“Miami Vice was a joke,” said retired undercover narcotics officer William King Grimball. “When I was undercover, I had to walk up to drug dealers and, in 30 seconds, convince them that they had known me forever.”
Grimball–who recently retired after working 15 years as both an officer and homicide detective for the New York Police Department—is the author of the newly released crime novel UC630 Cop or Criminal. Read a free sample.
Grimball sat down with Wrightspeak to tell us about why decided to detail parts of his extensive undercover career in his new crime book.
“It took me a long time to write the book because [my experience] was so traumatic,” he said. In all, he estimates that it took him ten years to write the book. The novel follows a young cop who looses parts of himself while trying to save New York City from the violent crack epidemic of the 1980s. The graphic novel provides a raw, behind-the-scenes take on the tumultuous decade and the toll that the crime wave took on the cops charged to stop it. Grimball takes readers through a journey where they see undercover officers in a new way—as close-knit family members.
“I didn’t start [writing the book] until I heard that two undercover officers were shot and killed in Manhattan,” Grimball said. “So I decided, let me write this book for people who are thinking about going into the police field. Most people don’t know what they’re getting in to.
“When you hear news about a meth lab or a crack house getting taken down, it all looks so sanitary. So much more goes on behind the scenes,” he said, adding that he’s witnessed everything imaginable during his time as an undercover agent, including drug abuse and child prostitution.
Fmr. Undercover officer William King Grimball.
“I was the first cop to buy crack from the city [during sting operation "School Days"], and at one point I was the number one undercover agent in the state,” Grimball said. “Crack dealers were vicious—they would force feed women to get them hooked on crack just so that they could get them into prostitution.” He admits that he sometimes still has nightmares about his undercover past.
“I remember a time when there was so many [orphaned] babies that the city had to pay family members to take care of the children. There was also a time when cops had to sleep at the Central Booking Station because so many people were getting locked up. Some cops were making more than the mayor of New York with salaries exceeding $125,000 including overtime during those years.”
Grimball says that his book is unique in that it details the ripple effect that street crime can have on the community.
“I want [people] to know how drugs impact people, government and society,” he said. “Readers get the chance to see how far people will go to get drug dealers off the streets.”
Read a free sample of the book. Follow Grimball on his blog UC630 Cop or Criminal The Series to hear more gritty undercover stories and to see sting operation photos (like this photo of Grimball as an acid-dropping hippie). He will release two additional books in the series later this year.
