The true story of my three years in corrections and law enforcement in South Carolina — locking down units full of incarcerated kids at the Department of Juvenile Justice, transporting insanity-plea patients for the Department of Mental Health, and patrolling the University of South Carolina campus with a badge and a gun — all while hiding the alcoholism that was taking me apart, and the workplace romance with a dispatcher that ended my career. Authentic, raw, and minimally edited — exactly how it happened.
I decided I wanted to be a police officer in 2004, halfway through college at the University of South Carolina, after walking away from Army ROTC and engineering. I wanted action instead of a desk, I'd just finished a criminal justice degree, and I genuinely wanted to help people on the worst days of their lives. What I didn't know was that the marijuana I'd smoked in college would keep every police department from touching me — so my way in was the hard way.
This book covers all three jobs, on duty and off, from 2006 to 2009: a corrections officer at the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice, working locked units of kids incarcerated for crimes as serious as murder; a law enforcement officer with the South Carolina Department of Mental Health, transporting insanity-plea patients between secure facilities, courtrooms, and their lawyers; and finally my dream job — patrol officer at the University of South Carolina Police Department, with the badge, the gun, and the campus.
The whole time I wore a uniform, I was an active alcoholic. I went to roll call with alcohol still in my system while my sergeant sniffed the room. I planned my drinking around the 2-3 shift schedule like it was a second job. One night after a 12-hour Saturday shift, a drunk friend picked my loaded duty weapon off my nightstand and pointed it at me as a joke. I got sober for stretches on fear and willpower alone, relapsed, and kept showing up to work anyway. None of that is cleaned up here — the book is authentic, raw, and only minimally edited, because the unedited version is the one that's actually useful.
And then there's the dispatcher — the longest chapter in the book, and the hardest one for me to tell. In 2009 I was being groomed to make corporal at USCPD. I sat at a report-writing computer one night, saw the two paths in front of me with total clarity — the promotion, or her — and chose her. The fallout from that choice is how my law enforcement career ended, and I tell all of it.
If you're thinking about a career in law enforcement, this is what the recruiter won't tell you — what the academy is actually like, what a polygraph feels like from the chair, what field training does to you, and what the job does to the person inside the uniform. If you're in recovery or love someone who should be, this is a fearless moral inventory read out loud — I recorded it as part of working my own steps, and if you know, you know. And if you just want a true story told with nothing held back, this is the most honest thing I made before I ever started making videos.
Once you own the book, ▶ Play and Download buttons appear right on this list.
| 1 | Welcome to Officer Banfield | 5 min |
| 2 | Timeline | 14 min |
| 3 | The Dispatcher | 1 hr 39 min |
| 4 | Fine I'll Quit | 1 hr 8 min |
| 5 | Gateway | 47 min |
| 6 | DJJ Training | 18 min |
| 7 | DJJ Gauntlet | 1 hr 9 min |
| 8 | DJJ A New Way | 42 min |
| 9 | Police Academy | 1 hr 21 min |
| 10 | DMH | 1 hr 27 min |
| 11 | Polygraph | 43 min |
| 12 | FTO | 29 min |
| 13 | Security | 24 min |
| 14 | All Out | 40 min |
| 15 | Cops | 1 hr 9 min |
| 16 | Afterlife | 26 min |
Officer Banfield is also on Amazon as a paperback and Kindle book, and on Audible. Buying the audiobook here is $9 once — no subscription, no credits — you're getting the same me-reading-my-own-story audio, it unlocks instantly on this page, and your purchase supports me directly instead of mostly supporting a platform. The audio is stored on the Internet Computer blockchain, the same place this whole website lives, so your copy can't quietly disappear the way platform content does.
Sign in free with Internet Identity (no email, no password), pay $9 by card or ICP, and every chapter unlocks right here on this page — stream instantly or download the MP3s, plus the complete PDF ebook so you can read along or switch formats anytime. Your copy is also always waiting on your profile.
Want the stories behind the book first? Read I Was a Police Officer and These Are My Stories, I Chose the Dispatcher Over the Promotion, or My Day as an Active Alcoholic Police Officer on the blog. Prefer to talk instead of listen? Get me one on one, or join the community chat for lifetime direct access.