This month, The Irish American Post makes note of the "thin blue line"  with our stories complementing National Police Week, set for May 14.   After all, there is  cause for remembering the work done by security officers on the public's behalf.

The big story this month focuses on Chicagoan David Rupert, now possibly in FBI protective custody. Rupert, originally thought to be active in radical republican circles here and in Ireland, was actually a government informant. For several years, he moved through the Windy City's netherworld of revolutionary politics and polemics, being brought to light shortly before Easter.

Other features discuss the challenges facing Northern Ireland's new security service, plus we an overview of an RUC constable now heading the UN police forces in Kosovo.  Post reporters also talk with a woman police chief, a nun who is a prison chaplain and a Chicago detective who wrote his first mystery novel.  And, as always, there's lots more.

Updated policing philosophy faces Northern Ireland 
By Diarmaid Mac Dermott 
The newly formed Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) comes into
being later this year to replace the discredited Royal Ulster Constabulary
(RUC) as a community police service for both Protestants and Catholics in a
divided society.[More]
 

Mystery man informant stuns Chicago Irish
By George Houde, Irish American Post Chicago Bureau,
Diarmaid Mac Dermott, Ireland International News Agency and Post staff
Frank O'Neill  thinks  people will get the wrong idea of the Irish Freedom Committee. Richard Wallace believes the Irish nationalist movement in the United States has been poisoned. And Maureen O'Looney isn't quite sure what to think. .[More]
 

FBI informant used cozy Irish pub as spy hole
By Diarmaid Mac Dermott
FBI informant David Rupert used a country pub in Ireland as cover while he spied on the Real IRA and supplied information to the Garda, FBI and MI5. [More]
 

Ulster officer faces new ethnic challenges
By Patrick Rucker
Almost three years after the Good Friday agreement was signed, the people of Northern Ireland can testify that ending violence is only the first, and probably the easiest step towards peace. Rebuilding a new society from the rubble takes much more time and effort. [More]
 

From brats-land to beach front, top cop's a lady
By Carrie Trousil
Kim Tierney-Richow was waiting tables at Amber's Restaurant in Milwaukee when she was recruited for the city's police force.  At the time, she was a nursing student just trying to get by.  After she took the application test and was placed fourth on the list to hire, she traded in her stethoscope for a billy club. Becoming a police cadet, she began her career on May 23, 1977. [More]
 

Ex-cop gets drop on new writing career
By George Houde
You worked, lived, and breathed the life of a Chicago cop and now you retired with a fistful of department commendations, a file of appreciation letters and days that are as wide open as Lake Michigan. But there are all those wild stories in your head; murders, drug busts, blood, bodies and bad guys. You've got to get something on paper.[More]
 

Black Mass  reveals unholy alliance
By Martin Russell
For Boston Globe investigative reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill, Black Mass : The Irish Mob, the FBI and a Devil's Deal  (Public Affairs Books, 2000, $26) was an exercise in what journalism should be all about: stories that are carefully crafted, meticulously researched, well-documented and truthful...with all-bases-covered. [More]
 

New books cover the reading spectrum
By Martin Russell
Fifteen Irish writers outta go to jail and not pass go. Each contributor to Yeats Is Dead (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001, $23) rammed enough convoluted chuckles and devious criminal twists and turns to make any mystery fan almost die laughing. [More]
 

Nun puts 16 years in the slammer
By John Mooney
When people hear that Sister Margaret McCabe has been on Riker's Island for the past 16 years, they are not the least bit surprised. [More]
 

Dial up Irishness on Chicago's Hagerty Family Hour
By George Houde
Dramatic stories, living legends and interviews with the best and the brightest of the Irish world at large have been issuing on the airways from a broadcast studio in Chicago for the past 50 years. [More]
 

Watkins' mission is music
By Alice M. Vollmar
Bill Watkins is a man with a mission."When I was a teenager, my dad told me, 'It's up to you and your generation to rebuild a Camelot of the mind -- to be the once and future Celts,'" related the lightly-bearded author over tea in his cozy dining room. . [More]
 

Science, art present wild mixture of form
By Michelle C. Boyle
Dr. Hunter O'Reilly can be proud of her accomplishments.  As a recent doctoral graduate in genetics, O'Reilly has been able to shed the proverbial white lab coat in favor of an artist's smock and put her scientific knowledge on canvas. Radioactive Biohazard, an appropriate name for O'Reilly's art exhibit, is the culmination of years of work in the science lab and pure artistic talent.  [More]