Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Frederick Douglass Reynolds, author of Black White And Gray All Over.

Frederick is a retired Black LA County Sheriff's homicide sergeant. He was born in Rocky Mount, Virginia, and grew up in Detroit, Michigan where he became a petty criminal and was involved in gangs.

Frederick worked in the Compton, California police force from 1985 until 2000 and then transferred to the sheriff’s department where he worked an additional seventeen years, retiring in 2017 with over seventy-five commendations.

Norm: Good day Frederick and thank you for taking part in our interview.

Frederick: Hello, Norm.  Its my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

What do you consider to be your greatest success (or successes) in your career as a police officer?

Frederick: Getting freeway memorial monuments for Officers Kevin Burrell and James MacDonald, who were murdered in the line of duty in 1993, and for Officer Dess K. Phipps, who was killed in the 1960s during a traffic accident.

I drafted the resolutions for the memorials, drove to the capital, and presented it to the House assembly for approval. I then gave the keynote speech at the memorial dedication. Nothing that I did as a police officer, no matter who I arrested, no matter who I saved, nothing was greater than that.

Norm: How many times in your life have you experienced rejection? How did they shape you?

Frederick: I have experienced rejection more times than I can count, and in every aspect of my life, both personally and professionally. I have been turned down for promotion, fired from jobs, demoted in rank in the military, turned down for dances at parties, and dumped by girlfriends.

But I handled everything in the same way. I used each rejection as fuel for the fire that has burned in my stomach for as long as I can remember. They shaped me to be the man that I am today, despite the multiple failures that I have experienced. But does not each failure we experience make each subsequent success that much sweeter?    

Norm: What was one of your greatest failures as a police officer, and what did you learn from it?

Frederick: Not being there when my colleagues were murdered. I was the senior officer on the shift that night. For years after, I shouldered the responsibility of their deaths. I engaged in many drunken, meaningless sexual encounters, and was morally void. I eventually learned that running from emotional trauma will never cure it. It has to met head-on and conquered. I finally came to realize that nothing I could have did that night would have changed the outcome. Our destinies are set in stone.      

Frederick: I don’t worry about the human race. Mistakes and reconciliation are in our nature. While I was a cop, some days I would see some of the most horrendous things ever, and then two days later see something even worse.  

But inevitably, I would see some of the most endearing things, some of the most humane responses, and things that would make me celebrate the wonders of life and the human spirit.

For every act of cowardice, I saw an act of heroism; for every act of barbarism, I saw an act of selflessness; for every tragedy, a triumph. The duality of life will always balance us out, and that will continue until the human race is no longer. We are a resilient species, and we will survive until we are not supposed to. But everything eventually ends.    

Norm: What do you think makes a good memoir or biography?

Frederick: Truth. No matter how hard it hurts. I have read several memoirs, especially those written by former cops, where they literally painted themselves as superheroes.

I wanted to be as truthful and honest as possible, even at the cost of confronting long dormant issues that I had buried deep within. I wanted to tell my story as a cop, but more so as a flawed, average man who sometimes did above average things. I wanted my story to resonate with the everyday person, because that is who I was. I just wore a badge.    

Norm: If you were a chief of police, how would you handle a situation if one of your subordinates were to commit a crime?

Frederick: I would handle it as if anyone else committed a crime. Police officers have to be a cut above. But there are mitigating circumstances, just as there are aggravating circumstances in everything.

The reputation and background of the officer would certainly be a consideration. What he or she did would be another consideration.

Some crimes are so egregious, that there has to be swift punishment no matter who you are, or no matter what your resume is. There are other far less egregious crimes where an individual’s track record should be considered when meting out punishment.    

Norm: What motivated you to write Black White And Gray All Over?

Frederick: The murders of two of my colleagues in 1993 was certainly one of the biggest motivators. But while I was working, I just couldn’t find the time to write a book because of job and family commitments.

I worked as a homicide investigator for the majority of my career, and obviously, that took up a lot of time and energy.

When I retired, I started writing, but I still wasn’t fully committed, as I was trying to get used to the transition of everyday, normal life.

My whole life perspective changed in 2020, though. In addition to the life-altering, social and culture transition we are going through, which started in earnest that year, I had a heart attack and almost died. After the surgery, I lay in my bed and realized that the chance to finish the book has almost been taken away from me.

When I recovered, I began writing with a sense of urgency that I did not have before.

Norm: Where did the title of the book come from?

Frederick: I chose this title because my life has always been about straddling that line between good and evil, right and wrong, and black and white. I could never quite get to one side, and the other side I definitely didn’t want to get to at all.

So, I stayed in the gray area. And this thought-process were never truer than when I became a cop.

The law-enforcement profession is riddled with black and white, but I found comfort in the gray area; the area where I didn’t have to take someone’s freedom because they were trying to feed their child and got caught stealing food, the area where I knew that sometimes, doing the wrong thing for the right reason was the right thing to do. So, I wasn’t a crook which would have put me in the black area, and I wasn’t an inflexible, uncompromising foot soldier, which would have put me in the “white” area.

