soultoshare
Posts: 519
Joined: 8/24/2006 Status: offline
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Police departments are SADLY understaffed. If the public really knew about it, they'd be outraged. I wouldn't live in the city of Phoenix to save my life. I worked for the city as a Call-taker, and having to explain to the citizen calling up and complaining about not seeing an officer for 18 hours to get a burglary report taken sucked! Mostly, it was all they could do to keep up with the priority one calls, reports are left for the wee hours of the morning. I dispatched for the state police in IL, I usually had three troopers to cover 5 counties. I've dispatched for cities all over the country, spent 47 minutes on the phone once with a woman I put under her bed while the two of us listened to two men rifling thru her drawers in a burglary. They did catch the guys coming out the door, but there are so many ways that could have gone wrong. I heard three of my officers get gunned down while I had the shooter on the phone. I have lost close friends to gunfire. And I'm an ex-cop. Like any other profession, there are bastards that are out there. I've worked with those arrogant cops who think a badge gives them carte blanc to treat people as something less than human. I always made it a point to treat all people with respect, even the wife-beaters and rapists. The other prisoners will make sure those bastards pay, the hard way. I have arrested people who later said thank you for not treating them as scum......I'm prouder of that fact than any atta-boy I've ever recieved. The good cops on the force know who the bad apples are, and contrary to TV and the movies, are not afraid to take steps to get them off the department. For every bad cop out there, ther are 10 good ones. But even tho I've worked with cops, been one.....I still get that sinking feeling in my stomach when one pulls out in traffic behind me. But I have nothing to hide, and don't drive like a maniac, well, as long as they are behind me, anyway, and they just go about their business. They are human, and as such, subject to the same human frailties that the rest of us are. Unfortunately, the media only reports the bad cops.....whenever one of them do something that we consider heroic, they are never there. The cop says he's just doing his job, the same thing I told my Chief when I went into a burning house to locate the owner.....the same thing I told my supervisor after the incident incvident involving the murder of two cops and the wounding of another....we don't do it for the glory, we don't do it for the money, we do it in the off chance that we can actually make a difference in someone's life. OK...off the soapbox.......just my nickel's worth. m
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