Recently I was asked why I became a police officer and what advice I would give to a person considering joining a police department. Here’s what I wrote:
Like pretty much everyone else who ever did it, I became a police officer out of a desire to help people. I felt that the most important service that government provided was public safety, and I wanted to participate in that effort.
Nothing that I saw during or after my law enforcement career changed my view.
The first bit of advice I would give to someone planning on entering the field today is to have a Plan B.
Law enforcement is the most difficult, complex, and draining job in America. It is also a young person’s job. Law enforcement is physically demanding, emotionally scarring, and psychologically debilitating. Some people can do it for a career – twenty years or more – but some can’t. The most miserable people I have ever met were middle-aged cops who were financially and emotionally trapped in a job that they had come to despise. It’s a fun job when you are 23, but when you are 43, the foot chases, the wrestling matches, and the endless family fights lose their appeal.
Sadly, too many officers remain on the job, even when they would much rather leave, because they have nowhere else to go. They make decent money as police officers – especially with overtime and part-time opportunities, though those take time away from their families – but they have no skill that’s saleable anywhere else. Private sector police jobs – we call them security guards – don’t pay much better than minimum wage, and movement from department to department is difficult. Agencies will always hire an experienced officer, but they almost always make you start at the bottom of the pay scale. If you’re a sergeant or lieutenant, you will almost certainly have to take a demotion in order to move to another department.
So, you should have an exit plan before you embark on your law enforcement career. Ideally, your plan is another marketable skill or ability that can help you move on if you decide that it’s time to go. You might not need it, but having options is always a good thing.
My personal view is that police departments should recruit more like the military. Officers should join for an initial tour – five or six years – and after that, if it’s working out, the officer can apply to extend their employment. The department can then decide if the officer’s performance warrants continuation. If not, the officer is released with a nice severance package – some combination of cash and educational assistance/job training benefits perhaps – and a sincere thank-you letter.
Second, be aware that the essence of police work is dealing with people. All kinds of people. Not people just like you, and certainly not just people who think you’re great. One of the biggest surprises for me in my law enforcement experience was the number of officers I worked with who didn’t like talking to people. That’s the job. To be good at police work and to find it fulfilling and rewarding, you have to love people – in all their various ages, sizes, shapes, colors, levels of intelligence, personalities, political persuasions, religious affiliations, and economic status. You have to truly want to help them. All of them.
Third, realize going in that you don’t know anything about law enforcement. Despite watching numberless police and detective movies and a million episodes of “Cops,” hardly any Americans know what police work is truly like. And, for the most part, actual cops won’t tell them.
Here’s a quick list of things to keep in mind:
1. You will work without supervision. If that’s a problem – and for a lot of people it is – think twice about a job in law enforcement. You have to be self-motivated and self-disciplined. It is likely that your organization will provide neither.
2. You will be untrained, ill-equipped, and unready for many of the things you will have to do. Police are the go-to government agency to respond to an enormous variety of social, economic, public health, medical, and criminal incidents. Why? Because they are available 24 hours a day and they make house calls. And, of course, in the short-run, from the city’s perspective, it seems cheaper. In the long run it is not cheaper, but that’s not how the city looks at it. Municipal and county budgets have to balance every year, so the city has no interest in hiring the mental health specialists, social workers, youth counselors, mediators, marriage counselors and housing specialists that they really need. They would rather place all those problems on the shoulders of the police. And training, equipping, and preparing the police to handle these issues properly would be very expensive, so they don’t even try.
3. You will be exposed to violence or the threat of violence pretty much every day. Most of the time it won’t be directed at you. but every day you will witness the limitless capacity that humans have for inflicting physical and psychological damage on other humans. Over time, this will affect you in ways that you cannot predict and probably won’t understand. You will almost certainly have some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Be ready for it.
4. You are not part of an occupying army. When you are working, the people around you all day are your neighbors. Think of them that way. Hardly any of them really want to hurt you. Most are happy to see you. You have to protect yourself, but that doesn’t mean that you need to “dominate” every encounter. Try to treat everybody with respect. The city is not a hellscape of violence and terror when you are not around. Most people are good nearly all of the time. Almost everybody just wants to get along.
January 21, 2021
Photo: Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams joins a prayer circle during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. Photo credit: Cleveland.com