Derek Pacifico has a Master's Degree in Criminal Justice and a Bachelor's Degree in Organizational Leadership and was a real cop for 24 years. The first 22 years of law enforcement were served in Southern California with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. After a short retirement, he was asked back into service in East Tennessee where he spent two years as chief of police for a small agency. After helping them get back on solid ground from a corrupt former chief, Chief Pacifico retired his badge and gun for good. He now teaches multiple levels of criminal justice courses at Central High School in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Corrections

Derek spent the first three years of his career working at the county jail, learning about criminal behaviors and modus operandi from the county’s most notorious criminal defendants.

Patrol Operations

Apple Valley, California is a medium township in the High Desert of San Bernardino County and was Derek’s first uniformed patrol station. Working with some of the finest deputies sheriff the department had to offer, including Shannon Dicus, a patrol partner who is now the Sheriff of San Bernardino County. Arresting misdemeanor and felony suspects on a daily basis, and learning from homicide detectives who responded to cases in Apple Valley, Derek was prepared for promotion to detective and proud to be selected to join the ranks of the elite squad of only sixteen homicide detectives in the county.

Sheriff’s Homicide Detective
Pacifico worked nearly 200 murder and other suspicious death cases in the six years he was in homicide, and quickly became one of their lead instructors and public presenters. His mastery of the art of interview and interrogation was the primary reason for the high ninety percent solve-rate he and his team enjoyed.

Sergeant

After six years as a homicide detective, Derek was promoted to sergeant and went back to the corrections bureau for a couple years and then went back, surprisingly, to the Apple Valley Patrol Station as a watch commander. After five years there, he transferred to the Hesperia Statin to be closer to home and enjoy new surroundings. At the end of twenty-two yers of service, Sergeant Pacifico retired from active service and moved his family to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he’d visited while in homicide to capture and extradite a suspect back to California. He was smitten with the slower pace of life, neighborly atmosphere, and being born and raised in the concrete jungle of Los Angeles County and his career in the deserts of San Bernardino, the green grass and trees were too beautiful to resist.

Chief of Police

Not long after Sergeant Pacifico arrived in Tennessee, did he start receiving offers to rejoin the law enforcement community in Tennessee. At first he resisted, but when one particular agency asked him directly to join them as their Chief of Police to take them out of the doldrums of the corruption of their former chief, Derek couldn’t say no. He worked diligently for two years to right a listing ship and get it ready to sail in much calmer seas. Leaving the department in terrific shape, Chief Pacifico decided that it was time to turn over the reins to the local leadership.

High School Teacher

After being asked to guest lecture at a local high school in Knox County, the chief was impressed by the program and that there was an elective for high school students to chose where they could learn about criminal justice. By the next summer, he was offered a full time teaching job and has been introducing 9th - 12th grade young men and women to the wonderful career of law enforcement.

Writers Homicide School
While Derek was still on active duty in California, he was invited to speak to a group of fiction writers at a “Sisters in Crime” meeting in Pasadena, California. After this first writers group lecture, he was invited to several writing conferences and eventually asked to speak to screenwriters at CBS Studios. It was after this lecture that “The Writers’ Homicide School” a two-day intensive seminar on all things police, detective, and forensics, was born.

The Writers Homicide School has gained world-wide recognition receiving writers from as far away as Australia, Finland, Canada and Mexico, as well as writers from all across the United States who love hearing Pacifico tell them how real cops, conduct real investigations.

Author & Edutainer

The writers Derek worked with during the seminars and private consultations, poked and prodded him to write his own stories. He started and stopped a few times along the way, with life interrupting as it does. But when COVID-19 sent him and the entire country home on isolation, there was no better time to complete his first fiction novel. GREED; An Eli Hockney Novel, the first in a series, was born.