I was watching a TV “cop show” the other day and saw an officer tuck a Glock, a striker fired weapon, into the front of his pants without a holster. I let out a breath, rolled my eyes, and shook my head.

Why do they have police technical advisors if they’re not going to listen to them? Or perhaps they have the wrong advisors? Or maybe their advisors have outlived their experience, or at least their tactical knowledge? Or maybe, it was their day off when they filmed that ridiculous scene. This is why the real police often hate, or don’t watch, “cop shows.”
 

One simply does not put a striker fired weapon in one’s waistband without a holster. If any cop does so, they’re an idiot and I’ll be happy to tell them so. It’s as dumb as shoving a cocked and locked 1911 .45 caliber handgun that doesn’t have its safety engaged into your pants. Bad idea. Stricker fired handguns do not have safeties or decocking levers and their triggers are engaged rather easily. One definitely wants to cover the trigger guard in a holster, especially if it’s tucked into the front of one’s pants, pointing at the family jewels.
 

Now, for the record, I do not want to be a technical advisor, and am not vying for a position as such. I just wonder about the quality and veracity of their advice.
 

Which brings me to early in my writing career. I was advised by bestselling author, John Sandford that I should “be careful to not let reality get in the way of entertainment.” Sandford (whose real name is John Camp) said he understood much of police work hour-by-hour was boring, he knew because he had served as a police reporter for many years in the Minnesota Twin Cities area.
 

As much as I love John Sandford, and/or Camp, and his books, I disagreed with this premise, primarily because I understood the rules well enough to manipulate them to my advantage, that is to say, the advantage of my story. I believed then, and still do, that I can make a story exciting and realistic at the same time.
 

For instance, spoiler alert if you haven’t read, Out of Cabrini, and shame on you if that’s the case, lol, but I wanted a one-on-one battle between the hero, Stacey Macbeth and a secondary antagonist, Antwan “Boo” Simms. I didn’t want Macbeth to have his radio as the scene unfolds, because in real life, a cop would call in a foot chase and more officers would descend on the area and search until they found the bad guy. It would probably culminate with twelve guys tackling Boo into submission, or at least it would have back in the day in which the book is set, when every community had more cops on the street than we see today.
 

What I did, is have Macbeth begin to chase Boo, but he is sideswiped by a responding squad car, sending Macbeth into a group of plastic garbage cans, breaking his fall. He gets up, more or less unharmed and commences to chase Boo. After a short period of time, when Macbeth recognizes that it’s going to be an extended foot pursuit, he reaches for his radio to call for reinforcements and discovers his radio is no longer in his vest. He is faced with continuing the chase by himself or going back to the scene and getting help, thereby giving the guy he knows has probably killed several people the chance to escape.
 

Of course, our protagonist would never allow such a thing as an escape to happen and continues on by himself, thereby setting up the story’s climactic one-on-one battle. I know the rule and was able to engineer a reasonable way around it. Ta-Da! Reality 1, Not Reality 0—or in iterary terms, Realism 1, Not Realism 0. And just for the record, all of the cop’s handguns in Out of Cabrini were in department approved holsters—not tucked in their waistbands! Score another point for Realism!