The Little Book of Tom. Cops & Robbers

Tom of Finland Fights Crime
Tom takes on policemen, criminals, and corporal punishment

Tom's taste for police officers and felons-and for sexual tension between the two-developed late in his career. “I've never been to prison,” he told a class at the California Institute of the Arts in 1985, “but I hear it's a closed world where there are different roles and people behave different from when they walk free. It fascinates me. It is another subject I come back to again and again.” By which he meant fantasized about again and again, since only those subjects that aroused him sexually made it into his art.
The uniforms of the California Highway Patrol motorcyclists were his favorite: tan and tight, with high boots and soft black leather gauntlet gloves.