ARRESTING TALES OF NEW YORK

Officers' Literary Outpourings Are in Growing Demand

Call it Cop Lit.

The annals of police writers include novelists like Joseph Wambaugh,
whistle-blowers like Frank Serpico and the unheralded officers who
contribute tales to true crime anthologies.

Stretch the definition a bit, and you can add the consultants to
reality-laden police shows like "N.Y.P.D. Blue." There is even a
policeman with a nationally syndicated weekly radio segment.

Now number among the writing ranks Lucas Miller, a New York City
police detective and former narcotics undercover officer. In a sign of
the times, he writes a column for an Internet publication, Slate
magazine (www.slate.com).

In sometimes wry and sometimes elegaic tones, Detective Miller has
chronicled station house reaction to the acquittal of police officers
in the killing of Amadou Diallo and to the seizing of Elian Gonzalez.
He has given an account of a strangely peaceful night on patrol in
Times Square during last New Year's Eve. He has written,
self-deprecatingly, about an off-duty encounter with marijuana, about
accidentally spraying Mace in the eyes of two fellow detectives and
about finding his car towed while on a date.

His column, which recently acquired the rubric "Flatfoot," has
appeared an average of once a month since the beginning of the year.
Though Slate does not release figures for the number of hits per
article, editors say "Flatfoot" is one of the more popular features.

The column is yet another example of the allure of New York police
stories, a mystique primed by television shows from "Kojak" to "Law
and Order" and countless movies and books. These days, the genre is
thriving.

Another member of the force, Edward W. Conlon, writes about an
officer's life under the pseudonym Marcus Laffey for The New Yorker. A
somewhat less topical, more lyrical version of Detective Miller, Mr.
Conlon is working on a hotly auctioned book about his experiences, to
be published by Riverhead Books.

A 20-year veteran of the force, Richard Rosenthal is coming out in August
with "Rookie Cop: Deep Undercover in the Jewish Defense League," a memoir of
his penetration of the radical group in the early 1970's. Mr. Rosenthal, who
retired from the New York department, is now chief of police in Wellfleet,
Mass., on Cape Cod, where he hired Detective Miller as a part-time officer
in 1990.

"There are far more officers out there who have wonderful stories, who
just don't have the facility to put them on paper," said Chief
Rosenthal, who has written two other police insider books and a novel.
"We see a section of society that very few people get to see," and can
deliver a "vicarious thrill," he said.

The police are not the only municipal workers with itchy keyboard
fingers. Dennis Smith won acclaim for "Report From Engine Co. 82," an
account of his days as a firefighter in the South Bronx. First
published in 1972, the book was reissued by Warner Books last year.

For those who ponder the genre, it is the muse of New York City itself
that generates the most fascination among readers. New York resides
firmly in the American consciousness, whether as Sin City, Fun City
and now, after a major drop in crime, Safe City. Who can resist it?

And like no other place, this cauldron of race, class, evil, money and
spectacle inspires peace officers to write.

"There's such a richness in New York, such a diversity of people, of
experiences," said Eli Silverman, a professor of police studies at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "The ordinary experiences far
outweigh what one's imagination can conceive. Each story is more and
more incredible."

Chief Rosenthal agrees. "You wonder why New York City cops can write
about the stuff?" he asked. "It's because we see the stuff. People
hacked into pieces, babies thrown into ovens, the most bizarre human
interactions you can imagine are relatively commonplace to a police
officer working in a high-crime precinct."

Such taxpayer-financed life experience by city workers can prove
lucrative. Officer Conlon received an advance for his book reported at
$995,000.

While Cop Lit is nothing new in New York, these are interesting times
for writerly members of the department, and Mr. Miller acknowledges he
is courting the possibility of official discomfort.

The department has come under sharp criticism in the past several
years for cases like the Diallo shooting, in which white police
officers killed an unarmed black man. Other such cases include the
torture of Abner Louima in a station house and the fatal shooting of
Patrick M. Dorismond by plainclothes officers. These much-publicized
incidents have formed a wedge between many New Yorkers and the
department and made rank-and-file officers and commanders more
sensitive to publicity.

