Clark looks at policing in 'Under Color of Law' - Pasadena Weekly

By Laura Latzko

Pasadena Weekly Contributing Writer

With his book “Under Color of Law,” Pasadena author Aaron Philip Clark does not glorify police officers, but instead delves into the taxing nature of the job, from the perspective of an African American detective.

The winner of the 2021 Book Pipeline Adaptation Contest, “Under Color of Law” is based on Clark’s experiences as a police academy recruit. He was injured near the end of his training, which he didn’t finish. But the experience left an indelible mark on him.

This is Clark’s fourth novel, after “The Science of Paul,” “A Healthy Fear of Man” and “The Furious Way.” He is also a screenwriter and teaches in the writing program at the UCLA Extension.

Clark became interested in writing at a young age. He remembers penning his first comic-driven short story at age 11 in summer school. When he got older, filmmaking and screenwriting seemed appealing.

He earned a BFA in writing for film and television from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and an MFA in writing from Otis College of Art and Design in LA.

As for crime fiction, that interest developed early in life, from reading books in his father’s library. He dedicates his latest book to his father and his “modest library.”

“He a garage full of books, but the ones that were in the house were a mixture of crime fiction,” Clark said.

“He was a therapist. He had books on childhood development and brain development. The ones that I really enjoyed were the ones that were crime related. Walter Mosley’s ‘Devil in a Blue Dress,’ that was the first crime novel that I read. I must have been 12 or 13. … He had another Walter Mosley book, ‘RL’s Dream.’ I took those two, and that was really what kicked off my love of Walter Mosley and crime fiction.”

Clark’s “Under Color of Law” revolves around Detective Trevor Finnegan, whose life is changed when he investigates the death of a Black police recruit found in Angeles National Forest.

The detective, who works in the robbery-homicide division, soon finds that the case isn’t just about solving a murder but is enmeshed with larger issues of race, violence, police solidarity and corruption.

“I liked the idea of not so much how the detective works the crime but how the crime works the detective. That was really my mindset for this book. Once we know who Finn is, how is this case going to change his life? That’s the approach that I took,” Clark said.

Clark is continuing with Finnegan’s story with his next novel, “Blue Like Me,” which takes place in 2016 and is set to release in November.

The characters in the series, including Finnegan, are amalgamations of police officers he has met throughout his life, including in the police academy.

“I would say that Trevor is more of what I could have been, with some exceptions,” Clark said.

“I think his outlook is the outlook that many young officers have to take, especially young officers of color. In order to survive, you have to become a bit of an apologist for the things that you see so that you can rationalize what is happening, even though in your heart you know that it’s not right and you disagree with it fundamentally.”

The first book takes place in 2014, right after Eric Garner died from a lethal chokehold by an NYPD officer and Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

During this time, the Black Lives Matter movement was starting to gain momentum.

“After Eric Garner, you saw the early calls for police reform. It hadn’t quite materialized into ‘defund the police,’ but it was already headed that way. So, departments started to feel like, ‘Our budgets will be impacted by these protests,’” Clark said.

These 2014 events helped shape many officers’ viewpoints, which he noticed while he was at the academy.

“What I started to see was officers who really felt like they were being attacked. They started teaching us from the standpoint of be careful because everybody has a camera, not so much do what you’re supposed to do, and it shouldn’t matter who is recording but more like someone’s always watching,” Clark said.

One pivotal character in Finnegan’s life is his father, Shaun Finnegan, a former LAPD officer who attends protests against police brutality.

Inspiration

Clark’s late uncle, a detective sergeant, was the inspiration for Shaun Finnegan.

“He went into the academy in the early ’80s,” Clark recalled.

“He went in in his 20s. … Back then, he said it was larger classes. In terms of the diversity within the academy classes, it’s never been a whole lot of officers of color, especially back then.

“He said most of the time, there might be one to two African American officer recruits, and then, you would have Latinx recruits. At that time, it was predominantly white male recruits.”

The departments’ characteristics, Clark recalled his uncle saying, differed. The Newton Division was particularly aggressive.

“There were way more complaints from suspects and from citizens about how officers from Newton were physically manhandling folks,” he said.

“He came through Newton Division. He did his probation there. He said in terms of that being a place to learn, it wasn’t that great. … You learned to be aggressive and how to assert yourself, but he said it wasn’t the best environment. So, in the book, my character’s father, Shaun Finnegan, had come through the Newton Division. He has this aggression ingrained in him.”

Shaun Finnegan’s character is multifaceted because as he gets older, his views on police violence change due to his own guilt and shame.

“He was very much inspired by some of the men in my life, the older African American men who either worked in law enforcement or they worked in the government, something where they felt they couldn’t always necessarily speak out,” Clark said.

“It isn’t until they retire that they feel they can speak out, but now they are older and they feel like they can’t get out there and march. He was very much inspired by those people in my life who have regrets for not speaking out and saying how they felt because they knew they had families to take care of and they had to make sure they had a paycheck coming.”

In researching his book, Clark used his training manual and notes from the academy as well as pro-police websites.

He said the posts started out focusing on policy but devolved into rationalizations of Garner’s death and even white supremacist and hate speech posts.

He said it was interesting how other police officers would respond when another talked about procedure.

“If an officer said something along those lines of, ‘He was combative, but the right thing to do would have been to do this and this,’ those officers were then attacked by officers who claimed they weren’t real officers. … You started to see almost this cult of policing, where if you disagreed with anything that that officer did, you were somehow deemed the enemy,” Clark said.

Clark said other police officers and family members who have been in law enforcement showed support for his book, expressing that it was an accurate police procedural.

He said his late uncle was more candid about his experiences as he got older and would have wanted him to share an honest portrayal of a police officer.

“I was thinking about him when I was writing the book. I knew he would want the truth to be told, not another of these fluff novels where it becomes like a myth, the superhero cop. It’s such a hard job not to mess up, your entire career never to do something that you’re like, ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’ Or not have some level of regret,” he said.

Clark said, for him, it was especially important to highlight the experiences of African American officers.

“In some ways, I see the book as a love letter to Black law enforcement. We are rarely in fiction. We don’t get a sense of, especially during this time period of 2014 to now, what it’s really like and the stresses that you have to contend with that exist within the department and obviously within the community. … I wanted, at least with this book, to show that we do exist and we aren’t a monolith. The officers have their own beliefs and their own ideas about law enforcement. The one thing that unifies the officers is they had to come through the same type of environment.”

Aaron Philip Clark

aaronphilipclark.com

source: https://pasadenaweekly.com/clark-looks-at-policing-in-under-color-of-law/

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