Any Police Officers Around?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m at that stage in my college career where I have no idea what the hell I want to do with the rest of my life, so next up on my list of possible careers is that of a Police Officer.

If anyone share their own stories if they are one or the relative of one, that’d be much appreciated.

Basically, what’s the average day like? I’m fresh out of the military, so I’m used to structure, rank etc. How alike are the two? My goal in life is to just be comfortably middle class, would not having a college degree prevent that (as of now I’m registered for classes but I highly doubt I really want to go to college. At least not now)? How difficult is it to pass the written exams, qualifications, etc? Moving up in rank, based on merit or are a lot of politics played?

Those are just a few off the top of my head. Any and all guidance would help immensely.

2

It’s been years, but a thread entitled (I think) “Ask the Cop” was done by Badge, but I haven’t seen him post in a long time. Loach is a LEO from New Jersey, but I recall he was headed to Iraq, so he may not be able to reply for a while.

3

Typical. Never one around when you need one.

:smiley:

4

Thanks for the heads up; I didn’t even bother to look in the anthology.

I’m reading that thread right now.

5

I can tell you what it was or is like coming from a family of police officers. My father has been a police officer for over 40 years. He started when he was 21 at the local city and later moved to a smaller, closer town 5 years later. He just turned 61 and he is still going strong. Well as strong as a 61 year old can. He loves it and I think the day he retires is the day he is going to die. It is all he has ever wanted to do.

As a child of a police officer, it was hell growing up. I was always the “narc”. People pretending to be my friend when my father pulled them over to get off on tickets. Death threats against myself and my family. There were times when his work came home with him unintentionally. Living in the town you protect, word gets around where you live. I remember being around 10 years old, waking up in the middle of the night to find some guy playing with my toys outside. After running to tell my father and he chasing him down it turned out to be a child predator. Or the drunk guy that walked up our drive way and started throwing beer bottles at me and my sisters…

He did and has made the job his life. He has a CB in his truck and when we use to go out to dinner and he found or saw something suspicious he would always call it in. I can’t tell you how many times he would chance down a guy he with me, my mother and two sisters in the car. The time he found crack and guns in their cars. It was crazy.

As much as it was scary it was exciting too. At the age of 24 I went into public safety dispatching. I loved it and as much as their was drama all the time, I miss the not knowing what was going to happen next.

Oh and there was that time my father pulled me over and wrote me a speeding ticket. But that is for another time. :cool:

6

How often did he take his work home with him?

Sorry if I’m getting a bit personal, but I hear that people ‘change’ once they become cops and my fear is that doing that job would prevent me from having a normal, stable home life.

7

No, it is totally okay.

Back when he started, he use to bring a lot of things home to work on. There was one case that he was lead on (when he was a detective) that was never solved. Theresa Duran. I don’t remember him ever talking about when she was reported missing, but I remember very clearly the day they found her body. Our house just got the addition on and my parents were both sealing the outside concrete (?) of the basement while I was outside watching. The phone rang and it was dispatch telling him the body was found.

We didn’t see much of him that month once the State Police was called in (they over see murders in the small towns). He worked hand in hand with them day and night. From my understanding, my father knows who murdered her he just couldn’t prove it. Evidence was lost. Time passed. That was in 1984 and to this day my father will still look over his notes. Interviews. He promised her father that he would arrest his daughter’s murderer and it bothers him that he hasn’t.

As for other examples. Was he hard to live with? Yes. Very much so. Always angry. Upset. Very “hands on” parent when it came to punishing us. His goal was to scare the living shit out of me and my two sisters so that we wouldn’t get in trouble and in many ways it worked. Though I have come to resent him in a lot of ways. I find it hard to talk to him let along be loving or affectionate at all with him. When I visit my parents, my mother will always get a kiss and a easy to say, “I love you.” With my father, he gets a kiss on the forehead that always makes me uncomfortable and a forced “I love you.” It isn’t that I don’t love him, I just don’t feel comfortable telling him that.

Because of the way he was brought up (My grandfather was a sgt in the local city for many years) and for what my father saw constantly on the job, he wasn’t a loving man. He is trying to make up for it now, but I am almost afraid to say that it is to late.

He bottles a lot of what he sees inside. A lot of what he feels inside. The one time I saw the “human” side of him was when he had to shoot a suicidal man because he was trying to kill himself by cutting his head off with a table saw. The man (after stabbing his wife) stabbed himself a number of time in front of my father (and other officers) and when my pepper sprayed him the guy only got more angry. That is when he went for the table saw in the basement. After that call, my father had to see a shrink and couldn’t hold a knife for a month.

I am not saying the job isn’t amazing. It is. It is very rewarding. Though at the same time (on the family end of it) it is emotionally draining and some officers (not just my father, but I even saw some when I was working in law enforcement myself) take it out on the ones close to them. I saw one Sgt at the department I worked for berating her 10 year old daughter because she was getting fat.

I am not saying that all of it has to do with the job. We all come from back rounds that shape what we are. Though the tools they are taught in the academy, the mind tricks and what not… fucked my entire childhood. My father was and still is at times very controlling. I am 30 years old and I am still very much afraid of him.

So in short. Yes. He takes it home with him. More emotional then physical. His tatics and emotional baggage he saw at work that would upset him, he would take out on us by screaming at us that our rooms weren’t clean. Something that should have bee a 5 minutes scolding would often turn into an hour long bitch session of all the other fuck ups we had done. It wasn’t about the “fuck ups” I learned later on in life. It was that he had a bad day at work and the only way to release that frustration or “emotional baggage” was to take it out on the people he knew couldn’t leave him.

Sorry for the novel. I just have a pretty strong opinion on this.

8

Also to add.

