Kensie Kiesow
I was in the middle of my normal, COVID-era social distancing routine, sitting alone in my house working on my laptop, when I chanced upon the opportunity to interview a fantastic, local crime fiction writer. What great luck I stumbled into because the one I would be assigned to interview was none other than Neal Griffin! This ex-marine, retired police officer, and bestselling author born and raised in Wisconsin was kind enough to chat with me over the phone about his most recent book, The Burden of Truth, which came out last July, as well as about his life as a Southern California police officer.
Griffin will be visiting the Chippewa Valley à la the internet on September 22nd from 7PM to 8PM to offer a craft talk sponsored by the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild and co-sponsored by the L. E. Phillips Memorial Public Library. During “Crime Fiction as Social Commentary”, he will discuss books from authors like Harper Lee and Walter Mosely, which contain social commentary that has maintained its relevancy to this day. He will also be exploring how real-world policing and justice are portrayed in the crime fiction genre as well as opening the floor afterwards for any questions. Be sure to tune in to his talk on Zoom (link here!) on September 22 at 7PM! Read on for more on Neal’s latest book, writing beyond oneself, and how his police work does (and doesn’t) translate on the page.
Kensie Kiesow: What influenced the subject matter of your newest book, The Burden of Truth?
NG: Well, after 27 years in Southern California law enforcement, at some point I got the writing bug. I’m a big believer in using crime fiction to test people’s assumptions about policing in America, and that’s certainly been true since I’ve been published in 2015. So, I wrote three books that were pure fiction and based in an entirely fictional environment in Wisconsin, and I enjoyed that and had some success with it. But, in the last couple of years, I talked to my editor about a story that kind of haunted me about a young man I met in my last couple years at the Escondido Police Department here in San Diego County. He, like Omar, was living in that hazardous middle lane of barrio street justice where gang culture is active in the community. On the one hand, he has to deal with the police officers who, when they look at Omar, see somebody who fits the profile of a gang member, and they treat him that way. Now, on the other hand, Omar’s gotta get along with the actual gang members. So, Omar’s that guy who was at ground zero of a very serious crime, and he had been in a car that he probably shouldn’t have been in, but he felt like he had to, to protect his family.
Well, the young man wound up getting arrested and involved in a major gang murder case. And, he had to testify in open court. I remember, after we arrested him, when we sat down in the interrogation room, he just sat forward and said, “Okay, let me tell you what happened.” He told us a story and that story didn’t change from the first day he told us to the last day he testified in court. It was his absolute truth. And, that truth almost cost him his life because, according to California law, being there at the scene of the crime considered him a principle of the crime, so he was looking at twenty-five to life. But, he was a nice kid, and when he got in the car that night, I don’t think anyone could have held him morally responsible for the decision he made to protect his family. But, legally, he wound up in a lot of trouble. Young men like Omar are constantly put in these situations where they have to go along to get along. They end up in the legal system, and the law can be pretty harsh. I’ve always wanted to write that book, so I decided to write what I call fiction true to life. I decided to make it in San Diego county in a real community because that story hits close to home.
KK: I noticed that your first book, The Benefit of the Doubt, was written with two, white male protagonists, and I was just wondering, how has your writing changed to portray a Latino man?
NG: Ben Sawyer, the protagonist of The Benefit of the Doubt, was sort of the cop I would always have liked to have been. He’s just a real bold and terrific police officer, until the moment he’s not, of course. He commits an act of abuse so egregious that his whole career is destroyed. Now, the real question is, “Where do I, a 60-year-old white man, get off trying to write as an 18-year-old Latino boy?” and I think that’s a fair question. The fact is, I did work with a lot of young men like Omar on both sides of the coin. I met young men who were really in that difficult situation and managed to make something great out of their lives, and some who didn’t. My wife is also a first generation Mexican-American, and her family mostly lived in Salinas, which is a pretty tough town up in Northern California, so I know some of her first-hand experiences. From hers and my own personal and professional background, I felt that I had some skin in the game, so to speak, that I could have the audacity to write as an 18-year-old Latino. Now, I did get some sensitivity readers because I didn’t make that decision lightly. To write that far outside of your own reality is something that you should be very careful with, particularly when you’re crossing cultures.
KK: What about the crime fiction genre draws you in, both as a reader and as a writer?
