Meet My Friend and Author, Joseph B. Haggerty Sr.

(I met Joe at a PSWA conference a few years back, and we've been friends every since. He's a most interesting guy and the author of novels: Shame: The Story of a Pimp, and An Ocean in the Desert. He also contributed to the PSWA anthology, Felons, Flames and Ambulance Rides.  He's an award winning poet, writer and lecturer on the sexual  exploitation of women and children in prostitution and pornography.)

From the pen of Joseph B. Haggerty Sr. 

I am a retired vice detective from the Metropolitan Police in Washington, D.C. I did 35 years with the department. Most of my vice years was devoted to investigating and arresting pimps/child predators. Through that endeavor I learned a great deal about the prostitution culture and firmly believe that the women involved in prostitution are more victims than criminals with a relatively high percentage of them victims of sexual molestation as children. In my latter years with the department I was an instructor at the police academy, mostly doing in-service training with experienced officers and sergeants. When I left the department in 2005, I worked as a senior investigator for the Office of the Inspector General for Amtrak. I retired from there in 2011. 

I really started writing for our FOP Union paper, Simulcast, from 1993 until 2000. I wrote articles, poems and even had my own column called Profiles In Blue. I interview various officers or detectives on the department about their backgrounds, their most exciting or meaningful moment while on the job. I asked about their educational background as well as what they felt they had contributed to the community. It was very enlightening in the fact that practically everyone of them was involved in some community activity in the area they worked.

I started writing my first novel, Shame, The Story of a Pimp in 1987. It was all hand written. As luck would have it I was asked by a retired Lieutenant, who ran his own investigative agency, to do a little investigation for him. In lieu of payment I asked his wife to put my book on a computer disc. I tried getting an agent to represent me, but basically was told I would have a snowball's chance in hell of getting published. 

In 1999, I joined the Writers' League of Washington and had renew encouragement to get my book published. After a significant amount of editing through 7 friends and colleagues, I decided to self-publish. This was 2008.

In 2010, I joined the Public Safety Writers Association. Through the things I learned from this wonderful group of writers and with the help of another member, who was a publisher, Billy Johnson, I completed and had published in 2014 my second novel, An Ocean in the Desert. I have since completed a third book, The Witness Room, but haven't been available to find a publisher for it as yet. I'm currently working on another novel with the tentative title, Craig's Follies.

Time is always an obstacle. I have 6 children,11 grandchildren and 8 Great grandchildren. Needless to say we are always involved with something with these blessings. I still write poems and short stories and I became an internet ordained minister. I actually conducted the wedding of one of our granddaughters. What a wonderful experience.

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Joe is signed up for this year's PSWA conference, and I'm delighted I'll be able to catch up with him once again.

Marilyn