Cops

Readers and friends,

I am compelled to write this little blog if for no other reason than to try and voice my feelings about current events.  This is not the bent of this blog and I will not discuss this here.  If anyone wishes to discuss my feelings on this matter with me, feel free to contact me in person, via twitter, Facebook or any other reasonable peaceful manner.

If you know me, you know my chosen profession.  I make no bones about it.

I am a police officer.  I started out in the Air Force in 1983 as a security policeman.  There were many jobs in between but I returned to the profession 17 years ago.  I started with my current department as a reserve officer.  A reserve officer is fully commissioned after going to anew academy and has a lot of training time riding in the passenger side of the patrol car doing all the work as the full time officer watches and teaches, he is forever a trainee.  The reserve officer is a different breed of officer though.  He wears the same uniform as the full time officer, wears the same bullet resistant vest, carries the same weapons, and has the same responsibilities to the public.  The difference is that the reserve officer is dedicated  enough to do the work for free.  That’s right, they receive no pay or benefits to do the same job as the full time officer.  I did that for about 6 months before being hired as a full time police officer.  This shows the level of dedication many officers feel.

I started out as a traffic safety officer.  Yep, I was the guy who would write all the tickets.  And investigate all the accidents and also respond to all the regular calls that came out.  In 2005 I was assigned as the canine officer for the department  (read my blog entry about Taylor).  In October 2015 I transferred to the wildlife enforcement division of the department.

I work for a community that is very diverse and interesting to work in.  It is a very close knit community that doesn’t always accept outsiders into the fold.  They watch you and judge you and everyone shares their thoughts about you.  We have natives from here, Alaska and Canadian First Nations members.  We have African-American residents and Hispanic residents.  We have lesbians, gay men, transgender people.  There really is no more diverse community in the country. There is a casino here and that draws thousands more people with diverse cultures to the area.

Our department consists of caucasian, native and black officers.  I know of none of my coworkers who has any negative racial bias.  In the last 17 years I personally have arrested or written traffic tickets to almost every racial group out there.  I have no bias, if you are in violation of the law you get the appropriate response.  Be that in the form of advice from an older brother to using the appropriate amount of force to affect your arrest.

Let’s talk about use of force……  my use of force policy basically reads for me to use the amount of force necessary to make you stop the action YOU were doing that made me use force.  YOU as the suspect drive what I do in response to you actions, from just a friendly chat to the use of firearms.  And this use of force can go from low to high and back to low in the blink of an eye, depending on what YOU make me do.

I am both the TASER and firearms instructor.  I ensure that my coworkers are properly educated on the use of force policy as well as make sure they can effectively use their weapons.  In answer to those of you out there that want to know why we train to shoot to kill….We don’t. I teach to aim center of the threat and fire as many times into that threat until he/she stops doing the action that made me use force to start with.  We are talking stress situations where you react to a threat to your life or the lives of others in time frames consisting of hundredths of seconds.  This is a gross motor skill (fine motor skills degrade as stress increases).  This is not the movies where we are all martial arts experts and can shoot smiley faces in a target at 100 yards with our sidearm while executing a double back flip and making the bullet bend around anything we don’t want to hit. We are real humans with real human reflexes and real human feelings.  You can look up any number of studies done by reputable researchers that prove the lack of time to make a decision.

I am not judge, jury and executioner.  I enforce laws and try to make our community safe for you to walk down the street and enjoy your life without worry for your well being. I do not set fines, that is up to the courts and our elected officials.  I merely write the tickets or process the criminal complaint.  I am not your executioner….how ignorant can this train of thought be?  I react to your actions.  If, in the course of my duties, you do something that makes me fear for the life of myself or some other person that is on you.  My goal at the end of the day is for everyone involved in my interactions to go about their lives as they were when we first made contact.

KILLER COPS:  I have been been in this business a long time.  I have never heard any of my peers start the day saying “today I’m gonna kill someone”.  This is not something we do.  Yes, we practice for the “oh shit!” moments.  We run scenarios through our heads to try to be prepared for those moments, but we never are.  This is not a video game or a Hollywood movie.  If you take a life the dreams and nightmares haunt you the rest of your life.  We are here to protect and serve all of our community and keep the wolves and lawless at bay.  To be forced to take a life means that somewhere that person decided that they did not care for the lives or well being of others.  LET ME SAY THAT AGAIN……THAT PERSON DECIDED TO MAKE ME USE THAT FORCE necessary to make THEM STOP THE ACTION.

IT’S THE COPS FAULT:  Really?  Try living in reality.  In all of the recordings I have seen and heard, I have yet to hear an officer tell the suspect to fight him.  I seem to hear the officers yelling for the subjects to stop doing what they are doing.  TAKE SOME RESPONSIBILITY.  It’s not my fault that YOU DECIDE to speed, or sell illegal narcotics, or steal from your neighbors, or kill someone.

BLACK LIVES MATTER:  Damn right they do.  All lives matter.  Every life is a precious gift from birth to death.  Try living that way.  Before you start screaming about my morals, you should look at yours.  In this country we have laws and social mores that say we cannot discriminate based on our differences.  This movement is a platform for discrimination. Disguised as a forum for social reform it has become a hate group which espouses discrimination against a group of people  (the police) and condones the assault upon and murder of that group of people.  Every person charged with or arrested for assault upon a police officer should also face hate crime enhancements if they use black lives matter in their rhetoric.

LET’S MOVE BEYOND THIS. …. How?  If you don’t like a law, go to your lawmakers, start petitions to change them.  Don’t like where you live? Move.  Don’t like how your local law enforcement agency is doing business?  Report it in a manner in which it will be brought to light in a civil manner.  There are ways to do this that don’t bring you into conflict with the officer on the street.  He/she cannot make the changes you feel need to be made.  We cannot, as uniformed representatives (while in uniform) of our governments sanction or endorse anything not approved by our employer.  There are procedures and places to get that message heard.  Resisting arrest or committing criminal acts against your community is not the moral way to go.

IN CONCLUSION :  If any of what I have said here offends you, that’s on you.  Take responsibility for you actions and feelings and don’t expect me to change because you don’t like what I say.  Feel free to unfollow, unfriend or whatever.  If you support discrimination in any manner for any reason, feel free to, just take honest responsibility for your actions and words.  I invite reasoned and rational discussion on anything I have said.

That’s my rant… now back to our regular scheduled broadcast.  More travel stuff soon.

LET’S GO!