Stories from 25 years of patrolling the urban core of Kansas City as a white police officer is packed into Peckerwood in the Hood - Misadventures of a Kansas City Cop.
“The title comes from before I even got out of the police academy,” said Author David Rawlings, who spent much of his career working out of KCPD’s Central Patrol Station.
Rawlings says an African-American man made the wise crack toward Rawlings' group of recruits at the academy.
“He called us a bunch of peckerwoods,” said Rawlings. “It was offensive and kind of gave me a taste of what kind of the N-word would have been if they were called that by somebody that was white. Police officers are called lots of things on the street and that ended up being my favorite and one of the most common ones that was used.”
Rawlings says there is something for everyone inside the pages of Peckerwood in the Hood.
“It’s to educate, to entertain and to shock the conscious,” said Rawlings. “Lots of humor, plenty of crime stuff, a little off duty shenanigans.”
Rawlings teases the book as a “wild roller coaster ride through the inner city” and says anyone wanting to be a cop should give it a read.
“Anyone considering a career in Law enforcement will jump off the fence they are straddling, on one side or the other,” says Rawling’s wife Victoria in the foreword of the book.
Rawlings says he also hopes the book with quell some of the national tension toward police.
“One of the main themes is to show how human cops can be and maybe put the kibosh on some of the anti-cop sentiment that seems to be pervasive in the country right now,” said Rawlings.
You can order the book on Amazon.
-----
Brian Abel can be reached at brian.abel@kshb.com.
