Coworkers: Fill & Download for Free

No. They never did with me or with my coworkers as far as I could tell. Maybe in some parts of the US or elsewhere someone cares.It always seemed to be blatantly bad drivers ripping through areas with lots of pedestrians or heavy traffic who had plenty of those donation stickers plastered on the back window or something stuck on a bumper. If the driving merited a citation, it got a citation from me. Stickers meant nothing. If someone was a jerk about it and actually mentioned their “donations,” I would shrug and say that I had no idea about any of those groups as they had nothing to do with me doing my job, so if they were promising a “get out of jail free card” for a donation, the person should probably report them for fraud to the state Attorney General's Office. They got their ticket and I left.Those phone solicitors are for the most part paid salespeople not officers or troopers or whomever they purport to be raising funds to help. The names of the groups will sound similar to the legitimate groups that give most of their money to support families of fallen officers or whatnot, but the groups selling the false dream of a sticker preventing a ticket are likely on those lists of “charities" that only give a tiny percentage to the cause and line private pockets with the administrative costs. With the internet available to so many people now, there is no good excuse for failing to vet these so-called charities before giving them your money. I loved it when they called while I worked at Texas DPS and belonged to DPSOA, the legitimate auxiliary organization. It's a real treat to have a phone solicitor stammer out an apology and then hang up.Don't expect a sticker to save you from a citation if you drive poorly.

No. Perhaps if the person only had a high school education and did not work to continue building skills, maybe it might make a transition difficult but why the assumption that the “majority" would have any difficulty doing other work? They must develop a variety of skills to do the law enforcement job including writing reports which would be useful in other jobs.I went to law school only six years after finishing my bachelor's degree, but I worked with police officers at the university PD who took much longer to finish a bachelor's or other degrees while working full-time and attending classes only part-time. One such coworker started his own computer consulting firm and was making a lot more money even in the first year after leaving law enforcement. Several officers went to law school and a few more went to medical school. I had six former police officers in my small law school class of 143, and most of us did not go into criminal law.Some of my police colleagues went on to teach at the secondary or university levels. One retiree from the PD had already been a professor (with a PhD), and he became the head of security for a museum as his final career before fully retiring. Trying to stereotype such a huge and diverse group simply because they shared an interest in one type of career is a mistake.The majority of my coworkers at the university PD had a four-year degree before being hired and many more finished one or more degrees while working there. At the city PD, perhaps one-third of the officers had a four-year degree. Texas DPS requires 60 hours of college or military, and it is so competitive that typically the troopers have college hours even if they also have military service. Many state police agencies require at least some college (typically the 60 hours if not an actual degree).

