Book ‘em: Two Metro officers tell their stories

By Abigail Goldman

Saturday, April 8, 2006 | 7:37 a.m.

It was a suicide attempt in an off-Strip apartment and Cam Madden, a rookie cop working his first day for Metro Police, caught two paramedics bent over the bleeding body, quietly chanting "die" in unison.

If the man who tried to kill himself got his wish, a senior officer explained, it would spare everyone from wasted work on a throwaway life.

So Madden, the main character in Metro detective Kim Thomas' novel, "Vegas, One Cop's Journey," did exactly as the author on his first day with the department, 13 years ago. He watched the man die.

Thomas readily admits his first hardback fiction is thinly veiled.

"There are situations in the book that are based on specific people and cops, and it's for those people to figure out," Thomas said.

The Metro detective started writing seven years ago and has since practiced principles of the most prolific authors: write every day, and write what you know.

Metro authors deal in a dark genre. Police work is a profession that prides itself on stoicism, sometimes to a fault. Depression, alienation, anxiety and apathy are private horrors that heavy-hearted cops must wear behind their badge.

Lt. Randy Sutton was drinking a quart of scotch almost every day before he began work on "A Cop's Life," a memoir published last year by St. Martin's Press. The 30-year Metro vet didn't bother cloaking his facts in fiction.

"I reached into my memory for what's affected me the most," he said. "It's the ugliest things that bubbled back to the surface."

"A Cop's Life" has sold around 60,000 copies and is due for paperback printing this year. Sutton attributes the book's success to an eager audience: Fellow police officers relieved to read themselves between the lines.

"Cops are very alone in their feelings," said Sutton, who graduated high school early to become a police officer.

"When confronted by deep feelings of almost depression because of things they see, they view it as a weakness. As the years go by you spend so much time pushing those feelings aside that sometimes you can never feel it again."

Sutton, 49, works Metro's graveyard shift. He's single and suited to living alone.

An occasional actor, Sutton started writing professionally with an agent's prompting. His first project was compiling "True Blue: Police Stories Told by Those That Have Lived Them," a collection of short stories written by cops.

The lieutenant writes only when he's inspired and spent around a year working on "A Cop's Life," his own true crime novel. When the writing started, the heavy drinking stopped.

"Human nature and violence and the human condition - that's universal among police officers," he said. "We all see it, feel it, touch it, taste it. I can maybe put it into words a little easier than others can."

Thomas, who became a police officer at 36 after working at the Nevada Test Site, sometimes fields questions from co-workers who want to know who his characters are based on.

Generally, he lets them wonder - until their wives call. The 49-year-old forgery-section detective has had to assure one woman that a character she recognized as her husband did not really have an illicit interaction with two tanned blonde tourists. It wasn't her husband, but perhaps someone else's.

"That was kind of the central theme of my novel - to demonstrate what happens to us," he said. "Personal politics are vying with internal loyalties and moralities. There's a sense of making good on the job or getting ahead on the job. Sometimes those things can be diametrically opposed to each other."

Thomas writes methodically, at least an hour every day on a computer in a coffee shop that's crowded. He started writing seven years ago, while getting an English degree at UNLV. Since then, he's written 10 books but published only the one. His publisher, Stephens Press, does not have solid sales figures.

"I consider myself an artist, except when I need to be a cop," he said. "Then I'm ducking for cover like everyone else and making sure my gun is pointing in the right direction and my mind is set for whatever I have to do."

Both authors say what their books have in common is the way in which they paint the bleakest picture of police life. Each describes the shame of violence, eroding personal lives, outbursts of rage and bullying as status quo. Both officers daydream about loafing into their pensions and paunches, but cringe at the idea of locking their guns in a desk drawer. Sometimes they're haunted by the thought of shooting someone, other times they're gunning to fire. Frequently, they're afraid.

"I know what it's like when you're out there at two in the morning, running through some dark neighborhood and there's not a body around but you and the guy you're chasing." Thomas said. "You're the cop. You've got to go out there and you're scared to death and it's not a lot of fun to do it."

Cam Madden, a symbol of Thomas and every officer he's ever seen struggle, is an outsider on Metro's Strip bicycle patrol. Madden gives up on making nice with co-workers who are largely lazy, corrupt and pathetic. Thomas, who really did ride with the bicycle patrol, admits laws are sometimes only as good as the people who enforce them.

"We're supposed to be the law, and the law is supposed to be blind, and realistically, that's not possible," he said. "We have to walk that line, but we also have to live with ourselves."

Both authors had reservations about writing the whole truth. Thomas cut out pages about high-ranking officers and Sutton won't reveal whether one particularly loaded chapter implies he inappropriately took a woman's life. The oblique exchange in question closes with a taunting paragraph: "Maybe there are some things you're better off not knowing but they always come back to haunt you until you feel compelled to tell someone. Anyone. Maybe you write it all down - and then wait to see what happens."

Sutton says he'd rather readers draw their own conclusions.

"There are things that I have done that I'm not proud of, but if my fellow cops are to learn to accept their own humanity, they need to know it's shared," he said.

Three police officers have contacted Sutton to say that "A Cop's Life" convinced them not to take their own lives, an option the lieutenant himself has considered.

"I'm a human being with the same frailty that everyone possesses," he said.

"There are times when you feel like your job is eating you, and if you don't maintain a balance in your life it will consume you. But sometimes we feel most alive in the thick of the action."

Both men are working on new books and neither has any plan to retire - from either of their jobs.