Pros and Cons of Becoming a Police Officer

[eddieb]

Leonidas, I really appreciate your post. Based on your writings, it was very emotional for you to post this and I thank you for doing so. Your post is very well written and played like a movie in my mind. I hope that writing this helped you in some type of way because it definitely gave me a more realistic view of things that may happen. Thanks again, and take care

 

[Walt34]

Leonidas really hit on a lot of it. The "burn-out" phase that I touched on earlier is (I think) the process of learning to make the daily transition from what can seem like a war zone to "normal life", whatever that is. The surreality of going to a suicide on Christmas Eve in which some guy ate a 12 gauge, spattering his brains and skull over the room, the smell of blood, little crunching sounds under my feet from bits of bone, and then going to a family Christmas party the next day.

Lest anyone be offended by that, know that my wife had a brother die the same way long ago, but at least he went outside. It still bothers her because she wonders why she didn't see it coming and if she could have done anything.

The surreality of your wife asking "Did anything happen at work today?" and you say "No, not much." Then she says "Excuse me, isn't that you on the six o'clock news bandaging a little girl?"

"Well, it was just some wreck. Happens every day."

It feels really weird sometimes to be a police officer, like you're living in two different worlds. The "normal" one that most people live and love and work in every day, and the "other" one that very few want to think about, let alone deal with head on.

But dealing with it is your gift to the community.

It's amazing what one can get used to. Eventually there came a time when things like that didn't seem weird anymore. Or maybe it was and one just shuts it out? I didn't say a word about this stuff to anyone but other officers until after I retired.

Lest it sound too depressing, there are a lot of good times too. There's no feeling in the world like knowing you saved somebody's life. Somebody worthwhile, who is going to go on in their life and do positive things. I touched on some of the other positives in other posts.

I guess the thing about it is the wide range of very intense emotions. The pride in what you do, the despair of ever seeing a change, the elation of seeing some good police work make a difference at least in your little corner of the world, the depression of failure, the frustration of dealing with managers and budget people who apparently don't have the sense of a box of rocks.

Go ahead and do it. In three to five years you'll know whether you want to keep at it and if not, you'll have a bunch of war stories to tell and experiences you won't get anywhere else.

 

[Leonidas]

I hope that writing this helped you in some type of way

Strangely enough, doing that actually worked. It helped to get things sorted out and put things back where they belong.

Until I dug up some bad memories, the memories I had of those days were how much fun we had. Besides, I became a police officer because I wanted an exciting job, and believe me, those were exciting times.

…the process of learning to make the daily transition from what can seem like a war zone to "normal life", whatever that is.?… But dealing with it is your gift to the community.

Our head shrink thought it was generally a healthy way to deal with the two different worlds police officers work and live in. He said it was something our minds did automatically to protect us. You just had to be careful to watch for problems when it didn’t work well. An example of it not working was in a story he often told us of a young investigator whose wife brought him into the office. The guy would come home every night and lay down on the floor of their daughter’s bedroom and weep for hours. This was a man who saw dead children at work on a regular basis. What happened was that there was a popular type of footwear that every little girl was wearing at the time, including his daughter. He had seen the footwear several times on crime scenes, and then came home and saw the same shoes in his house. Subconsciously, he made a connection between death he saw at work and his daughter, and would be overcome with grief that he didn’t understand.

Your right about it being weird and it being a gift to the community. Sometimes the right thing to do is keep your barrier up, and other times it’s vital that you make a genuine connection with someone. Knowing when and how much can be tricky.

Lest it sound too depressing, there are a lot of good times too

You are right, and I feel a little bad about purging some depressing crap on Eddie. I feel the need to make up for that. Eddie, here is an official war story for your entertainment.

Riding by myself, no backup available, running a burglary in progress call at a condominium complex. When I arrived, I found the three guys from next door had armed themselves with baseball bats and surrounded the location. Burglar #1 had spotted the welcoming committee and wisely decided to await the police, who he hoped would be less violent. He came out on the balcony and saw me with my shotgun down below, and surrender negotiations commenced while the boys with their Louisville Sluggers offered him some more exciting alternatives.

Surrendering involved him shinnying down a handy gutter downspout, which of course broke away from the wall at the top just as he got started. General hilarity ensued, he screamed as the ground got closer and I was chuckling when I handcuffed him. But that’s not the funny part.

