Page 487 - NIXBOOK

In 2015 a national police officer satisfaction survey was conducted and the results showed that a majority of cops, if they had to
do it all over again, would have greatly preferred being firefighters instead. I couldn’t really see myself as a
firefighter/EMT/paramedic kind of guy, and although I can look back on my police career with pride, there were a lot of tough
moments that I wish I could have just not experienced. The guy who first raised his hand to take an oath and get a shiny new
badge with “610” on it was not the same guy who put that badge in a display many years later.
In 2018, the leading cause of death for police officers across the country became not car accidents, and not shooting by bad
guys..but suicide. Which does not help the stats for life expectancy for cops, which depending upon the studies you cite, show
cops live 10 or even 20 years less than the average civilian.
I retired just shy of 27 years. Physically I was actually still in remarkably good shape; a little softer and fatter than I wanted to
be, but no major injuries had been sustained, and I never wound up on light duty behind a desk to recover after a surgery on a
wrist or a knee or a shoulder or a back or neck or ankle or anything like that. Unlike a very high majority of my coworkers.
Mentally, though, I had gotten pretty tired of police work. If you were to make a list of the top 10 or 15 things why you think I
was growing weary of it all, yeah, your list would be totally correct and probably only halfway complete.
When I first got hired back in 1993 (actually my testing was in 1992) policing was a coveted career to pursue. My department
had two new openings, and over 120 eager candidates applied. Fast forward a couple of decades and the numbers were quite
different; when we wanted to hire a new officer we were lucky to get maybe 10 applicants. And usually at least half would be
disqualified pretty quickly based on their background. This was not just a local problem; it was a nationwide challenge for police
departments everywhere to find good, qualified applicants. Why do you think that is? Go back to the list you just made, and
yeah..there you go.
For better or worse, being a career police officer changed me. Not completely, just in some aspects. I took some notes over the
years and now, at page 487 of this rambling mess, I think I’ve found a place for them; not so much for your reading pleasure or
education, but more just a place for me to archive my thoughts for posterity without just deleting them outright.
I call this end part: Changes and Consequences of Being A Cop.

Okay, here we go with the beginning of the very end:

I trust people a lot less now. Because I met enough nice-looking folks, nice-acting folks, and very seemingly normal people who
turned out to have significant underlying secret and degenerative character defects. I have come to the horrible sad realization
that you can never really know somebody. You may think you know a person, but really, you can’t know. After seeing a lot of
seemingly decent people get caught with child pornography, or get caught embezzling, or get caught with a drug habit or
whatever, I decided I could no longer give wholeheartedly good references or opinions on anybody ever again, but instead I’d
have add the qualifier “well he SEEMED like a good guy..” Because who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? So now,
yes, I have trust issues with people.
Just on principal, I do not like guns pointed in my direction. Even if a gun is unloaded, do not point it anywhere near me. Not
only that, don’t point even a toy gun toward me. It’s just bad form.

I’ve met a lot of gross folks; enough so that as a general rule, I really don’t like shaking hands with anybody. (If I ever shake your
had, consider yourself blessed) When the fist bump was invented I used that a lot when I could, but if somebody caught me off
guard or I didn’t want to be rude and I had to shake a hand, then I always felt a little uncomfortable until I could go disinfect it.
I always had sanitizer in my patrol car, and I used it several times a day. One time when I found myself shaking hands with a