Anniversary Waltz

Charlie Mannix, a 30 year police vet, delves into the psyche of what it is to be a police officer working at the street level. Anniversary Waltz examines how split second decisions officers regularly make have domino effects - how those decisions affect the lives of all involved. It explores the human frailty and occasional corruption that is present among the people who we hire to ＂serve and protect＂ our cities. It is a story of people with weaknesses exposed, police bureaucracy that fails those it employs, different strata of society functioning in their respective positions, and finally, of despair and redemption.Two additional short stories (＂The Alarm＂ and ＂Wilma＂) describe how the day to day uncertainty of street-level policing impacts officers on patrol. In each story we see the rush from abject boredom to those energized thought processes inherent in ＂routine＂ assignments, fueled by the human desire for safety and the adrenalin rush inspired by the multitude of things that can go wrong on any call. Charlie Mannix’s shorts also offer a glimpse of the detritus of humanity - abandoned with no sense of hope - that officers encounter on daily and which they are expected to process and move on without becoming cynical or burnt out.They are stories of cops at the ground floor of society, doing what is expected of them and going unnoticed ... until we need them or they aggravate us with the nuisances like ＂undeserved＂ traffic tickets. They are stories of people doing a job for all of us ... that most of us desire not to do.