Welcome! I'm thrilled to be sharing a guest post from Janice Cantore today in celebration of her upcoming release! If you'd like to check out the interview I shared last week, go here. Otherwise, check out the guest post and enter the giveaway sponsored by Tyndale House below...
Code of Courage
By Janice Cantore
Christian Romantic Suspense
Paperback & ebook, 432 Pages
July 19th 2022 by Tyndale House Publishers
Summary
Detective Danni Grace has never met a police officer who wants to face a scenario where pulling the trigger on another person is the only option. When the worst does occur and there’s a police-involved shooting, it leads to riots and calls to disband the entire police force in La Rosa, Danni’s hometown.
After fifteen years on the force, Danni has had enough. Injured in the line of duty when a protester throws a chunk of concrete at her and shaken by the vitriol being shown to the police, Danni realizes for the first time that she’s lost her passion for the job.
While she’s on a leave of absence, though, a community activist in La Rosa is shot and a fellow officer is blamed for his murder. Taking on this case means stepping back into a job Danni’s not sure she can do anymore . . . and working closely with her ex-husband, Gabriel Fox, an investigator for the city prosecutor’s office. Danni will need to tap into her code of courage to uncover the truth, prevent another injustice, and uphold her oath to serve and protect.
(Affiliate links included.)
Guest Post
The Inspiration for Code of Courage
By Janice Cantore
Code of Courage is the book I’ve wanted to write since the beginning of my writing career. The Rodney King riots in 1992 so upended my perceptions about policing, politics, news media, and brutality that I felt I needed to write it down. I tried, but I was never able to get my thoughts down on paper the way I wanted to.
And those riots were not the first I had witnessed. I’d experienced my first riot a few years earlier, when I was still in training and following my training officer around like a puppy. Fender’s Ballroom was a notorious nightclub in downtown Long Beach. Notorious because whenever they hosted a large event, there were problems. One night I was dispatched to Fender’s during a punk rock concert. The place was overcrowded and the fire department barred additional fans from entering, but they refused to leave. When I arrived, a sea of maybe 300 punk rock enthusiasts filled the street.
Ignoring warnings to disperse, the crowd became an unlawful assembly. What made it a riot came next. We moved in to disperse the crowd. The punk rockers were having none of it. In the blink of an eye, with what seemed like one mind, the crowd turned from us and began running down the middle of the street, breaking windows in cars and shops, and throwing anything that was not nailed down—bottles, cans, newspaper racks. Raised to respect authority, I’d never been so close to such chaos before. A few people were arrested, the ones we could catch, but most eventually made it to their cars and out of the city, leaving a huge mess along a three-block-square area.
Little did I know at the time how tame that “riot” was. I was on duty when the 1992 rioting started in Long Beach, and there was nothing that could have prepared me for that night. I’d watched for weeks while the media played the beating video over and over, stoking anger throughout the community. When the verdict came down and the rioting started, the crowds were confrontational, violent, angry. And the police were so outnumbered. I remember facing off a crowd of about 300 with only 10 or 12 other officers. Once it got dark, there was a point where we split up, and four of us were in the middle of the street trying to prevent a crowd of 100 or more from looting a grocery store. My partner turned to me and said, “Someone could be out there with a gun pointed at us, and we’d never see it.”
Thankfully the crowd was more interested in looting than in hurting us. The fact that we were so outnumbered meant that we couldn’t protect the city. There were not enough of us to go around. Businesses were burned, livelihoods lost; Long Beach had one riot-related homicide. I remember thinking that nothing at all was accomplished by the riots except the injury of innocent people.
Then came the riots of in the summer of 2020. Long out of uniform now, I watched in sadness and anger at how much more violent these riots were. Again, news media played a huge role in stoking the anger, even to the point of distorting events and reporting flat-out lies. Looting was certainly prevalent, but the rioters were also out to hurt people, specifically police officers. And for the most part, the police were restrained from doing any sort of enforcement or containment. I could only shake my head in frustration. Finally, I was able to write the book I’d wanted to write so many years ago.
Fictional cop Danni Grace sees violence start because of a lie. Injured in a riot, she almost quits and leaves law enforcement because of the chaos. She changes her mind when she remembers why she entered law enforcement in the first place: to help people and serve her community. She and her coworkers battle to get the truth out, not only for the police force, but for the innocent civilians who are being victimized.
Code of Courage was born out of my desire to show the other side, the side that gets hurt by the violence of rioting. Whatever legitimate grievance spawned the protest gets lost in the violence, and often, the innocent pay the price. The police are not the enemy. Lawbreakers are. By and large, people become police officers to serve the communities they live in. That’s why I signed up. Riots only hurt the innocent; they solve nothing.
About the Author
Giveaway
One winner will receive a print copy of Code of Courage by Janice Cantore (US only)
Ends July 23, 2022
Do you have any thoughts on the guest post? Will you be reading this one?
No comments
Post a Comment
I love comments! I try to read and reply to them all. Feel free to agree or disagree and generally share your thoughts with me.