The Decoy Man: The Extraordinary Adventures of an Undercover Cop

VG/VG First Edition.
From the Jacket: Dan Chiodo, N.Y.P.D. shield number 27996, was a decoy man. In a tough, dangerous profession, his was the toughest, most dangerous job. Prowling the Bowery and the East Village, Washington Square Park and Central Park, Brooklyn and lower Broadway, looking the part of the aimless drifter, the nervous, strung-up addict, the vulnerable drunk, he fought street crime by attracting it-to himself. And for him, crime in the streets was not hard to find. He went after car boosters, flim-flam men, muggers, mashers, robbers and petty thieves. He nabbed hoodlums in the act of beating and robbing bums for pennies. He caught street-corner Romeos pawing women pedestrians and chased purse-snatchers and junkies. He mingled with crowds of war protestors at demonstrations, trying to cool tempers inflamed by militant rhetoric. And there were the bigger fish: networks of pushers distributing to addicted kids; motorcycle thugs gang-raping an innocent young girl from the country; agitators plotting to bomb a crowded teen-agers' rendezvous-all these were grist for Chiodo's mill. It all adds up to a hazardous life, a life full of action and of frustration. In case after case, Chiodo saw the petty offenders convicted and the greater offenders released through a legal system bedeviled by plea-bargaining, overlenient judges and over-worked prosecutors. In time, the fight against cynicism became almost as tough as the fight against crime. Through Chiodo's eyes, we see it all-the day-by-day existence of criminals and victims, in deserted parks and in dark, back alleys, on riot-thronged avenues and on empty, late-night streets, in seedy bars and dingy tenement walk-ups where brutality is a daily occurrence and justice an irrelevant abstraction. We share with him the tension and determination, the risks and opportunities, the hopes and despair of the cop who is in the midst of the action wherever and whenever it is happening the Decoy Man.