Code 33: True California Cop Stories from the 1970s has won three CIPA - EVVY Awards, a national and international book competition, for Literary Non-Fiction, Memoir - Autobiography, and Inspirational. It has also received a positive book review and posted in the San Francisco Police Officers Association Journal by Dennis Bianchi, retired SFPD officer and lecturer of literature and criminal justice at San Francisco State University.
Author Thomas Wamsley shares his memories as a San Francisco police officer and a Santa Cruz County deputy sheriff and detective during the turbulent decade of the 1970s. During the late 1960s, San Francisco and the Haight Ashbury became know as the epicenter for the new counter culture in America. By 1970, much of the idealism of peace, love, and joy had given way to drug abuse, crime, violent protests against the Viet Nam war, bombings, and terrorism. During the four years Officer Wamsley served in San Francisco, nine SFPD officers were killed in the line of duty.
Although Officer Wamsley worked some of his times early in his training in the Haight Ashbury District, most of his police stories took place in the Central Police District.. That district covered one of the primary business and financial districts in the Western U.S., Fisherman's Wharf, and other tourist and nightlife attractions, Chinatown, North Beach, and the notorious high crime Tenderloin District.
The author provides some graphic detail of a wide variety of experiences he encountered, some violent, some humorous, but all interesting. He also confesses to some errors and bad decisions he made, including how he came very close to losing his life. These stories show his human side, but he also learned from those errors.
Mr. Wamsley gives a good and rational reason for taking a lateral transfer from the SFPD to move his family to the beautiful seaside and mountainous community of Santa Crua County wher he joined the sheriff's department there. Some readers might think that Santa Cruz County would be an easy place for cops to work. Not quite! Unbeknown to Mr. Wamsley at that time, Santa Cruz County was soon to become known back in those days as the serial murder capital of the country.
Deputy Wamsley found that among the many changes he would find in his new job, some of the patrol sectors he would be assigned to would be larger that the city of San Francisco and he would be driving solo. Back up assistance could be as far away as 20 to 30 minutes as compared to a couple minutes or less in the big city. One of the chapters describes an incident that took place while he was a field training officer. In that situation, he relied on his experience and intuition and probably saved his life and the life of his trainee one night during a traffic stop. There are also several chapters in the book that recount some of the major crimes that then Detective Wamsley investigated and which resulted in some interesting outcomes.
Code 33 is a book that is easy to read and keeps the reader's attention from start to finish. Because of some of the graphic and harsh language, the book is not recommended for children.