biographies

The stories read like fiction, life imitating art. Gina Gallo captures fact and spins a very visual account of the trials and experiences of being a cop, a woman cop. It seemed that as I was reading her memoirs, every question I had of what a woman would think in this situation and that, she answered without making this book overly drawn from the struggles of being female. She was a cop who offers up an intelligent and articulate story that demystifies cop land but leaves me thinking that most jobs good or bad feel disconnected to life and one's community. I have a greater appreciation for the scope of human behavior, both inside and out of the PD.

...ARMED AND DANGEROUS...is the story of an evolution. A memoir of the author's cop life from her days as a recruit through the events that led to her retirement, this book sets all the events, bizarre and mundane, that take place in the cop life within the context of one person's experience, and it is a moving, unforgettable read. You really do come away from this book knowing what it must be like to be a cop. And evidently if you are a cop you come away with all your own particular experiences confirmed by the universal truths that Gina Gallo, in unpretentious, direct and hardhitting language, so ably and vividly describes. This is a terrific book. It reminds me of some of the best Vietnam literature...--it's that intense, that personal, that memorable.

This was an interesting book, however I would have liked to see a little more of the positive side of being a policewoman. There had to be something positive about the job, or she wouldn't have been a policewoman for so many years.
Having a policeman for a friend, I did appreciate some of the insights into how they may feel different from "civilians".
It's a very sad tale of how many people live and how instead of the police being encouraged become discouraged.
I struggled with how to rate this book, because it's discouraging and haunting, with no upside I wanted to rate it a 3, but Gina does a good job of writing and relating her experience, so I rated it a 4.