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Last Updated: Aug 28, 2009 - 10:45:21 AM |
You may already know Jerry Ardolino. For many years, Jerry ran the company which manufactured the "Dirty Harry Shoulder Holster." There is, however, a lot more to Jerry Ardolino: antiquities dealer, security specialist, historian, author, etc., etc. And, Jerry was, for five years, a wildman in a Chicago Police Department uniform. After literally several years in the writing, EXTREME COP: CHICAGO PD has finally been released. EXTREME COP details Jerry's bizarre career as one of Chicago's finest.
Photo by Sharon Ahern
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Sharon and I met Jerry Ardolino because of the shoulder holsters.
Our son, Jason, will be turning thirty-two on January 4. Jason was close to two years old when Ardolino came over to our house in Oak Park, Illinois, to show us the shoulder rig. Ardolino was sitting in an overstuffed living room chair wearing one of the rigs with an original six and one-half-inch blue Model 29. Not long after that, Sharon and I left suburban Chicago for Northeast Georgia and Ardolino, who left the force a couple of years later, wound up moving out of "Chicagoland" as well. But, we kept up over the years. And, decades later, I would still hear stories about when Ardolino was on Chicago PD -- and not from Ardolino.
Jerry Ardolino was "unorthodox," to use a nice word.
Sharon and I grew up on the Southside of Chicago. My dad, Jack Ahern, worked two jobs, usually, one of them managing a movie theater around 47th and Ashland. His other job was in the meat business at the Chicago Stockyards. Between the theater and the Stockyards, I saw a lot of cops. And, I saw some terrific guns. I remember this white beat cop patrolling up the street and across from Drovers Bank who carried a nickel plated stag gripped revolver in a reverse draw rig just like Guy Madison did as Wild Bill Hickok on television. At the International Amphitheater once I saw this black motorcycle cop -- jodhpurs, boots and all -- with a brace of nickel plated pearl handled revolvers slung on long drop loops with the sixguns' muzzles almost down to the level of his knees. Chicago cops didn't use Sam Browne style rigs; they were outfitted like gunfighters, often carrying two guns visibly and, later, one of those new large capacity automatics in a shoulder rig under their leather jackets.
Ardolino eventually got to the point where he'd show up for Roll Call with a .45 stuffed in his pants because he didn't feel like wearing the gunbelt. But, that's just Ardolino. Nobody would ever create a fictional cop like Jerry Ardolino because nobody would believe that a wildman like Ardolino could have existed.
In those days, Chicago wasn't just the Windy City; it was a very cool place with a life below the surface that most people wouldn't think was possible. It was, and Jerry Ardolino lived it. It's a true story, the names changed to protect the innocent and the less-than-innocent. Ardolino doesn't pull any punches, whether its street language as it was actually spoken or a graphic description of how he was able to use his Blackjack (a flat sap that lots of Chicago cops carried in those days) to save his life.
If you want a read that will give you a view of law enforcement that you never thought existed, read Jerry Ardolino's book, EXTREME COP: CHICAGO PD.
To order, call Xlibris Corporation at 1-888-795-4274 or go to www.extremecop.com. Ardolino's book is an experience.
© Copyright 2006 by DOWN RANGE TV
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