Joe Brauer

Former Waterloo Police Chief Joseph Brauer has written a memoir titled “Gateway Blue: True Life Experiences of a Cop: Bizarre, Raw and Authentic,” which was recently released.

The 170-page book focuses mainly on Brauer’s time as an officer in St. Louis, but it does include a 29-page chapter on Brauer’s four-year tenure as Waterloo’s police chief. 

Brauer began writing the book about 2.5 years ago with the intention of telling how things actually work in law enforcement from his perspective. 

“I thought that I would just put some things out there that are true,” Brauer said. “It’s all documented and true – what really goes on and how the politicians have more or less kind of destroyed the law enforcement profession. I just wanted to get my story out there. Some of it’s funny. Some of it’s sad. Some of it’s unbelievable.”

“What the police deal with day in and day out, the real public has no conception of what really goes on behind the thin blue line,” he added.

Brauer, who served for 33 years as a police officer in various capacities, said it was difficult to condense that experience into the memoir. 

“I had to stop because there’s so much I could have written about,” he noted. “I just had to draw the line and stop somewhere.”

Brauer said the book is an easy read targeted at a particular niche…>>> 

Read the rest of the story in the January 2, 2019, newspaper.

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