Rookie Years in Milwaukee PD: Jeffery Dahmer, Riots, Worst Districts
Things Police See: Firsthand Accounts
Steven D Gould
4.9 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2026
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Retired Milwaukee Police Sergeant and bestselling author Patrick O'Donnell returns to Things Police See for a raw, no-filter conversation about his early days on the job. From his very first week—nearly shooting a suspect and witnessing open-heart massage on a dying man—to patrolling districts that mixed million-dollar lakefront mansions with some of the city's most violent neighborhoods, Patrick shares the unvarnished reality of big-city policing during the crack era.
The Rookie Years - Patrick's latest book
https://a.co/d/02dzfbNZ
Reasons We Serve Podcast
https://youtube.com/@reasonsweserve?si=799-ZHsMLq4pDoQp
Contact Steve - steve@thingspolicesee.com
Support the TPS show by joining the Patreon community today!https://www.patreon.com/user?u=27353055
Sergeant Steve YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/@UCuobtuGxJny9V5lX5a1ieuw
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is things police see. |
| 0:03.9 | First and accounts with your host, Steve Gold. |
| 0:07.9 | Welcome to the podcast at interviews, Act and Retired Police Officers, both their most intense, bizarre, and sometimes humorous moments on the job. |
| 0:15.0 | It is I. Old Gingerface here with you as always. Thank you guys for joining me. |
| 0:20.1 | Welcome to all the Sergeant |
| 0:21.6 | Steve subscribers who have slid over here to get the long-form interviews of police officers |
| 0:27.3 | from around the country and the world. I appreciate you guys. Thank you for checking it out. |
| 0:33.0 | Thank you for the new Patreon supporters. The supporters, if you give Sergeant or above, you will |
| 0:38.2 | get a shout out on the show. We do that at the end. So listen for your name. Really appreciate all |
| 0:44.0 | of that, all that you've done for me on both channels. Really been an incredible ride so far, |
| 0:49.5 | and I could not be happier about it. Today's episode, very pumped for this one. Friend of the show, |
| 0:56.1 | he's been on, I think, two or three times by now. He's a well-known author. He did many years |
| 1:03.9 | as a sergeant for the Milwaukee Police Department. You know him. You love him. The great Patrick |
| 1:10.5 | O'Donnell. Patrick. Wow. What an intro. |
| 1:13.6 | Again, the bar is way up here, Mr. Thank you so much. It's always a blast coming on and saying, |
| 1:20.0 | howdy do you? Yeah, I'm excited to have you. So you're right, this is, you, you just wrote your 11th book, |
| 1:24.8 | police stories, the rookie years, and that is out already. |
| 1:44.6 | We're going to, we'll put a link in the show notes and all that, but I mean, are you done? How many more are these things? How many do you got left in you, man? We'll see. You know, I already started writing the sequel to it. It's going to be police stories street cop to sergeant. So I'm going to try and do the career progression and all the crazy stuff, you know, that happens to you while you're going through all |
| 1:50.1 | that. So this book is being, I didn't realize it at first, but they put me like in the worst |
| 1:56.8 | neighborhood in the city working midnight to eight. and I had no clue I I thought the whole |
| 2:03.0 | city was like this I didn't live there I wasn't from there you know and and I'm like whoa hey |
| 2:08.0 | this is kind of crazy but it's through a rookie's eyes so I thought that would be kind of a neat way |
... |
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