Those who are intrigued by criminology and crime-deterrence will be very pleased when a new and urgently-needed factual reference book is published.
I am referring to an authoritatively insightful new book that profiles numerous real-life cases from American history of crimes that were committed by individuals (or a group of persons) while posing at the time as government-employed "police officers" or "law-enforcement officers."
I recently read, for instance, that in mid-20th Century Rochester, New York, a particularly notorious sex-crime case involved a young man who over an eight-week period molested numerous female youths in the Rochester area after he falsely stated to each of those girls that he was a local "police officer."
I obtained factual information about this alarming case from page 410 of the Futura book "Crime Busters," a hardbound reference book copyrighted in 2002 by Time Warner Books. The names of the author and editor of the book are not stated in the book; the book was printed in Spain.
One of the most publicized cases in which criminals inside the United States posed as "police officers" was the infamous Valentine's Day Massacre. That appallingly violent day in U.S. history occurred on Saint Valentine's Day in 1929 in Chicago, Illinois.
According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia's factual account about that appalling massacre, two hired thugs attired in City of Chicago municipal police uniforms reportedly signaled for gunmen to begin shooting at seven men who had been lined up near a wall of a business's garage in north Chicago.
Nearly all of the victims were reportedly affiliated with Bugsy Moran's Irish-American Mafia in north Chicago. The murderers and their accomplices were reportedly affiliated with Al Capone's Italian-American Mafia in south Chicago.
Minutes after the massacre, the two "Chicago Police Officer" imposters reportedly sought to reassure onlookers by faking an "arrest" of alleged murderers in full view of witnesses in that section of north Chicago.
The two "Chicago police officer" imposters reportedly marched alleged gunmen away from the scene at gunpoint, in order to slyly suggest to observers in that section of north Chicago that law and order had just prevailed, since criminal-law charges against the alleged gunmen were presumably pending.
In fact, as the Wikipedia encyclopedia entry notes, the entire gang of thugs fled from the scene of the crime without anyone being arrested that day for that brutal crime.