Meeting Minutes

December 2009

The Bloomington Writers' Festival and Book Fair is being held on Saturday, February 27,
2010. Our Sisters in Crime chapter will have a table there. Volunteers are appreciated.
Marilyn Victor will be compiling a list of past speakers. If you have the name and
contact information for a guest who appeared at the club, please forward it to Marilyn at
marilynvictor@msn.com.

The book for the evening was Cop Hater by Ed McBain, the first in the prolific 87th
Precinct series. The novel was originally published in 1957 and introduced Detective
Steve Carella. There was plenty of enthusiasm for the story and crisp writing even if
some of the language dated it to the fifties era. McBain is a master of the police
procedural, one reader commented, if not its creator.

The guest speaker was Richard Greelis, a Bloomington Police officer who went on for a
stint in the FBI before returning to the Bloomington Police Department where he finished
his career in the Narcotics Unit. A veteran of over twenty-eight years, he is the author of
Cop Book, a true-crime memoir of his own experiences in law enforcement.

Greelis said the biggest crime in Bloomington is narcotics, lots of narcotics. Crack, some
meth but "lots of weed." Grow houses are very popular. These are houses that have
become marijuana farms. Often Center Point Energy will alert the police to a potential
grow house by the abnormally high electrical use caused by the grow lights.

In summer these houses often reek of pot and can be detected by a simply walk by the property. A new trend among Bloomington youth is "robotripping," which involves guzzling Robotussin cough syrup. It gives an LSD kind of high and will fry the brain. "Huffing" or the inhalation of the contents of canned computer air dusters is another potentially deadly practice.

There are a lot of abandoned cars dumped in the Mississippi River, some of which may
contain murder victims. No one's checking these cars. There are too many of them to
tow away and inspect.