Because of my father or learning from him rather and his anger issues, I have some of my own. Where he was a very hands on dad… I became very hands on when dealing with any of my own issues. I once assaulted my older sister and almost came close to going after my best friend’s wife after an upsetting phone call from her. When I get to that point, it is very difficult to stop myself.

And to know or to get a better understanding of the time of life or house hold I grew up in. When I assaulted my sister, she called my father on the phone and screamed bloody mary. I was terrified I was going to get the wrath of 'od that night that I brought a male friend home with me. I figured if he was going to get that pissed, he wouldn’t do it with someone there. Once I got into the house with my friend, he took me by the arm and “escorted” me outside where we were alone. What did he say to the 19 year old girl that just socked his oldest daughter? “The next time you want to take a shot at your sister, make sure there aren’t any witnesses.”

That example happen over 10 years ago and he has changed a lot since then… but living in that type of situation forms who are you or your ideals whether you like it or not.

sigh

9

Don’t rush me, I’ll be in Texas for a few more weeks. :wink:

Rand how about some specific questions? I’ll try to answer but even though I’m still in America I don’t get a chance to get on the Dope everyday.

For some of the general questions I have to say it depends on the department you go to. They can vary greatly. Military experience will make it easy to get through the academy. Once you have been yelled at for a few weeks it loses its impact the next time you go through it. At the actual job it tends to be a lot more lax. You can be friends with your supervisor, be on a first name basis but you still have to remember who is in charge.

In my area we make pretty good money. That varies greatly depending on where you are.

I have a very good memory and reading skills. The course work and exams were not very difficult for me. If you have trouble memorizing a lot of statutes then it might be some work for you.

Promotions vary from place to place. I don’t work in a civil service department. The administration has all the power for promotions. There is a lot of politics and infighting over it. In civil service departments promotions (at least at the lower levels) are done by test.

Which is why I live 40 miles away from where I work. I’d rather deal with the commute.

10

Alright, Sir. Be well, and be safe. :slight_smile:

11

Additional thoughts: see if California has some form of state mandated training which LEOs must have. In Pennsylvania, it’s referred to as Act 120 certification, and can be obtained through many of the PA community colleges and universities. If there’s a similar program in California, your hire chances could be enhanced by obtaining training/certification on your own, prior to making application to a department.

Here’s an overview from Delaware County (suburb of Philly) Community College on their Act 120 training: http://www.dccc.edu/teched/police/act120.html

Good luck.

12

In California the Highway Patrol is hiring. You will make about $61,000 your first year. You can also transfer to anywhere in the state.
Do not join the LA County Sheriffs Dept. You will spend your first two years working at the county jail.
The CHP offers a ride a long program so you can go out one on one with an officer and see what it is like. Many local departments also offer such programs.

13

As for police politics, many people in the field say the HBO TV series “The Wire” is the most realistic depiction of crime and policework there is. So watching that series (it is out on DVD) might help.

14

About transferring to another part of the state, what if I want to stay in Santa Barbara? Will it be like the military in that I don’t really have a choice where I go?

15

The PA troopers I know said they were shipped around the state after completing training at the academy. You can put in request for a given duty station, but it may take a while.

16

Some jurisdictions won’t take anyone unless they’ve had at least some classes, preferably in criminal justice or the like. For example, the local county PD requires 60 semester hours or 90 quarter hours in an accredited school but the county sheriff’s office only requires a high school diploma or GED.

17

In other departments (like the NYPD), you can quailify with military service instead of the college credits. Check the specifics of the department(s) you’re interested in.

18

I’ve got some questions for cops and former cops, so I’ll add them here.

On my last Security job, the Director and Assistant Directors were retired cops. Rather than promoting from within or hiring qualified people in the field, the Director went out and hired two other retired cops, both of whom she’d known for a while (one for over 20 years, the other for a couple of years) as Sergeant/Supervisors.

The one I got kept telling me things different from established procedure, then screaming “Insubordination!” when I would correct him (in private or in our office). He would socialize rather than doing the job, and when I’d say something about it, that was “Insubordination!” again, and I was allegedly telling him how to do his job. Claimed I’d be up on charges for talking to him that way if it was the military (which it ain’t, dumbshit!) and made a big fuss about me daring to speak to him as an equal. On a fucking Security job where he made $15 an hour and was a NON-management supervisor.

Is this kind of assholish insanity commonplace in Police supervisors? Would a Sergeant be able to threaten someone for insubordination or other charges if the Sergeant told them to do something contrary to established procedures? Would a Sergeant get away with making threats against an officer who calmly pointed out that the Sergeant probably shouldn’t be shooting the breeze loudly in an office around the corner from a crime victim he claimed not to have time to deal with? (yeah, that’s what I made comment on, after she made comment on it to me. I was firmly rebuked. Our department looked really bad, because it was more important for him to shoot the shit with an off-duty cop than to take a crime statement. Seriously.)
The other guy had been a Police Chief on an Indian Reservation after retiring from the city cops. He too was a $15/hour, non-management supervisor. He tried to order me into a closed office to be bitched out, before my shift began. When I refused on the grounds that I was not on the clock and had things to do before my shift began, he threw a tantrum. Stomped around like a 5 year old screaming “No officer is going to speak to me like that! I’m not taking that shit from any of you!” (Seriously. Fists clenched, staring at the ground, stomping his foot.)

For the record, I never raised my voice or swore, I simply stuck to my position that I had things to do first, was NOT on the clock yet and thus, I wasn’t being paid to be yelled at. In the end, I did relent and punched in early, after being assured that I would be paid for the time.

Again, is this sort of thing usual for a Police Supervisor or management level person, or were they being unprofessional assholes, as was my firm belief?

19

Really? Where ya at, Camp Mabry?

20

Bliss. My location field is a clue.