You step into a doorway to see a man levelling a shotgun at your chest. You hold a dying child in your arms. You crawl into a mangled car to help someone trapped and bleeding.

These are a small sampling of the kinds of things that police officers encounter. Not everyone is able to do the job that cops do, fewer still are willing. Those who do it with grace and dignity are special people.

CODE 4 is an insider’s view of the police profession, seen through the eyes of one of its veterans. Over a thirty-seven-year span Terry Smith worked as a uniformed officer, a long-haired undercover narcotics agent, an organized crime investigator, a SWAT commander, and a homicide detective. He and the men and women who worked with him looked down their gun barrels at murderers, armed robbers, rapists, burglars, and an assortment of other violent people. He began his career with the Bloomington, Minnesota, Police Department, then moved on to do thirty years with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). During his last seventeen working years he ran a squad of homicide investigators for the BCA.

Smith has written about things that happened while he was protecting and serving. Some of them were dangerous, some gut-wrenchingly tragic, some humorous. He speaks with insight about the people he worked with who could be kind or hard-edged as circumstance demanded, and the toll that policing took on their lives. He gives an inside look at several newsworthy cases he supervised including two sad abduction/homicides involving victims Julie Holmquist and Katie Poirier. Both investigations received extensive national coverage. Smith appeared in an episode of The New Detectives featuring the Poirier Casee on the Discovery Channel.

In 2001 Smith received the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association honorable mention award as Minnesota Police Officer of the Year.

CODE 4 will help you, the reader, feel the adrenaline, the excitement, and the occasional bursts of fear that are parts of the police job. It will help you understand why cops are willing to do what they do.

*The words Code 4, spoken into a police radio, mean that a dangerous situation has been handled, things are under control, and no additional help is needed.