ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As I reflect on my life, as I come to the end of the beginning of the journey into the depth of this book and account of my life, I confess that I still tend to compartmentalize most of my relationships and isolate friendships.
I still have deep inner trust issues with people and live with the understanding that I have always had very few people that I consider true friends. Maybe this is a way of protecting myself that I learned many years ago.
The faces of the people that I hurt still haunt me like ghosts from a past life and so I intentionally try to distance myself from people and use relationships to achieve goals in life.
How I understand and define true and complete love at this point in life is very different from the physical and sexual ways I identified with what I thought was love before my life with Sharon. With Sharon, I finally experienced an emotional state of love that transcended the physical limitations that most people settle for, desire, are comfortable with and accept in their relationships. Therefore, the primary person that I desire to dedicate this book is the woman I truly loved. Sharon gave me a precious gift in the very brief time we lived together in this life. Sharon taught me how to truly experience the power of love before she died. Her spirit and my love for her will live with me until the day I die in this world.
Paul Joseph Werner, my first partner and training officer in Narcotics probably had the most impact and effect in my life. My trust of PJ was unconditional. I trusted him with my life and he trusted me with his life. The night we cut our wrists and became blood brothers sealed our bond forever. He will always remain my brother in spirit.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge my love and gratitude for my parents, Michael and Alice Kaminski, for loving and supporting me throughout my life. They never really understood my actions or the reasons why I chose certain paths in life, but they loved me unconditionally. My parents never knew most of the decisions and work in which I was involved. They never knew about the dangerous situations I chose to create or the lifestyle I led at times. Moreover, they never asked any questions because they did not want to know the truth or the reality of my life.
Preface
I believe everyone has a dark side within their being, whether or not they want to acknowledge or admit it. There are two faces that people see when they look at the person they think they know in relationships. Each one of us lives with a secret or hidden part of our personality in which we struggle to understand and want to conceal from other people.
Like the shadows of the dark figures in Plato’s “Allegory of The Cave” in The Republic, our thoughts, ideas, emotions, concepts, actions and behaviors provide us with indirect lighting – a superficial and often inaccurate understanding of our true self. We live with, and try to conceal, these distorted images of our inner personality. We justify our actions and behaviors. We create situations that violate our belief systems, values, morals and ethics.
Many times in the journey we call life we are confronted, either by others or ourselves, to explain our behaviors. Then we are faced with a dilemma, a time of truth. This book is my attempt to confront the shadowy figures of my life.
Just as Roxanne confronted Captain Benjamin Willard in Apocalypse Now, the epic 1979 movie set during the Vietnam War, when she said, “there are two of you, don’t you see. One that kills and one that loves,” I have been confronted by myself.
Apocalypse is defined as “lifting of the veil, a revelation, a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of people.” What you will read inside the chapters of this book is the story of my personal apocalypse.
Life After Russian Roulette: Redemption is a voyage inside the cave of my mind, soul and psyche. It is an exploration into the dark places of a human heart. If you have never met me, you will create a distorted image or false perception of the person I am today. If you have known me in the past or think you know me now, you will have a misunderstanding of my personality as you try to relate or compare me with the character in the story. However, my character was a real person and, at times, is still alive within me.
Primarily, this is a personal story about the truth that many police officers and undercover detectives would prefer not to reveal about themselves. It is an attempt to present one man’s inner struggles – psychological, mental and emotional – as he encounters and confronts moral, ethical and legal challenges in situations, both in uniform and in undercover operations, that affect his belief system, values and loyalties.
Although this book is not intended to be a confession, it is an acknowledgement of the decisions I made, and the actions I chose, in situations where many people in society would consider being contradictory to moral and ethical behavior. However, living and existing in the shadowy world of drug gangs and organized crime associations can become very complex and contradictory. Allies become enemies. Enemies become allies. It all depends on survival, motive and opportunity. When do you decide or make a choice that wrong becomes right and then live with the consequences?
This story is about personal confrontation of death, life and love. It is a glimpse inside the dark cave to confront the shadows of the dark figures that still live within my psyche, in hope of finding enlightenment.
In the writing of this book, I realized I deeply related to the conflicting, challenging and mentally controlling thoughts and fears that Captain Willard wrestled with when he accepted the assignment to kill Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now: “Part of me was afraid of what I would find and what I would do when I got there. I knew the risks – or imagined I knew them. But the one thing I felt the most, much stronger than fear, was the desire to confront him.”
The story begins in a uniquely contrasting and contradicting setting. The opening scene takes place in a lonely seminary dorm room. I had been in seminary for almost two and a half years. As I sit in the silence of the night, there is a gun pointed at my head. How I react to the situation eventually changed my life, again.
The events that follow the long night of confronting the memories that had haunted me will take the reader on a journey of exploration, criticism and potential judgment. The goal is that you will find what I continue to seek and search for in life.
You will follow me through this psychological and emotionally challenging story, which begins on my way to the Baltimore City Police Academy in the fall of 1973. After graduation from the police academy, you begin to walk with me on foot patrol in one of the roughest districts in Baltimore City, Western. You will learn about The Law of the West of Baltimore in the 1970’s.
The hot tension, unrest and division within the police department eventually grew to a boiling point in the summer of 1974. Witness this historic moment in Baltimore City when members of the police department went on strike, chanting: “I will not die for 5.5.”
The Anne Arundel County Police Department becomes a trigger that will eventually change my life again. It will be in this organization that I will meet the person who will have the second most significant impact on my life and future, both personally and professionally.
Because of my unorthodox activities and ways of enforcing the law in uniform in The Beach, I am assigned to the Vice and Narcotics Division and live and learn how to survive within drug organizations and organized crime operations. You will be with me as I develop business associations with a black drug group, local organized crime and the Pagans motorcycle gang, when I trade the vehicle title and my undercover police car for drugs and later, undercover on the docks as I am assigned to Coast