NG: As a writer, what we really strive for is to challenge the assumptions that people have. And, certainly everyone has an opinion of police work, and most of the people I come across not only have an opinion about police work, but they’re “experts.” They think they know everything that cops go through. That’s changed within the last couple of years because, with the ubiquity of cell phones, it’s become harder to challenge people’s assumptions. People are seeing it themselves from reality TV and youtube. Although, I still like the idea, and I want The Burden of Truth to challenge people’s assumptions, specifically concerning how they think justice plays out in the lives of young men like Omar. That’s really what motivated me to create that very first character, Ben Sawyer, then Tia Suarez after him, and quite a few others.
KK: What made you want to become a police officer in the first place?
NG: Crime fiction! It’s funny because, way back in 1970, I wandered into the Eau Claire Public Library on Farwell street, and there was this book that everyone was talking about. It was a book of the month selection, and it was called The New Centurions by Joe Wambaugh, who was a new writer and a detective for the Los Angeles police department. I tried to check it out, but the librarian wouldn’t let me because it was adult fiction. Instead, I went over to my dad, who was a professor at the college, and he got it for me because he believed that children should read whatever they wanted. I did end up reading it when I was very young, and the librarian was probably right that I had no business reading it as a 10-year-old, but by the time I was 12 years old, and because of the books I read, I was bound and determined to become a police officer. I ended up joining the marines, but when I was discharged, I immediately went over to the academy in San Diego and worked in the county for 27 years.
KK: I noticed you studied police ethics at the FBI National Academy in Quantico. How has that influenced your police work on and off the beat?
“So, I’ve always been fascinated by police excellence and how to train that, how to operationalize that as opposed to just depending on people being able to respond to such difficult circumstances. When you train shooting, driving, or even report writing, you’re training the physical imagination on how to respond to certain scenarios, but when you’re training ethics, you’re training the moral imagination. That’s the part that I try to drill in them.”
NG: I was a core instructor, so that meant I instructed on police conduct and police ethics. I like to talk about police excellence, but of course we studied misconduct as well. I’ve studied that field for close to 20 years, so when I ended up at the FBI academy, that’s what I wanted to specialize in. I’m fascinated by what makes some cops so good at what that do, and how sometimes we let people who clearly have no business wearing a badge and a gun work in that field. And I don’t think I need to use any specific examples because all you have to do is go on youtube. When I started teaching ethics, I said a good trick for law enforcement is to behave as though there is a camera on you, but now I have to tell them, “remember, you are always being filmed.” So, I’ve always been fascinated by police excellence and how to train that, how to operationalize that as opposed to just depending on people being able to respond to such difficult circumstances. When you train shooting, driving, or even report writing, you’re training the physical imagination on how to respond to certain scenarios, but when you’re training ethics, you’re training the moral imagination. That’s the part that I try to drill in them. In police work, you don’t have the moral right to be pretty good at your job, you have to be really good at it.
KK: How has studying police ethics and patrol procedures influenced your opinions on the recent shootings of unarmed black men and women?
NG: Well, my career began in 1989, and within the first couple of years, there was the first viral police video. It’s interesting because, back in the day if you mentioned Rodney King, everyone knew who that was, but now if you mention that name, no one knows anymore. There was a time when everyone had an opinion on Rodney King, and in the last ten years, we’ve seen so much of this egregious misconduct that it’s very difficult to come to grips with it. I do point out when I answer this question that the police respond to between forty and sixty million calls for service every year, and over 98% of them involve no use of force whatsoever. That being said, I can’t look at the video of Kenosha and defend that. What police officers need to recognized is that people can see it with their own eyes. They can see what has occurred, and they can see it’s just not defensible conduct. I could break down what happened in Minneapolis frame by frame and see so many opportunities for a competent, well-meaning officer to avoid that situation. I can also see some malice, particularly in Officer Chauvin, for standing on George Floyd’s neck, and I think that’s going to be a very solid criminal case against him. In Kenosha what I see are some issues of competency as well. I still teach ethics, and a lot of the time, it really just is police officers who aren’t very good at their jobs.
Tune in on Tuesday, September 22 at 7PM on Zoom (link here!)! For more info on Neal Griffin, or to order his latest book, The Burden of Truth, visit his website at nealgriffin.com