Nor is the department a place where attention-getters flourish. Its
previous commissioner, William J. Bratton, loved the limelight and
found himself forced out of a job by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
High-profile members, like the now-retired Detective Bo Dietl, whose
1988 autobiography was called "One Tough Cop," are not always welcome.

On the other hand, Detective Miller's current boss, Commissioner Howard
Safir, has shopped his own book about life in law enforcement. And Mr.
Bratton, who wrote his own book with Peter Knobler called "Turnaround: How
America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic," joined the now-faltering
crime Web site APBnews.com as a columnist.

In an interview, Detective Miller said he had raised no eyebrows in
the department with his Slate columns. He said he received the
standard approval needed for an officer to work off duty and did not
clear his columns beforehand.

"All of my commanders and supervisors I've talked to about my writing
have been solicitous about my opinions, my writing," he said. But
then, he concedes, few officers probably read Slate. One of his close
colleagues did not know about the column.

Officer Conlon, 36, who declined to be interviewed for this article,
early on chose to write under a pseudonym mainly to avoid alerting his
fellow officers that he was writing about them and thus change the
flow of his stories, said his editor, Christopher Knutsen. Avoiding
official repercussions may have been a reason, too, Mr. Knutsen allowed.

For Detective Miller, the line is tough to straddle. He says he is no
apologist or spokesman for his employer but he does not want to be
considered a critic of a force he says he loves dearly. He says he
wants to enlighten readers, but "obviously I'm under constraints as to
what I can write about."

He says he would never jeopardize an investigation, invade the privacy
of fellow officers or release sensitive information. Nor, he says,
will he air the department's dirty laundry.

Detective Miller's balancing act is seen in his Diallo piece, posted
on Feb. 26. He wrote of the sadness his fellow officers felt at the
way the system failed Mr. Diallo, their relief at the acquittal, their
identification with the officers who used their guns.

"But every cop in my office today was aware that it is going to take a
long time, a lot of sweat, and probably some blood to deal with what
they have done," he wrote to finish the column.

In his marijuana piece, he wrote about a home delivery of the drug to
his girlfriend's roommate while he was in the house. Some officers
favor strict enforcement of anti-drug laws when it comes to marijuana,
he said. Others are embarrassed about cracking down on marijuana users.

"And there are those, like myself, who see the virtue of enforcing
quality of life laws but can't help but feel bad putting a guy in
handcuffs for smoking pot," Detective Miller wrote. He would not be
making any arrests on that off-duty evening. "But nor could I sit idle
while Ms. Roommate toked up," he said, ending the article this way: "I
found myself hitting the redial button on their phone pad, trying to
get the number of the delivery service."

Detective Miller, 33, was born on the Upper West Side and grew up in
SoHo, where he lives now. His father taught English at Brooklyn
College and his mother is a painter. He majored in English at Wesleyan
University after being rejected from a creative writing program at the
university but was kicked out in his senior year for academic reasons.

Detective Miller was sworn in in 1990, rose quickly while working
undercover in narcotics and made detective in 1996. He is on the staff
of the commander of the narcotics division for the Manhattan South
command.

He came to Slate's attention after sending an e-mail comment on a
columnist's harsh remark about the Diallo case. After an exchange of
messages, he was invited to contribute a so-called Slate diary, in
which people write about daily experiences. A Slate editor, Jodi
Kantor, suggested the column after that.

"He's humane and intelligent and funny and clearly doing his job for
the best of the best of reasons," Ms. Kantor said.

While Detective Miller sometimes seems to float between two worlds --
one of words, the other of police work -- his heart lies firmly in his
day job.

"I'd like to believe people are reading my stuff because I'm a decent
writer, not because it says I'm a cop," he said. "Hopefully, it's both."

But writing, for now, cannot replace policing, he said, adding, "It's
my first and only real love as a profession."