I was a cop for fifteen years, but I took my first ride in a scout car long before that, on a beautiful spring day in 1959. I was 10 years old, in fifth grade at Bennett Elementary School in southwest Detroit. Leaning against the tall chain-link fence that enclosed the playground, my two friends Randy McCoy and Jimmy Smith and I were singing Wilbert Harrison’s new hit song “Kansas City”:

“Well, I might take a train, I might take a plane,
but if I have to walk, I’m going just the same.
I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas City, here I come . . .”

PostedJune 10, 2014

AuthorRobert Ankony

CategoriesPolice behavior, Juvenile behavior

TagsRobert Ankony, Wayne County Sheriff's Department, Willow Run Airport, Learjet airplane crash 1973, Detroit Police Department

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My first Article 15 happened when I was a 17 year old paratrooper stationed at the Rhine Kaserne, Germany. Bored one weekend I left the kaserne with a friend and took a bus to Weisbaden. We spent our time drinking and ended up late at night crashing a formal convention. We helped ourselves to the ample supply of champagne that was placed on crisp white table cloths as the conventioneers looked at us with disgust.

PostedJune 3, 2014

AuthorRobert Ankony

CategoriesArticle 15, Military discipline

TagsRobert Ankony, Rhine Kaserne, Richard Ankony, long range reconnaissance patrol, Fulda Gap, Company F 425th Infantry Ranger

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Wives can be great companions and lots of fun, but from a cop’s perspective, an angry wife can be something else altogether. She can stop your heart. Of all my professional dealings with hostile women, two encounters really stand out.

PostedMay 9, 2014

AuthorRobert Ankony

CategoriesPolice behavior, Criminal behavior, Police use of force

TagsRobert Ankony, Wayne County Sheriff's Department, Sheila Ankony, Richard Novak, Amy Joy Donuts, Joe Porcarelli, Richard Ankony

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It was last light, and my front scout, Gair Anderson, my assistant team leader, Bruce Cain, and I were each placing a claymore mine facing an enemy trail. It was a well-used trail, four miles west-southwest of Quang Tri City, and only the night before we had heard enemy troops casually talking as they walked along. We were confident that more enemy troops would return. Then, just as we slipped in the detonators, a dark figure suddenly appeared on another trail, a hundred feet away.

PostedApril 18, 2014

AuthorRobert Ankony

CategoriesVietnam War, Long Range Reconnaissance, Tet Offensive

TagsRobert Ankony, Douglas Parkinson, Khe Sanh Combat Base, A Shau Valley, Lurps: A Ranger's Diary, Recondo School, Dong Tri Mountain, Dong Re Lao Mountain, Battle of Signal Hill Vietnam, Catherine Ankony, Gair Anderson

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It was my sixth year with the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department in Detroit, and I was assigned to uniformed motorized patrol at the Patrol and Investigation Division in western Wayne County. Six years on the force meant I no longer had to work nights, afternoons, or the shift that was toughest on the social life: seven at night to three in the morning. The best part of days was that if I had to go to court, I could do it while I was working—no more having to lose sleep. And I could go to college in the evening without any scheduling hassles.

PostedMarch 30, 2014

AuthorRobert Ankony

CategoriesDetroit Crime 1976, Social alienation, Police use of force, Criminal behavior

TagsRobert Ankony, Mayor Coleman Young, Amy Joy Donuts, Ed Swamba, Sheila Ankony, Wayne County Sheriff's Department, Detroit Police Department, Officer in Trouble

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It was 12:05 a.m., and I was lying alone in bed, heartbroken after a recent divorce. She and I were both cops, she with Detroit Police and I with the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department. I had worked the scout car all day and then gone out on a date that evening, but I knew she wasn’t the one for me. I had finally dropped off to sleep when the telephone by my bed jangled me awake.

“Hello?” I said, grabbing the phone.

“Bobby! Please help!” It was my mother’s frantic voice.

“What’s wrong, Mom?”

“There’s people breaking in our house!”

PostedMarch 25, 2014

AuthorRobert Ankony

CategoriesDetroit Police Department, Detroit crime 1976, Social alienation

TagsRobert Ankony, Ruth Ankony, Edmond Ankony, Richard Ankony, Mayor Coleman Young, Murder City, Patton Park Detroit, Wayne County Sheriff's Department

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January 25, 2014, was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Surf City, USA—also known as Huntington Beach, California. It was a pleasant seventy-two degrees, with not a cloud in the sky. The weather was especially nice since, just the evening before, I had flown out of Detroit, where it was two degrees with biting forty-mile-an-hour gusts. I had been in Detroit for a week of unavoidable family business with three self-absorbed siblings.

PostedMarch 2, 2014

AuthorRobert Ankony

CategoriesRip current, Ocean dangers, water rescue

TagsRobert Ankony, Huntington Beach California, Surf City USA

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My two-years-older brother was an inspiration to me—a giant. As a teenager, he was fascinated with military airplanes. Hanging on strings from our basement bedroom ceiling and covering every shelf were more than a hundred plastic model planes he had meticulously assembled and painted, making sure every color and decal matched the real thing. His airplane collection ran from the de Havilland biplanes and Fokker triplanes of the First World War to the Vietnam-era F-111 “fast movers” and B-52 bombers. He even had Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft models.

PostedFebruary 28, 2014

AuthorRobert Ankony

CategoriesEstranged Families, Science and Religion, Bitterness and Health

TagsRobert Ankony, Richard Ankony, Edmond Ankony, Ruth Ankony, Tom Howard, Mike Kozel

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Christmastime 1972 was one for the ages. I was a 24-year-old undercover cop assigned to the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department Metropolitan Narcotics Squad. It was December, and I was also serving with Company F, 425th Infantry (Ranger), in the Michigan National Guard.

PostedFebruary 12, 2014

AuthorRobert Ankony

CategoriesDetroit crime, Police behavior, Criminal behavior

TagsRobert Ankony, Robert Dooley, Robert Bradford, Mark Bethune, John Percy Boyd, Hayward Brown, Wayne County Sheriff's Department, Company F 425th Infantry Ranger, Chuck Art

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How, after spending eight years on the Wayne County Sheriff’s force and three years in the Narcotics Bureau, did I end up in the Detective Bureau, shuffling papers and answering phones? Answer: because I decided it would be a good idea to illegally convert two semiauto M1 carbines to fully automatic. The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms didn’t agree with my assessment. Neither did my department—never mind that these were weapons I used in my work as an undercover cop. So I worked patrol till I was promoted to detective, but what I really wanted was to get back to the Narcotics Bureau, where everything was fast, exciting, and fun.

PostedFebruary 3, 2014

AuthorRobert Ankony

CategoriesPolice behavior, Criminal behavior

TagsRobert Ankony, Sheriff William Lucas, Tennessee v. Garner, Police use of deadly force, Wayne County Sheriff's Department

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