Title: Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man’s Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement
Author: Frederick Reynolds
Publisher: MindStir Media
ISBN: 1638485216
Pages: 396
Genre: Memoir
Reviewed by: David Allen
Hollywood Book Reviews
Every once in a great while, a book comes along that truly captures the spirit of the times. Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man’s Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement is one of those books.
Our society is beset by gun violence, racial strife, drug epidemics – and the blame-mongering that invariably follows. Frederick Reynolds gives readers an articulate vision of crime and law enforcement in America, as lived by a Black detective staunching social wounds and putting out fires in Compton, California, a legendary nidus of gang warfare, murder and heavy drug use.
Reynolds, growing up in Detroit with an alcoholic father, had several things going for him – his hopes for himself, his desire to make a difference, and the head on his shoulders. Follow Reynolds as he navigates the Scylla and Charybdis of a failed marriage, of fatherhood, of rampant corruption and grievous loss of life in his community and among his fellow officers.
This book has it all. Drawing upon vast stores of humor and history, Reynolds takes us through recent events (including the Rodney King debacle in Los Angeles and the riots), always reflecting on them from a personal and prescient point of view. The memoir is filled with amazing stories, one episode after another of blazing action, tragic loss of life, insane and catastrophic excess arising from lives gone wrong. Reynold’s canny portraits of the Crips and Bloods (gangs that achieved notoriety again and again for their savage exploits) leave us breathless and shocked. The take-home question becomes: How can human beings act this way? The portraits of gang leaders, corrupt police officers and local government officials which emerge are all too recognizable, all too instructive. Reynolds holds no punches (literally!), and serves up round after round of police and gang banter, obscenities, curse words to live by. The prose is practically operatic. The writer makes brilliant use of nicknames and cop idiom to bring each story to life.
Compton’s death rate (ten times that of the rest of the country) continues to spiral as punks and druggies battle it out with an incredible assortment of weapons: semi-automatic guns, ‘assault’ rifles, Magnums, Walther PPKs, Glocks; the toys are all there and so is Detective Reynolds, as he heroically wrests some semblance of order from the chaotic mélange known as inner-city violence. Reynolds points out that profiling, racial and otherwise, works both ways. Not all cops are corrupt. Arrests and take-downs of violent offenders are not always manifestations of institutionalized racism. Hence, ‘the Black, the White, and the Gray.’
This is very fine writing, important reading for everyone in this mad, mad world. The book is a life-changer. The portraits of police and the inner city that emerge are vibrant, fresh and real. Let’s hope Detective Reynolds continues to write and spread the important word.