The second thing about the stop that aggravated me was his family rolling up on the scene making a huge issue about him being stopped. The family members were screaming about police harassment and not following my orders to leave. Additional units were called and instead of one person going to jail all six on scene went and three vehicles were towed. Idiots.

Frequent fliers are a common occurrence with turds. Everyday people don’t wake-up in the morning and decide to start committing crimes. The majority of incidents in the community are the same people going out and screwing over the decent people in the city day after day. We may arrest someone for class c misdemeanors and all of a sudden daytime burglaries stop in the area where he lives. What sucks is that these people are arrested time after time and keep getting slapped on the wrist. Even serious crimes usually mean very little jail time. If the district attorneys office would stop cutting sweet deals to these turds and the courts got hard on crime then the city would be a much safer place. Plea deals are just a lot easier and cheaper than going to trial I assume.

To put it simply – DWI stops and the associated paperwork is a major pain in the ass. I was hit by a drunk driver 9 years ago and personally know how important it is to get these drivers off the road and make sure they face charges for their actions. The satisfaction I get out of taking these individuals off the street though is usually canceled out by not only the hours of paperwork that I have to do but having to put up with these people urinating on themselves or in the car, throwing-up on themselves or in the car or in the PD. As much as I dislike doing these type of stops I know that it is necessary and may save one or more lives.

Most officers feel exactly the same way I do but the sad part is that a few of these officers handle a DWI stop in a different manner. Some of them will arrest the offender for a class C misdemeanor instead of the DWI offense. This does get them off the street and prevents a possible crash or fatality but the punishment does not come anywhere close to what the DWI charge would bring.

A lot of the paperwork that I do is information entered two or more times. If the computer programs were tied together and information had to only be entered once this would significantly cut down on the time that some of these reports require.

If you are thinking about getting into law enforcement go on a ride along and don’t just go on a few calls and call it a day, stay with the officer while he writes reports and see what is required.

Just about every person has a camera these days and there is no shortage of individuals that would love to get you on camera driving like a bat out of hell or simply not signaling a turn. I was on the freeway the other day and noticed a car following me with the driver holding up a camera. For all I know he was trying to get footage of me breaking traffic laws.

I also find it difficult to pull someone over and scratch out a citation for some infraction that I will most likely commit during my shift. I know some cops have no problem not wearing a seat belt or hauling ass in their patrol car and then writing Joe Blow for the exact same infractions.

I just do not want to be a hypocrite. Maybe that kind of thinking is a little naive. What do you think?

If you have any amazing ideas I would love to hear them in the comments. Selling crack on the side or crap like that is not a business by the way…

Lets say you want to work drugs, stay busy and get a good adrenaline rush during your shift. This means you are probably going to be working in a bad area and that generally means the city has a crappy tax base. So what does this mean to you? If the city doesn’t have a good cash flow you will probably be buying your own equipment, retirement may be lousy, soft money such as education pay, certification pay, and so on will be low. Cars may have a ton of miles on them, equipment may be hard to come by or shared. Places like this usually attract people that like action and it may be more laid back.

You are really more interested in making  good money and having shiny new equipment to use. Sounds like a great place to work with a nice tax base. Those perks  means you will probably be working in an upper class community. Upper class communities usually have very low crime and this means you are dealing with things like parking issues, dogs crapping in a neighbors yard, kids skate boarding on sidewalks. These are all issues that you wont even think about if you work in the lower class area I mentioned above. Upper class communities also usually have a very active political environment, this translates to officers usually being micro managed.

Another place you can usually find good equipment and pay is hospital systems. Hospitals have almost no action and you have a very small area to police. BOREDOM. If you want to be a cop and not actually or rarely do police work while getting paid well, this is the place to do it.

State Troopers. DPS gets paid well, have good equipment and are not micro managed. The downside is that you can be moved around, the highway/freeway is a terrible place to make traffic stops – at least in my opinion. I will stop a car on the freeway but it is not my favorite thing to do. These jobs are hard to come by.

A place that really interests me is the Sheriffs Department. Having an entire county means you can work in very diversified places. You may be in a ghetto one minute dealing with dope and then out in the county dealing with cattle on the road. Sounds cool to me. The problem is pay and if a new Sheriff is elected they may clean house.

These are just a few examples. Every place has a suck factor, you just need to decide what kind of cop you want to be and honestly you probably will not figure that out until you go to work for an agency and get your feet wet.

The other night I stopped a car due to being in violation of my cities loud music ordinance. Upon approaching the vehicle I saw a handgun in plain view – unlawful carrying of a weapon. I place the man into custody and did so in a respectful manner. During the process of waiting for a tow truck I explained what was going to happen, how much his bond would be and how he would probably be transferred to county jail that night. I simply informed him of what was going to happen and answered his questions. This individual was someone that had encountered police on several occasions and he thanked me for the way I treated him and finished by saying he had thought that all cops were dicks until he met me.

Some of you peace officers may be thinking that I just want to be a good community police officer and hand out hugs all day. Well, I work in a very high crime area and that could be further from the truth. I can be very forcible when it is necessary but as soon as the threat is no longer there I bring my attitude into check and return to being respectful.

I think that operating in this manner establishes some level of trust with the offender and makes it less likely that problems will arise and has even led to confessions that I think would not have occurred if I was treating that individual badly.

The vast majority of peace officers do act in a respectful and professional manner. Like any profession though, you are going to have some people that do not act the way that they should, or at least the way I think they should. Try the nice guy approach, I think it will not only help you on the job but will reduce the likely hood of that behavior rolling over into your personal life.

The downside is that the majority of these people don’t care about going to jail – it’s considered a minor annoyance by some and even a break from life for others. The tickets that get issued are never paid by the majority, they simply fail to appear and let it roll into a warrant. Once an arrest is made on that warrant they sit in jail for a few days and then the cycle continues.

It’s almost sad when you step back and look at this group of people, the residents of the ghetto. Most of them are raised in this mess and do not know a different way of life or have no hopes of an improved life style. One of the best ways I believe to start changing this is for an active police presence in schools. I do not mean policing the students, I mean as educators teaching these kids that we are there to help them, that crime is not a way of life. Show them that we actually care. Go out and get businesses active with the program, ask for help with school supplies or simply small things that we take for granted like toothbrushes and toothpaste. The current generation may be mostly lost but we can put things in motion with the up and coming generation – I at least like to think we can.

Most first time candidates find the oral board to be the most intimidating part of the process. It can be nerve racking or it can be as simple as a friendly conversation. Every department has their own style and methods of what they believe works best. Some departments will fire multiple questions at you at one time, they will question your answers, and put an extreme amount of pressure on you to observe your response. Other departments will simply sit down and have a conversation with you, find out why you  want to be a police officer, what you think about police work, why you want to work for that department.

Before you go into an oral board be prepared. Go onto the department and city’s websites, find out who the chief is, who the mayor is. Find out all you can about the city, demographics, history, population. Be well prepared when you go in, get someone to practice with you.

I know some people that stopped the application process with other departments because they had passed the oral board with a certain department. That’s great that you passed but that is no where near a swearing in ceremony. Keep up the process with other departments. Something in your background could knock you out with one department but not another. The shrink for one department may not like you or your answers and another may give you the okay. Maybe you are nervous during a polygraph and that is interpreted as deception. Even though it sucks filling out those 60+ page applications you need to keep it up.