‘Miles to Go’: Powerful stories from the streets

That’s not to say that people necessarily want to visit all the places Archer has been. Most of his stories take place in crime-ridden neighborhoods and back alleys of a deeply disturbing city. Prostitutes, criminals, addicts and drug dealers all figure prominently.

But when Archer was first trying to find a job as an officer in 1989, after graduating from the police academy, that was exactly what he sought. He had applied to several different departments — many in or near Montgomery County, where he spent part of his childhood — but D.C. was his top choice.

‘‘I knew deep down that as soon as D.C. called, that was where I wanted to go,” he remembers. ‘‘In that time period, in the late ’80s [and] early ’90s, they were getting a lot of press. Their crime rate was high; they really needed people.

‘‘If you wanted to expose yourself to a lot of things quickly, it was a no-brainer that Washington was the kind of place you want to be.”

Archer took a deeply personal path to the book.

‘‘After going through a large part of my rookie year, having been exposed to a lot of different things and the fortune of being involved in a lot of interesting situations, I realized... part of the reason I wanted to be a police officer was to find an understanding about my brother’s death.”

In the introduction, Archer explains that his older brother strangled himself in the kitchen while the two boys were alone in the house.

‘‘Ultimately, the guilt of having been home, sleeping in my bed while he died in the next room had become overwhelming,” he writes. ‘‘As I grew older, I cultivated these feelings as an excuse not to care, about myself, or really anyone else.”

Becoming an officer healed some of those wounds, and then he took his reasoning a step further: If becoming a police officer had helped him deal with his brother’s death, then he should start writing down what he was learning to gain another measure of perspective.

Archer began paying careful attention to his daily experiences.

‘‘I never really took notes at all. I would go home and sit down at my computer and whether it was the next morning or night, just write what had happened,” he says. ‘‘I’d go home and look back at the incident, and if it had a profound emotional effect on me.”

He eventually picked out about 30 stories (19 wound up in the book) that represented the finest, funniest or most profound moments of his career.

Still, Archer didn’t initially intend to share the stories with anyone.

‘‘It absolutely was going to be for myself [only],” he explains. ‘‘It was never intended to be a book, but was more something that helped me understand my motivations for becoming an officer and my place in the world.”

He realized, though, that other people might like to read the stories, and that the completion of a book might complete his emotional journey.

The experience gave him a larger frame of reference.

‘‘It brought me to terms with an important aspect of my life. I’m not the only one who had things like that happen to me,” he says.

‘‘Other families go through this.... Coming to Washington, D.C., and seeing so many things happen — so many homicides, so many violent crimes, a lot of people suffering — it gave me the realization that this stuff happens to everybody every day.

‘‘Being able to write this book absolutely enabled me to come to terms. It was the final piece of the puzzle. I needed to sit down and say ‘OK, these things happen, and you move on.’”

‘‘Miles to Go Before I Sleep” is available in major online stores.

“Miles to Go Before I Sleep: Life, Death, and Hope on the Streets of Washington, D.C.“

by Christopher M. Archer

Paperback

$19.95