Part II comes when I realized I had drawn a huge audience. The complex residents were all standing around and watching, which in itself was not unusual. But this crowd had armed itself to the teeth with assorted bric-a-brac. Their choices of weapons ran the gamut from a couple of more baseball bats, a few broom handles, a woman in fuzzy slippers holding a rolling pin, and a 400 pound woman who had apparently snatched up her living room lamp on the way out the door.

The leader of the crowd was so excited that he was almost peeing his pants as he reported in to me. “There’s another one officer, he had a guy looking out for him, and he has to still be here because we didn’t see him leave.” The leader looked like the old actor Wally Cox (who defined milquetoast), but he was playing like the leader of a posse. I admit that I discounted the “he’s still here” part because I figured any burglar worth his salt had already booked for more peaceful climes. But I decided to appease the crowd and do a drive through.

After starting out I quickly realized that the posse was following. They looked like the villagers storming Dr. Frankenstein’s castle, but instead of pitchforks and torches they had broom handles and a floor lamp. My evening had veered off into the surreal. Normally I didn’t mind a competent helping hand when I was by myself, but this crowd did not impress me.

I decided to see how fast they could run.

Accelerating gradually I got them to break into a trot (the fat gal with the floor lamp was soon walking), and then almost a full run. I started chuckling, but the appreciation for my own sense of malarkey got out of control and I started giggling as I made it to about 15 MPH. My prisoner even turned around to look out the window and start laughing. I left my posse in the dust and actually was half-heartedly looking for the other guy when I screwed up and found him.

He was in the back seat of his car, and had lain down and covered himself with junk from the interior, which included his dirty laundry. When the spotlight lit up the interior, he freaked a little and bolted upright. A dirty sock was on one shoulder and a pair of tighty-whities was draped on top of his head like a deflated beret. One eye was looking out of a leg hole.

I got out of the car, and because the shotgun was on my lap I took it with me. That was a mistake. After giving him my usual polite request for cooperation (”show me your hands **#*$(%!”) I got him out of the car and about halfway in a search position when I realized I should have left the shotgun in the car. He started fighting, and I ran through all the options and realized my hands were way too full of shotgun, I was too close to get in the buttstroke they taught me at Parris Island, and I wouldn’t be able to sling it across my back quickly enough.

I was trying to keep the crook up against the car with my body weight and figure out some masterful move to keep from getting my butt kicked, when a little white fist came from over my shoulder and started beating on the bad guy’s head. Glancing over my shoulder I see Wally Cox trying to climb over me to get at the crook. His eyes were full of murder and the rest of the posse was coming around the corner.

For a moment I thought about handing the shotgun to Wally, but the headline “Cop allows citizen to murder prisoner” flashed in my mind and I decided against that plan. Meanwhile, Wally’s little, girl-like fist was bouncing off this guy’s skull and he was starting to get himself turned around to face me. In a move born out of desperation, I pushed back and gave about half of an elbow jab in what I thought was the area of Wally’s chest to get him off me, and then I tried for a complete 180 degree body twist to the left while pushing the shotgun butt in the direction of Burglar #2’s face.

The bad guy’s head snapped around and then he went limp and laid down for a nap. If my bayonet instructor had been there to see it I am sure there would have been tears of pride in the man’s eyes. I handcuffed Sleepy the Burglar, called for an ambulance and then turned around to put the shotgun away. The rest of the posse was gathered around Wally, who was sprawled on the ground with a broken pair of glasses and a lot of blood. Great, I’ve killed Wally. This is going to be difficult to explain.

There must have been a miscalculation in my estimate of how tall Wally was, because I had caught him on his cute little dimple with my elbow. He bumped his head in the parking lot - that’s where the blood came from - but after the paramedics cleaned him up we found that the only real damage was a pair of busted specs.

The difficult part was that I had never knocked the snot out of someone who wasn’t also a winner in the free trip to jail contest. While I could have made Wally contestant number three for interfering with an officer, it just did not seem fair. The guy’s heart had been in the right place, and he was the one with dried blood on his clothes, and skull. So before I left, I went over to the guy and told him “I’m sorry about what happened back there, but you were getting in the way.” While saying that, all I could think about was the letter I would have to write in response to the forthcoming complaint.

