The Kindle eBooks of George Roland Wills
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As I Recall
The Police Stories and Reminiscences
of Lieutenant Bill Smith
as told to
Former Officer George Roland Wills
As I Recall are the reminiscences and police stories of Lieutenant Bill Smith, Daytona Beach Police Department, retired. These stories span the twenty-five years of his career, and are his memories of those years in patrol, both on uniformed patrol and working under cover… working both as a shift supervisor, as well as working with a number of federal narcotics tasks forces. My name is George Roland Wills, and I was a full-time police officer with the Daytona Beach Police Department, as well, before transferring over to the Daytona Beach Shores Police Department. I knew of Lieutenant Bill Smith while I was at Daytona, but we really became good friends when we got together, years later, under the leadership of Daytona Beach Police Lieutenant Rick Miller, after his retirement from the police department, and during his years as the director of security for the Florida Health Care Plans HMO. Rick had built up a security force of seventeen armed security officers, most of them being selected from retired lieutenants, sergeants, and corporals from the department at Daytona Beach. These officers patrolled and protected all six hospitals under the control of Florida Health Care Plans, but in order to be armed, they needed to have state licensure. Rick chose Bill Smith as his K license holder to train and certify all of his D & G licensed officers.
Every police officer that I knew - on all of the eleven area departments in the Greater Daytona Beach Area - wanted to work for Rick Miller at Florida Health Care Plan(s), and I am proud to say that Rick held one of those coveted spots for me during the formative years of that company, and I worked for him as long as his security force existed. In fact, Rick asked me to be his direct liaison, traveling to Orlando and various other venues and representing him as the director of security, attending seminars and making presentations of those nationally accredited seminars, such as Violence in the Workplace, a Seminar for Supervisors, to our satellite FHCP properties when I returned.
It was during this time that we would all meet a couple of times a year for our required revolver and firearms re-certifications, and to have our ritual ‘breakfast at Denny’s’ before going out to the range for the day, to get qualified with our service weapons. It was also during this time that I first heard about these stories. Bill is an excellent story teller, and his years in law enforcement have been rich in some of the most fascinating stories you can imagine.
I recently moved back to Daytona Beach, Florida after a seventeen year absence. I had not seen Bill in twenty years, or more, and I still had his number from before. As it happens, Bill is still going strong, many years after his initial retirement. He teaches defense tactics at the Daytona Beach Police Academy, to this very day, and he even continues to run the required circuit with his recruits, every day.
We got together at the McDonald’s out on the west side of 40 and I-95, in Ormond Beach, and once again, these old and well-thumbed stories started popping up in conversation.
“You really should publish these things,” I told him,” they are fantastic. They are also a part of a police history that is quickly vanishing. You really need to record these things, for posterity. Police work was a completely different world back in those Wild West days of service revolvers and high speed chases, in the days before the internet, political correction, and immediate mass communication and social media. You really ought to do this.”
To this, he readily agreed.
I told him that I had written a number of books that I self-published on Amazon.com, and that I would be glad to publish his collected works as a series of books that I would produce for him. We ironed out the fine print, and these stories are the result of those planning sessions.
The series of books, As I Recall, begins with this first book of adventures, and these nineteen, or so odd stories. Each book in the series will have about twenty or so stories, and to date, Bill says that he has about seventy-five such incidences and tales, ready to be typed up and published, with more being remembered as he completes the first series of books. I am thinking that we might have as many as ten books in this series, when all is said and done.
Everything in these stories is true, and each of these events actually took place. Not all of these stories are police stories; some of them are from Bill’s tour of Germany, when he was in the service. He is compiling them as he recalls them; As I Recall, so to speak.
Some of the stories are funny, and some of them are quite graphic; a few of them are on the really gory side; some of them are almost unbelievable in their intensity and in their irony, as well as in their uncanny level of coincidence. But truth is stranger than fiction, and that is what makes these stories well worth reading.
Bill Smith wrote every one of these stories, himself, with the exception of those cases which happened to me, personally, or those which happened to my father, Deputy George A. Wills, VCSO.
I edited each of them, for the most part, and compiled them into this book, in the order that you see them. At times, some of the names have been changed, and certain facts, known only to those in the business, have been omitted for the sake of discretion.
These stories cover his entire career, and are told in a loose, random fashion; with no order of importance nor any order of chronology, at this time.
All of these stories will one day be combined into a single volume of work, but for right now, the two volumes below are now available, with roughly twenty plus stories per book.
In one story, you will read about the playful banter and teasing of the mishaps and amusing moments of fellow officers who are really good friends… and in the next story, you will be behind the scenes as a serial killer is finally brought to justice, and the unlikely and quite chilling way in which that actually happened.
You will read narratives that have never been published anywhere before.
This book, in that way, is a furious roller coaster of a ride, at times. You just never know what to expect from story to story. But most important of all, this book is a last, brief glimpse into a world that is no more, and can never be, again. And this is probably your only chance to ever go there, at all.
Right now, if you would, just sit back and do what I have often been privileged to do; spend an afternoon with Bill Smith, and listen to him tell his stories from his days behind the badge.
Fifty Shades of Gray
Every Word Ever Written About
Extreme Realism Drawing
The Kindle eBook
Order Here
Thomas Jefferson; The Man, His Times and His Private Plantation, in His Own Words
Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest is the antithesis of his home at Monticello. It was created to be a retreat; an unsung escape from the crowds who pursued him to Monticello. By its very nature, it was never supposed to be known to the general public. He did not want visitors at this property. Indeed, it is not an easy property to find today, even with a Garmin pointing out the path; there are a maze of small roads that lead up to either side of the property which must be negotiated accurately, or one will indeed make a wrong turn without meaning to do so.
Thomas Jefferson the man is as much an undiscovered country to us as his Poplar Forest plantation. We expect to find Jefferson comfortably ensconced deep within a sort of a Mount Rushmore setting, somewhere just behind Washington, adding to the rich mosaic of the great tapestry formed by the other founders. It is only in recent years that we have begun to explore the 20,000 or so odd letters and other correspondence that he left us.
We have always known Thomas Jefferson as the creative genius; the gentleman farmer and the possible inventor of any number of gadgets upon which he perfected. We have always seen Monticello as the alpha and omega of all of his hopes and dreams. We know the Monticello side of Thomas Jefferson; what we would like to know is his Poplar Forest side; that of the unknown Thomas Jefferson. In this book, we shall explore some of his lesser-known attributes, as well as his lesser-known property located in the County of Bedford, Virginia.
This book will show you that side of Jefferson using his secondary plantation to illustrate the vast complexity of this great man. We shall use his own words in order to illustrate various points along the way. This book is an expansive look at the property at Poplar Forest as well as a side of Thomas Jefferson that you may never have seen before; it is part history book, part Thomas Jefferson's agricultural, philosophical, and political views, and a fairly complete look at the home of Poplar Forest in Thomas Jefferson's own words.
