Actors and Academics

Police-Writers.com is a website dedicated to listing state and local police officers who have authored books. Two of the three writers added during this round started in one career, moved into policing only to return to their original career. One an actor, recruited off the set and into police work and the other a budding academic who changes majors after his experiences in policing.

Steve Allie Collura was an actor on the NBC-TV show "The Doctors" when he was recruited in 1967 by the New York Police Department to work as a Narcotics and Organized Crime Undercover Detective. Steve Collura set an all time record in the New York Police Department for narcotic undercover buys. He solved some of the biggest cases in the history of the force and subsequently became the youngest "Gold Shield" Detective in the history of the NYPD. Steve Collura co-wrote a true crime biography about his double life: Collura: Actor With A Gun. Steve Collura’s book and story were made into the movie Between Love and Honor. According to the description of the movie, “an undercover cop falls in love with the stepdaughter of a notorious mob figure and must choose between his work and his feelings. Based on the true story of Steve Allie Collura, who portrays another police officer in the movie.”

In December 2005, Dr. Richard Kania joined Jacksonville State University as the head of the Criminal Justice Department. Previously, since 1999, he had been at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke leading their Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice. From 1982 to 1999, he was at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC, rising to full professor, to head a department at Guilford. He taught at UNC-Charlotte, and also for the Southern Police Institute of the University of Louisville and as a Senior Fulbright Professor for the Central European University in Warsaw, Poland while on sabbaticals. In 2004-2005, he was awarded his second Senior Fulbright Professorship, teaching at the Belarusian State University in Minsk, the Republic of Belarus.

Dr. Richard Kania originally majored in anthropology at Florida State University, where he earned his BA with Honors in 1968. He continued in anthropology at the University of Virginia, earning the MA there in 1974, and wrote his MA thesis on conflict resolution and the law ways of the Hopi of Arizona. In between the BA and the MA degrees, he served in the Army in Berlin and in Vietnam.

Mid-way through his doctoral degree, his experiences as a Charlottesville Police Department (Virginia) police officer, led him to change his emphasis and eventually pursue a teaching career in Criminal Justice. Presently, Dr. Richard Kania is also a sworn reserve deputy for the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office (Alabama).

Dr. Richard Kania has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals and authored one book: The 1605 Waymouth Expedition to the Coast of Maine: An Assessment of the Rosier Text, He has also co-authored: Diversity and National Identity in Belarus; Police and the Use of Force: The Savannah Study.

Michael D. Ranalli was a police officer for the Colonie Police Department (New York). He retired from the Colonie Police Department at the rank of lieutenant and became the Chief of Police of the Town of Glenville Police Department (New York). He is the author of Search and Siezure Law of New York State, Volume One, Street Encounters.

Police-Writers.com now hosts 480 police officers (representing 206 police departments) and their 1010 books in six categories, there are also listings of United States federal law enforcement employees turned authors, international police officers who have written books and civilian police personnel who have written books.