18 American Police Beat: January 2018 Sam Quinones’s Dreamland is as riveting as it is eye-opening. The award-winning story reveals the horrors of the opiate epidemic and how it came to be. The author delves into the two worlds of drug trade and big pharma, explaining how they’re interwoven and the power that they have together through the stories of addicts and their relatives. Through participant observation he tells the sto- ries of Mexican farm boys turned entrepreneurs, narco-bosses, lawmen, pioneering drug research- ers, doctors, and other public health personnel. Sam Quinones is a long-time journalist who is well versed in the topic through years of research and studies. His narrative approach to the crisis America is facing makes for an enlightening, mes- merizing account of the way the overprescribing and overproduction of opiate pain killers has con- tributed to the widespread surge of heroin addic- tion over the last few decades. Quinones provides great detail and elaborate re- porting of the connections between Mexico and the United States, and completes a deep investigation into the formation of the opiate epidemic in the U.S. Order on Amazon or wherever books are sold. Dreamland is a stark portrait of a national nightmare I n Florida recent- ly, two deputies arrived on an acci- dent scene where a vehicle had crashed and wound up upside down in a pond. Deputies Benjamin Thompson and Trent Mi- gues responded and found some good Samaritans trying to effect a rescue with a rope, but 82-year- old Leona Evans, the woman who crashed, was in danger of going under. Thompson was first in. He shed his duty belt and boots (keeping his ba- ton) and approached the vehicle to get a read on the occupant’s condition. The passenger door was stuck, so Thomp- son grabbed his baton and went to work on the window. “I hit it for all of my life,” he told reporters with the Tampa Bay Times. After some banging, the glass shattered and Thompson was able to get into the vehicle and grab Evans by the waist. But like in a nightmare, the victim was stuck. Not only that, the vehicle was now basically submerged and sinking fast. Somehow Migues and a bystander were able to grab Thompson’s ankles as the vehicle finally sank in the pond. The human chain held. Thompson, holding on to Evans, was pulled to the surface as the vehicle went under for good. Evans was taken to a Lakeland hospital and Thompson was treated for cuts cut on his face and hands he received trying to save an old lady from drowning. As usual all the cops said they were just doing their jobs and didn’t want anyone to make a big deal of the thing. But it’s more than likely the victim has a different perspective about the bravery of the police officers that risked life and limb to pull her to safety. The lady’s in the drink; Time to get wet, fellas! Deputies Trent Migues (left) and Benjamin Thompson of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Florida. Author Sam Quinones ★