Detective Alan Sandomir was born and raised in New York City. He attended Cortland College in upstate New York where he received a dual Bachelor’s Degree in both Anthropology and Political Science. After college, Detective Alan Sandomir spent four years in the United States Army where he was involved in a classified intelligence collection operation in Eastern Europe during the height of the Cold War.

After his military service, Detective Alan Sandomir joined the ranks of the New York City Police Department in 1984 and began his career walking a beat in the housing projects along Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His stint as a Lower East Side cop included a four year assignment in a plainclothes street crime unit that targeted guns, shootings, robberies and burglaries in and around those housing projects. Following that, he began an assignment in an undercover narcotics unit that targeted lower Manhattan.

Alan Sandomir’s experiences there led him to a position in the highly acclaimed Organized Crime Control Bureau’s Manhattan North Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT) where he was involved in undercover investigations against the organized drug gangs that battled for upper Manhattan. By1992 he had been decorated nineteen times and was transferred to the Detective Bureau. Detective Sandomir was then sent to the South Bronx where he investigated everything from harassment to homicide. In 1995 he requested a transfer to the Manhattan Special Victims Squad where he began specializing in investigating violent sex crimes.

In 2001, Alan Sandomir created and initiated a program that allowed him to specialize in and investigate the trickle of incoming DNA based cases that was correctly forecasted to soon turn into an avalanche. As the DNA databanks began to churn out DNA cases Detective Sandomir and his partner, Detective Edward Tacchi, became the first DNA Detectives in the NYPD where they led both New York City and New York State in DNA arrests and indictments while working out of their Manhattan office.

During his tenure at the Manhattan Special Victims Squad Detective Alan Sandomir became immortalized as fictional Special Victims Squad Detective Al Vandomir in mystery writer Linda Fairstein’s ‘Alex Cooper’ murder/mystery series.  Detective Alan Sandomir continued to hone his investigative, interrogation and interview skills while working on thousands of sex crime cases over the years and becoming an in-house lecturer and DNA consultant. He was soon promoted to the highly vaunted rank of Detective 2nd Grade where he continued to be involved in some of the most publicized, notorious and serious sex crime cases that the City of New York encountered.

Three New York City Police Department detectives are among the co-authors of the Rape Investigations Handbook.  According to the book description, “This work addresses specific investigative and forensic processes related to sex crimes for those who work in law enforcement, the defense community, or in the private sector. It is an unprecedented collaborative work -- the first working manual for sex crime investigators, written by sex crime investigators and forensic scientists.

The key feature of this work is a thorough overview of the investigative and forensic processes related to sex crime investigation. It takes the reader through investigative and forensic processes in a logical sequence, showing how investigations of rape and sexual assault can and should be conducted from start to finish. It is intended to set the investigative and forensic standard for sex crimes investigation.

It is designed to be accessible, in terms of language, not only to a detective or investigator who does hands on casework, but to the student in the classroom learning about the subject for the first time.

This work is an excellent training manual for sex crime investigators around the world. It is also an excellent textbook for any hands on university course on the subject of sex crime investigation. This work is an excellent supplement for any investigative course involving violent crime or death investigation. The only comprehensive reference available on the investigation of sexual assault and rape, a crime 10 times more prevalent than murder;  Authored by qualified investigators and forensic professionals with more than twenty years of collective experience working cases, preparing them for court, and offering testimony; and, Written in a clear, practical style, ideal for professionals in forensic nursing, law enforcement, the legal community, and the investigative community.”