You Treat Police Horribly, and Expect Good Results?

Lately the news has been full of stories on high crime rates, how some cities are “defeating crime” (no, they aren’t) with new initiatives, increasing efficiency with smaller police forces (no, they aren’t) and with new investigative units to crack down on “dirty cops”.   There are even a few about how police corruption is everywhere, and op-ed pieces that police should be replaced with other systems.   The media makes it look like officers live the life of Brian, with great salaries and tons of “extra” income sources.   

Let’s review something, briefly.  The average starting salary for a Police Officer hovers around the high 38,000’s.   Some cities (ones desperate to hold onto officers, after putting theirs on blast for the last several years) offer as high as 43,000 or 44,000.   In most of these cities, the people who spit on officers (literally – ask any officer in a large city), make more than that spending half their 40 a week playing on Facebook.  My wife works with secretaries who make more than new Police Officers.  

So as an officer, you are going in daily to chance (at high risk) your life and your health for people who make more than you and treat you like shit.    For this salary, you are expected to be available 24/7 to respond to police calls, 7 days a week.   So guess how many of your kids’ “growing up” moments you are going to miss?   

Your family life has to come second to your electronic leash to the district house, and calling out sick (while possible), leaves someone in your unit at twice the danger while riding alone, or while riding both his route and yours.   

Your wife almost has to be a stay-at-home partner, because the constantly rotating hours you are required to work make it impossible to help watch the kids– unless you have same-neighborhood parents who are able to take care of them.   So there goes a second salary for your family – which means you take every bit of overtime offered, just to keep your family fed. 

You are expected to respond to policing situations, even when off duty, and you have (in many states) a legal responsibility to respond and hold the situation until backup arrives.    Ie, you can (and will) be sued civilly if you don’t.   So you may be the only officer on scene, on your day off, for hours.   I know an officer who had to send his wife and kids to down to VA to Dorney Park all alone, because he witnessed a seven car accident.    And it wasn’t the first time he’d had to abandon his family for his duty.  

You deal with some of the worse elements of society on a daily basis, while under constant scrutiny from both the Public Relations and Internal Affairs departments.   You will have a big "Pay Day" sign written in gold-digger ink on your cruiser, for everyone with a cellphone camera and some home editing software who's looking to score.   Often your own upper echelons of management are worse enemies than the guys who take shots at you in the dark.   At least with shooters, you have body armor.   

Speaking of.   Your equipment is limited to what a lawyer allows you to have – while the criminals’ equipment is limited by what’s on sale that week at the local black market.  People scream when you have “paramilitary equipment” grabbed second hand from returning national guard units – but they ignore it when your opponents have the same, or better.  

Your staff safety people will be top notch, at least.   At my division, our staff safety (read: defensive tactics, arrest tactics and firearm instructors) are some of the best I've ever met in my career.   They may be some of the few non-field personnel who genuinely and deeply care about the safety of field officers.   But they’re handcuffed by tiny budgets that blind elected officials demanded at the clueless public’s request, and by tactics that are defined by lawyers, not by what actually works to keep an officer safe.  

As a law enforcement officer, I have been threatened by a drug dealer, spit on by a random woman out with her kids, threatened and cursed out by a grandmother for arresting her son while he was in possession of an illegal weapon – and that was just a typical day.   (Welcome to our world.) 

Speaking of - you will be shot at several times in your career (no matter how short it is).   At least once a year you will wind up in the emergency room, praying to God that you didn’t just get some crippling infectious disease from the knife on the guy you just scuffled with.   Because the retirement benefits for permanently disabled cops?   Not nearly as good as the media make you think they are.  

And you will deal with people with infectious disease daily, and risk taking home AIDS, HIV, HEP C, and worse to your family, every time you have to arrest someone.   Because those “precautions” they teach you and that “equipment” they give you for officer safety?   Yeah…you have to actually put it on, snap it together, and prep it before using it.   Guess how often you have the time for that during an emergency call? 

The public hates you, everywhere except the suburbs.   And thanks to the lovely media, they’re even starting to distrust you there.   I personally live in a tiny little suburban town outside of Philadelphia, and I've gotten the evil eye from a few residents while driving home in my gear, after leaving work too tired to change back into civvies.  

Now put all of that together in your head.   Really imagine a life like that – where you can never guarantee being part of your own children’s lives, much less your own safety.   Add to it that police officer’s have one of the highest rates of divorce – and officer suicide is something that has only just begun to be studied.  You're on duty 24/7, even when your family is with you.   

Now …would you like to re-think your opinion of your local cops?   Do you want to take a moment to wonder why so many cops make bad choices (we’re human too) that lead them down the wrong path, to try and provide for their families?     That’s not excusing corrupt officers – but there would be a whole lot less of them if cops were paid and treated fairly.    Want to lower the amount of police corruption?   Pay the officers for the work they actually do, so that they can have a “living wage” for their families and be less bitter about it when they can't pay their bills.

Or maybe just think through why so many cops quit the force when they’ve had enough, or move out into the backwoods suburbs where they can make 5k-10k more per year, doing a tenth of the work and leaving you to be protected by rookies, those near retirement, or those who are clinging to their ideals – just waiting for the wrong choice to be offered to them, for them to start taking a little bit of the taste too.     The average large city can spend 20-30,000 dollars training and equipping a single police officer – and then those officers leave after a few years of being spat on, going unsupported by their public, and risking their lives daily for a pittance.  

If you really have thought it through, then understand just how bad things are for cops in America, and stop this “Blame the Badge” bullshit.   It takes a special breed of man (and woman) to wear a badge in this country – be they Police, Bureau, Probation and Parole, Sheriffs, Marshals, or any of our other brothers.  

Write a letter to your local government representatives (State Representatives, State Senators, Mayors, Governors, City Councilmen)  that officers aren’t paid NEARLY enough for the job they do.   And that they need BETTER equipment and a bigger training budget for their safety (and yours), not a smaller one.   Maybe they could even hire a few more officers and, you know, actually have enough of us out on the street so we don’t have to choose between watching each other’s backs, and watching yours.  

Because sometimes it really does come down to that choice:  watch a brother’s back, and let a citizen get hurt – or let a brother die, so that same citizen gets to go home and spit at us another day.