 That, coupled with the fact that police cars are black and white in California, and the current racial divide in the country made this quite an appropriate title.

Norm: What was the most difficult part of writing your book and did you learn anything from writing the book? What was it?

Frederick: I came face-to-face with my own inadequacies and deficiencies.

There were so many scenes that were difficult to write, starting with my father’s alcoholism, my upbringing, and the contentious relationship between my parents.

I went down a dark path that involved drugs and jail time, I was homeless for a time, and was working the night two of my friends were murdered by a street gang member. I often found myself crying as I struggled to put my feelings on paper.    

Norm: What was the time-line between the time you decided to write your book and publication? What were the major events along the way?

Frederick: Probably about two to three, solid years altogether. I had been writing off and on and keeping notes and jotting down ideas for about 20-25 twenty years.

After I retired, I started putting everything in some type of order. While I was working, something always seemed to get in the way; a big case, a death in the family, issues with my kids, etc. But after I had a heart attack in 2020, I realized that I could have died without finishing my book. After that, when I recovered, I started in earnest and finished in early 2021. Rewrites and editing took about six more months.   

Norm: Is there a message in your book that you want your readers to grasp, and do you believe your book is an important one at this time?

Frederick: That cops don’t live to fight, or to get in shootings, or vehicle and foot pursuits. That most of us actually care about the communities we work in. That we are not cold, uncaring monsters just looking for notches in our gun handles.

That it takes a special breed to potentially lay their lives down for someone they never even met or probably wouldn’t even like if they knew each other. That every community since the beginning of time has had its protectors and that will never change, whether those protectors in the future be flesh and blood or metal and fish-eye cameras.

That a just society is reflected in not only how its protectors treat its citizens, but also how its citizens treat their protectors.

I want us all to continue our quest for unity and equality and freedom for all. Not just what is written in a yellowing document in the Library of Congress, but tangible freedom, where we all share the belief that if I get a job or position it is not because I am Black, or female, gay, but because I am the right person for the job.

To give someone a job for the same reason you would deny them that same position is not freedom, or equality. It is window-dressing for another form of discrimination. We are all the same. The word love has got to be used more, and there has got to be some weight behind it. How many times was that word used by the founding fathers of the United States, even though it is the single most important thing we as humans have? 

The George Floyd incident has divided America tremendously, but even an incident as terrible as that would not have been such a societal nuclear explosion if there hadn’t been an ongoing death by a thousand cuts for the previous 400 years. Because of the topics that I touch on in the book, I believe if one reads it with an unbiased eye and truly try to understand the anger and pain felt from both sides, the world may just become a better place. Lofty aspirations, huh?

Every accomplishment starts with a dream, though. If I had a magic wand, I would change the whole world to Mayberry, RFD. Then the job would take care of itself.  

Norm: How were you able to remember all of the events and names that you recount in your book? Did you keep a diary or journal?

Frederick: I was fortunate enough to work homicide for the majority of my career, so I always had access to police reports. I did keep a journal at one point, and starting keeping notes on a potential future book many years ago.

When I first met my wife almost 30 years ago, I had a green binder filled with notes. The cover of the binder had a sticker on it that read, “Black, White, and Gray All Over.”

 She asked if I was writing a book and I sheepishly denied it, because I was embarrassed. Another way that I was able to remember is by attaching music to events. Even now, certain songs prompt me to relive certain events. But trauma? Memories from traumatic events may as well be videotapes of your hippocampus.       

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and Black White And Gray All Over?

Frederick: From my WEBSITE. The book has also received a fair amount of critical acclaim, which I found surprising considering the overall sentiment toward law enforcement in this country at the current time.

Norm: What is next for Frederick Douglass Reynolds?

Frederick: Enjoying retirement life and my family, while actively promoting my book. I had no idea how expense it was, and just how many unscrupulous people and organizations there were seeking to take advantage of those who are ignorant of the whole self-publishing process. I have also been approached to ghost-write a book for a former colleague.

Norm: As this interview comes to an end, if you could require the President of the USA to read one book, what would it be and why?

Frederick: It would be, Black, White, and Gray All Over; a Black Man’s Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement, because it is a book written by a Black man who has been on both sides of the law, and who has experienced both subtle and overt racism in America. Because the book seeks to bridge the divide in this country between not only Black and White citizens, but between Law Enforcement and the community as a whole.

When I talked earlier about duality, good and evil are most certainly a part of it and always will be. That being said, there has to be a way to address the evil and to keep the good among us safe. Maybe someday in the future, someone much smarter than either of us will isolate whatever it is that makes people commit acts of evil, and eradicate it. But until such time, there has to be law enforcement in place.

Cops have to earn trust in the community by respecting those in the community.

After all, cops ARE the community; they are fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles. They are US. And the politicians have to understand that and support them, and hold them accountable when called for without demonizing them.

 I believe that anyone reading this book will come away with an understanding of the dynamics between the boots on the ground cops and those he/she strives to protect and serve, no matter their race, religion, gender, or sexual preference.   

 Follow Here To Read Norm's Review of Black White And Gray All Over