The Badge Between Us: Duty, Marriage, and Family

The Badge Between Us is a raw, unfiltered account of policing that tracks the impact of secondary trauma and moral injury, infused by instances of organizational betrayal and police officer corruption. It is a first-person account of author Terrence P. Dwyer's final year as a New York State Police Investigator, with flashbacks from a 22-year career spent responding to and investigating violent crime and organized criminal gangs, and its impact upon him and his family. Through the lens of a final gang investigation and the subsequent quintuple murder of a young family, Dwyer delves into the workaday world of a homicide investigator.

Table of Contents:
Author's Note Prologue Part I: The Job 1. Married to the Job 2. Excelsior 3. Line of Duty 4. Close Calls 5. Mobbed-Up 6. Funhouse Mirrors 7. Bad Mood Rising 8. After 9/11 Part II: The Gang 9. Partners 10. Crazed Killas Mafia 11. The Bosses 12. Integrity Issues 13. Enterprise Corruption 14. Ambush 15. Night Terrors 16. Hit Squad 17. Dope Rodeo 18. Stray Bullets 19. Manhunt 20. Officer Down Part III: The Fire 21. Family Massacre 22. Big T and D 23. Meeting Sam 24. Final Shift 25. Recovery Acknowledgements About the Author

About the Author :
Terrence P. Dwyer, a retired trooper and investigator from the New York State Police after a 22-year career, is currently a university professor of legal studies at Western Connecticut State University and an attorney consulting on law enforcement issues. He is the author of Homeland Security Law: Issues and Analysis (2024).

Review :
Terry Dwyer has written a moving memoir of his two plus decades as a police officer. It moves artfully between public and private, from an unfiltered, detailed, and evocative presentation of the successful investigation and prosecution of a violent criminal gang, to a depiction of the stresses upon his family caused by the frustrations and miseries of a career in law enforcement. This book explores the personal challenges, sacrifices, and dedication of the author in his duties as a police officer. Highly recommended for all readers. Terry Dwyer's The Badge Between Us is a riveting account from a man of strong character and ideals who becomes a New York State Trooper to enforce the law and do good in the world. A standup cop and a devoted family man, he rises to the rank of investigator and begins working organized crime investigations, murders, and gang cases, to name a few. But along the way, he is stymied time and again by corruption and complicity from within his own ranks all the way up the chain of command to Albany. Dwyer's struggles to navigate his sense of duty, his ethics, morality, and loyalty to the badge he's sworn to uphold as his nerves, his sense of self and his marriage strain to the brink of breaking, makes for propulsive reading. Terrence P. Dwyer's memoir, The Badge Between Us, is a raw, heartfelt, and simmeringly honest journey into the life and mind of a criminal investigator in a dark moment of American history. At times bleak and foreboding, at other times shimmering with hope, the story is driven by Dwyer's uncanny willingness to dissect his own psychology, for good or bad. The stakes here are incredibly high: not only the lives of New York citizens and the criminals who prey on them, but also the soul of a man who stands between them, and the soul of the family that-across decades-persists in drawing him back from the dark, urban abyss of his life's work. These emotional dynamics make for an incredibly compelling read, and signal the arrival of a talented writer, one truly capable of narrating the lives that exist at the edges of our nation's shadows.