My good friend Wally beamed up at me and broke into a huge smile. “No problem Officer. That was the coolest thing I ever saw. Man, I can’t wait to go wake up my kids to tell them all about it! Thanks for everything you did tonight!”

God bless that little man. If it would not have been unprofessional, I would have given him a big hug right then.

Eddieb, if you found that story humorous, then you have a sufficiently warped sense of humor to go on to have a successful career in law enforcement. Good luck to you sir.

 

[Walt34]

Leonidas, you had me laughing so much DW came in to see what I was laughing at.

Have you given any thought to writing a book? I think you could give Joseph Wambaugh a run for his money.

That sounded like something straight out of The Choirboys.

 

[Gworker]

The bad guy’s head snapped around and then he went limp and laid down for a nap. If my bayonet instructor had been there to see it I am sure there would have been tears of pride in the man’s eyes. I handcuffed Sleepy the Burglar, called for an ambulance and then turned around to put the shotgun away. The rest of the posse was gathered around Wally, who was sprawled on the ground with a broken pair of glasses and a lot of blood. Great, I’ve killed Wally. This is going to be difficult to explain.

Great war story. In today's PD that would be followed up by 2 hours at the hospital sitting with suspect while waiting for him to be cleared for booking.

Booking him into HQ or the jail, another 30 minutes to an hour, then completing all the use of force reports and other paperwork, an hour at least.

Then walking out of the jail to see the guy standing on the street corner waiting for a ride smoking a cigarette already released by the detectives to be charged later. He nods to you and says see you later.

You go to work the next day and do it all over again. A few weeks later the warrant gets issued for dirt bag and you go look for him and have to chase him down and fight him again to arrest him then when you get to the jail he's your best buddy reminiscing about the first time you arrested him.

My wife has said, "You loved being a street cop now you just have a job."

 

[Leonidas]

Leonidas, you had me laughing so much DW came in to see what I was laughing at.

Eddieb, I hope you're paying attention. If you ever see a group of cops laughing until they almost cry, it's a sure sign that somebody is telling the latest version of "let me tell you about this guy I arrested."

Someday I'll have to tell you about the night I fought the naked carpenter. Or perhaps the one about the night two robbers met the Taekwondo master who was moonlighting as a store clerk. Or the cop who had an off duty job as a male stripper. Or time the herpetophobic desk officer shot up the radio room when he found the rubber snake we left for him.

A sense of humor, no, make that a really twisted sense of humor is absolutely vital in police work.

 

[free4now]

The saddest thing is the way that cops get hardened into an "us against them" siege mentality. If you think you are psychologically strong enough to be a cop without getting cynical, without deciding that "the rules don't apply to you", then please go for it.

 

[Walt34]

Oh, yeah, the Screaming Naked Lady:

Late December 1973, I've been on the road all of five months and hadn't been "cut loose" yet, they had a six-month field training program. On a 20-degree Sunday night midnight shift at about 2:00 AM we received a call for a "screaming naked lady" on a street that had a number of brick apartment buildings. We were about two blocks away and on the way I figured this was either a sex assault case or some drunken dowager. It was neither.

We turned the turned the corner and in the headlights was an astonishingly attractive young woman who wasn't quite naked. She was wearing a sock on one foot. She was apparently uninjured but generally incoherent except for repeatedly and loudly expressing her wish for, shall we say, "male companionship".

Apparently someone had accommodated her wish many times, as she was only attractive if you stood upwind. Naturally the senior officer grabs MY raincoat to put on her.

This being a Sunday night in that area there wasn't anything else going on so of course the entire shift showed up in short order. Her response to each officer's arrival was the same, her previously expressed wish. The Sgt. was about the last one to arrive. Since we couldn't get any useful information from her we had called for an ambulance and as she was being loaded into the ambulance she looked at the Sgt. and said "I don't want you".

It was months before people stopped saying that to him.

Strapped to a hospital bed behind a curtain in the ER, visitors and staff alike were sometimes startled to hear her yell "Will somebody please come back here and *uck me!"

At the hospital they decided she was having a bad acid trip and she was released the next day.

 

[eddieb]

Leonidas,
This was very funny. Your writing style is very good and keeps the reader (at least me) wanting for more. you should consider writing a book, wow

 

[Leonidas]

Great war story. In today's PD that would be followed up by 2 hours at the hospital sitting with suspect while waiting for him to be cleared for booking.