I'm going to give you the non-sugarcoated speech because police work is not for the delicate flowers who need a sugarcoated fantasy instead of seeing the real world.If you are considering police work with the expectation that the public will ever have warm fuzzy feelings for you, that the press will do lovely puff pieces on officers and all of the good that they do or even that most of your family and friends will be understanding and supportive, then this is probably not the career for you. I don't know when officers got the idea that the media would be "fair" and that a bad officer wouldn't rub his rotten stench on everyone else. Life has never been "fair."The ones who get the warm fuzzys from the public have traditionally been the firefighters. Nevermind the fact that without police to secure a scene first and to watch their backs in a dangerous area that the firefighters will watch your home burn to the ground from a safe distance. The public has never really understood police work as a "herd" or appreciated police although individual members of the public might do so. Therefore, if you need kindness, admiration and cookies from the local residents, go to the fire academy instead.I was told all of this in my police academy way back in the "olden days" of the 1980s, so I shake my head now at all of the officers who seem to get into police work with seriously unrealistic expectations about the job. You cannot be successful at much in life if you expect your satisfaction to come from external sources and need admiration or ego strokes to survive. If you cannot strive to learn and grow in professionalism while getting satisfaction in a job well done and maybe if you're lucky an occasional pat on the back from inside your field (other officers and not necessarily your supervisors), then police work may not be for you.I was a woman of color in police work from my sophomore year of college for about a decade in uniform then after law school inside Texas DPS as an attorney. I worked in Communications first, and if you want a job catching more $#!+ in an atmosphere with loads of pressure from the public and the officers to produce perfection when you have little control, try some time in there. It will make you appreciate patrol which in spite of the shifting public opinions and other nonsense can be a great career for officers who have the right personality, internal fortitude and who know how to find their joy from something in life that is not their job.Officers who don't report their location before jumping out of the car and into messes of their own making will often blame the dispatcher. I had a guy who did it (often) who once started arguing with me on the radio about whether he had waited for the response on some crazy check he wanted me to do on the FBI database before he went back into service. As usual, he was breathing his own farts due to where his head was firmly planted, but he not only berated me on the air for the whole city to hear as I kept telling him to get off the air and to call in, but he physically came into the department that weekend morning to stand over me and scream some more after demanding to be let inside my locked work area. There's nothing quite like having a crazy jerk who is bigger, armed and not quite rational standing over you in a small room with no witnesses as he blames you for one of his errors. I had to stand up to him as a 19 year old noncommissioned officer.I couldn't get the supervisor to respond until after the incident. When I played back the data multiple times showing the jerk that he had screwed up royally and not waited for the response before going back in service, there was zero apology for screaming in my face or the mess on the radio. First he accused me of editing the recording (magically without even knowing that he was coming and in violation of federal law). When I pointed out the incredible stupidity of his actions and statements, he walked away silently then attempted to lie and ruin me when the supervisor finally called in and I reported the idiot. This was only one of numerous incidents that this guy had before he prudently decided that police work wasn't for him. He left to work at a cardboard box factory owned by his wife's family where his screw ups were less likely to cost his life or someone else's.In my basic police academy on an almost daily basis we were reminded of all of the reasons why we needed to get over things and deal professionally regardless of idiot coworkers, the public, the press and the frequently less than stellar work conditions or, they bluntly told us perhaps we should look into driving an ice cream truck where everyone would be happy to see us and we could be surrounded by upbeat music and smiling faces daily. I found this to be true as I dealt with abusive male supervisors (who locked me inside small rooms at two different agencies to scream, punch things and stand between me and the locked door because their egos were bruised by my work making them look like the lazy, barely competent officers that they were).Being vindicated by their supervisors right up to the chief level shortly after the fact doesn't make the situation any better while you are sitting there wondering if this irrational behavior is going to escalate from more than an hour of verbal abuse and things being thrown or punched to violence directly against you. However, I discovered an inner fortitude while catching hell from the public as well as a few truly heinous officers. It has served me well in my subsequent endeavors and opened up many outstanding opportunities as well.To be truly successful and professional as an officer, you cannot be excessively afraid of the people in the community or look down on them. (See the mess in Ferguson, Missouri for an example of an officer who wasn't a part of the community, didn't respect the people he served, instigated a mess, then for ego or lack of training or something else refused to back out of the situation at least until he had assistance. He escalated to using deadly force over essentially nothing of importance. He should have driven the ice cream truck.)You need to have enough internal fortitude and commonsense to do the right thing even when a coworker does not. Consider the Tamir Rice shooting in Ohio where the 12 year old was shot within seconds of arrival by two officers who drove right up to a kid they later said they thought was an adult with a real gun. Piss poor judgment. Poor training. No commonsense.One guy had basically been told to drive the ice cream truck by a better agency that washed him out for his unsuitability during field training. This was two officers together who didn't use the most basic commonsense which is that you don't drive within a couple of yards of anyone who you believe might be waving around a real gun. There was a string of errors including the lack of spine of the more experienced officer to insist on a proper response instead of escalating into deadly force within seconds along with the idiot who had already proven he wasn't fit for the job. The result was a dead kid with a toy gun and another black eye to law enforcement that apologists try to explain away instead of examining, acknowledging the mistakes and looking for ways to improve training and tactics in the manner done by other professionals like our military fighter pilots and doctors.If you understand up front that TV reporters are humans just like everyone else and some will skew a story or misquote or do something outright disgusting to get a flashy story, then you can do your job properly and professionally and stop worrying about them. They will not impact most of your days on the job or most of your career. The greater impact on your life will be the possibility of terrible shift assignments for years that will cause you to lose lots of time with friends and family. The job causes lots of divorces, depression, substance abuse and poor health. Stress and getting out of shape from too much fast food and sitting is far more likely to kill most officers before their time than a weapon unless they happen to work in an area with a lot of violent crime. It's still true that most officers can get through their entire career without firing a gun outside of training, so bad food, lack of exercise and stress, stress, stress are much more likely to mess up your life if you allow it.You already know the warm fuzzy reasons why you're thinking about this career which is why I have highlighted more negatives. I loved police work enough to go back into an agency as an attorney for less money than I could have made elsewhere. I respect most of my former colleagues as only a handful were defective humans and likely would have been that way no matter their choice of career. I believe that police work is a noble calling like ministry and healthcare and teaching and that it requires more from us than an ordinary "job."I strongly believe that substandard officers dragging everyone down in the US is not going to stop unless or until those who know better require that everyone do better. It means real self-policing within law enforcement and that starts with better screening in the hiring process. Currently, depending on the agency we are expecting candidates like you to basically self-evaluate and to get out of the training or the job if they find that they are not well-suited, and that sort of works, until it doesn't and we have another bad apple pop into the public eye.The fact that you are doing the thoughtful evaluation of this major life choice before you jump into it is great. It may mean that you have enough introspection to think your way through an excellent career path in police work. Our academy emphasized strongly that our best and first tool on the job should be our brains! If you get all of the training you can and think through scenarios in advance to reason through possible outcomes, then you will likely never find yourself on the news in some career-ending mess. You will hit the occasional bump as there have been jerks, idiots and criminals since Cain killed Abel, but by being as prepared and professional as possible it's still possible to do well and to have a good life.I had to contend with blatant racism and sexism inside my agencies as well as from the public on top of everything else that white male officers had to manage, and I did well and enjoyed the work probably 80 percent of the time. Compared to my years being an attorney and now a judge that is pretty danged good. If you don't have to manage extra layers of crap on top of doing the job, then count yourself lucky/blessed. I had some horrible experiences like managing a multi-fatality highway collision as first on scene while still in the academy, and I had some amazing experiences like being loaned to the US Secret Service to guard the president of my country up close and personal. It was absolutely worth it both bad and good times, and I would do it all again!Only you can decide if this is your correct path, and remember to plan ahead for the day when you cannot do it or want to do something else. Burn out is a real thing in any career field. I knew that chasing 20 year olds when I hit 40 would likely suck rocks, so I went back to school for a law degree. I was right because police work wrecked my knees by my early forties, and I have already had one of the joints replaced with the second one not far off. I'm also looking to the future now in case I decide that what I thought would be my last position until full retirement (judge) should only be my next to last position. I encourage you to stay well-rounded and keep other interests active even if you love police work. I worked with multiple officers who went on to do other things like become doctors, lawyers, owner of a computer consulting business, authors and more.