is to enjoy it.