As we were putting together this month’s issue, The Sun’s editor, Sy Safransky, recalled an article he’d come across years ago. He couldn’t remember the name of the author or when the piece had been published, only that it was the best writing he’d ever read about being a policeman.
Fortunately we were able to track down the author, Edward Conlon, a Harvard-educated New York City police officer who wrote for The New Yorker in the late 1990s. Conlon used a pen name, Marcus Laffey, because he was still on the force back then and thought higher-ups in the police department might not like his unvarnished description of police work.
“Cop Diary” was originally published in The New Yorker in 1997. Conlon went on to write the best seller Blue Blood and is now back working for the NYPD, as communications director for the commissioner.
- The sun
