On the Job: An Omaha Police Officer’s Story: 1958-88

From circus lions loose in the streets, to bombs and bullets, suicides, tragic deaths by accident or otherwise, shootings, stabbings, car crashes, tornadoes and floods, Officer Vern Hauger pursued burglars and bad guys while walking a beat in some of the roughest neighborhoods in Omaha. He ran the Omaha Crime Lab and the auto impound lot. He trained some of the finest of the finest as a recruit trainer. And he designed a better police shotgun that’s still in use today across the nation. On the streets of Omaha, in his thirty years on the police force, Hauger said, I have experienced things that only a few people will experience. I have been places and seen things that I would never have been able to do if I had not been a police officer. I have rubbed shoulders with people from all walks of life and discovered there is good in the worst of people and there is bad in the best of people. Vern Hauger tells the street stories in his memoir, and in so doing, he provides life lessons for us all.