He was fine. He was fully conscious in a few seconds and calling me bad names in less than a minute. We had similar policies even back then, but like I said, stuff was hectic and not always well done back in those days. If the paramedics didn’t think he needed to take a ride to the county hospital, he was bookable. All prisoners were medically screened by the jail doctor anyway, and they were hyper-vigilant over the prisoners health issues. If there had been any concerns over the guy they would have just made me go pick him up and babysit him at the hospital.

It usually wasn't too bad at the hospital as long as someone didn't get the brilliant idea that the patient needed an x-ray. The radiology section was the waiting room of the innermost ring of hell, and nobody ever came back from there. I had a suspect and his lover who were kidnapped by his mother and her boyfriend once. Sonny boy had stolen some guns and checks from Great Grandpa's house and I had just got the case that day. All I told them was that once I got enough evidence I would go get a warrant. Somehow that translated into "He's a wanted man, and bring his boyfriend too!" Mom and bf found son and his boyfriend on the other side of town, kicked the snot out of both of them, tied them up with the ever-present poor man's handcuff (extension cords), and "extradited" him back to the South side of town, in the trunk of their car. They called patrol and proudly displayed the result of their amateur bounty hunter work. Patrol calls me at home to ask WTF? No charges yet, so I told them to cut him loose at the hospital. 18 hours later I knew right where to go find him, and there he was in the Radiology waiting room.

My wife has said, "You loved being a street cop now you just have a job."

I understand exactly. I spent almost 5 years at a three-letter alphabet agency as a “looks like a 1811 GS-14” (I got the same job and title, just not the same paycheck). Lots of toys, lots of money (I think the government could have bought a small aircraft carrier on what we spent), but the office was like a death sentence for me.

Every day I was the in the office while my troops got to go out in the field and do real work. For me it was 500 phone calls and emails, mandatory meetings, and every morning my secretary greeted me with a litany of the urgent stuff: “Somebody in Headquarters called to say they’re sending the SOD report back to be redone, the SAC’s office called to ask when you were going to finish reviewing the credit card bills, Janet from Fiscal called to say we’ve overspent our OCDETF funds, OEO is sending the affidavit back on the Gonzales wire for corrections, you owe ten bucks for Suzy’s baby shower gift, and, oh, you’re late for a meeting in the ASAC’s conference room.”

Lovely young woman. Her dad was a cop, and her husband was a cop, and she covered for me, a lot. That’s why I never threw the stapler at her head.

 

[eddieb]

"Lovely young woman. Her dad was a cop, and her husband was a cop, and she covered for me, a lot. That’s why I never threw the stapler at her head."[/quote]

I busted out laughing at work after reading this line. hahaha

 

[Bestwifeever]

Leonidas, I'm so buying your book or watching the movie from your screenplay.

 

[Buckeye]

Leonidas - Wonderful stories! What city were you working in that had all the craziness back when?

 

[Leonidas]

... she looked at the Sgt. and said "I don't want you".

It was months before people stopped saying that to him.

When I first went to Vice I spent a lot of time on the streets seeing how things worked. One night a couple of the squads were making cases of street prostitutes and I was hanging out watching how the flow of prisoners and paperwork went. I must have had my serious Lieutenant face on and I had forgotten how nothing is sacred to a girl working the streets.

Girl, I can't believe that little white boy was the pohleece!

Yeah, he was good looking. That ain't fair being tricky like that. Thats some kind of entrapment.

(referring to me)Now that man, he won't never get no b*tch. He too mean lookin!

Uh-huh!

Well, he kind of cute. He might get a b*tch, but he won't never catch a real ho!

I know that's right.

They had a blast with that. They would stand outside my door, knowing that I was always looking for an excuse to get out on the street.

I think we're burned out there on the south side. We need some fresh faces to work UC. But who're we going to use?

Man, you could ask the Ell-Tee.

Naw, he too mean lookin!

The worst part is the way they would giggle and guffaw as they walked off.

 

[Gworker]

Oh the ho's. I loved when we did the reverse stings. You always get one John who says:

"I should have known she was a cop, she had all her teeth."

 

[Milton]

The above just cries out for this video: YouTube - CSI DUI.

 

[Notmuchlonger]

At least the pay is good May cause your city to file bankruptcy but hey.. 122000 a year plus 90 % pension after 30..

Fat paychecks and pensions spell trouble - Jun. 3, 2008