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If there is anything glorious or romantic about being a cop I certainly do not know what it is. My experience as a law enforcement officer lasted only a few years, but in that time I nearly burned myself out to a level of superior cynicism. For me, enforcing laws was like being trapped in the chaotic middle of a sociological chamber of horrors. Coping with such a high level of emotional disenchantment impacted me drastically and threatened to chisel my psyche down to a dark mute point.
The responsibilities were endlessly haunting. Everywhere I went I had to be mindful of an air of authority that I had to maintain because I was a cop. Even off duty I was ordered to carry my service firearm and badge. In the summertime, when I would wear shorts and a T-shirt, my firearm was nearly impossible to conceal and extremely uncomfortable to support.
I either had a bulge in my back or looked as if I had an excessively generous anatomical endowment in front. Everyone always looked at me as a figure of authority and control. My job responsibilities called for that, yes, but even off-duty it was difficult to relax. When I would try to join my friends for a beer at a bar, something always seemed to spoil the endeavor.
I remember one such incident when I was recognized by a guy in a pub on the outskirts of town. I had arrested him about a month prior for driving drunk. He quickly spread the word around the bar that I was a "pig. " The place filled with nervous whispers, and I could feel the weight of a thousand stares bearing down upon me. As I turned to visually address their increasingly uncomfortable stares, everyone's eyes darted awkwardly from floor to door. The whole place emptied faster than water from an overturned bucket. To me it felt as if someone had stenciled, "Kiss me!
I have the Ebola virus!" on the back of my shirt. My friends and I tried to make the best of the empty bar, but try as I might I could not get comfortable. My bar stool felt like a child's toy -- Sit and Spin. About fifteen minutes later we decided to leave. When I returned to my car I discovered my front windshield had been smashed and someone had defecated on my front seat. Needless to say I found dealing with people's bad attitudes and their pre-conceived notions about me to be spiritually maddening.
I already had enough difficulty retaining my composure while intervening in all their worst nightmares. Every situation was a blooming crisis, and I was the one who had to sort it all out. High stress levels from everyone involved compounded the burden of adversity Tempers flared up quickly and inevitably were directed at me! It began to feel as if every call I responded to deteriorated into a pissing contest.
I had bottles and rocks thrown at me for simply pulling into a driveway. I had lit cigarette butts flicked in my face. I was tired of going home scratched and bruised up from struggling with a resistive suspect. I grew weary of my ears ringing with colorful expletives that were shouted in my face such as "ass-holed sellout" and "conformist censored bird. " I eventually decided that only six-year-olds liked cops. Everyone else pre-judged and hated us. The working conditions were also torturous.
Not only were the hours long and tedious, I found myself constantly subjected to unimaginable hazards. I lived in fear that I would contract some horrible disease from a drug dealer or street person. Once I arrested a sixteen year old prostitute who tried to stab me with a syringe. I learned later that the syringe contained a lethal combination of heroin and cocaine.
While transporting her to the detention center, she thought it would be funny to urinate all over herself and my patrol car. The resultant smell was so disgusting as I guessed she had not cleaned herself in several days. She then went on to vomit and feign shortness of breath and chest pain. I ignored her because I was also an EMT, and she was obviously faking. She later filed a complaint with the city claiming I had refused her necessary medical treatment because I would not give her CPR. Many of my co-workers found that to be humorous.
I did not think any of it was very funny. Since we were a small department with limited resources, I was responsible for cleaning my vehicle. Despite my best efforts and two professional cleanings that I paid for, I could not relieve the interior of the smell of that woman. It was summertime and the sun would bake my cruiser to the point where I would gag from the wretched stench. In the academy I was taught that my cruiser was to be my sanctuary. Mine was more like a stale coffin, rank with the filth of society.
Academy lectures, essential for all officers, also stressed psychological detachment from encountered horrors. My greatest failing was an inability to desensitize myself from all the madness and misery I experienced. I remember arresting the father of a precious seven-year-old girl named Sheila Baker four times in two months for child and spousal abuse. The man was an alcoholic.
Each time I arrested him his torments had escalated, and the beatings he imposed upon his wife and child grew worse. I felt so frustrated and powerless. I was not making any difference because the courts seemed manipulated by this piece of censored . He always seemed to worm his way out of any serious reprimands. Once I accompanied a representative from Child Protective Services to the home to plead with the mother to press serious charges against him.
She refused out of fear of his reprisals. A few weeks later when I returned to work from my days off, I learned that in my absence he had been arrested once more. This time he had taken the life of his daughter by crushing her skull in a vice. Apparently, she had spilled a bowl of pretzels on the living room floor.
In his ensuing drunken rage he chose a welder's vice as the instrument of discipline. T...
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