Living the good life or die trying!

People always want to know what it’s like being a cop.  This is an impossible question to answer.  It cannot be explained, only experienced.  But I am going to try and answer that question as best I can (which probably isn’t very good).

Being a cop is the best thing in the world.  There is nothing like it.  Its’ the hardest, most challenging, most difficult, most rewarding, most honorable work I’ve ever known.  It’s the most fun I’ve ever had, the most pain I’ve ever experienced, the most fear I’ve ever felt, the most everything.  From extreme boredom at 4am when everyone is asleep, to extreme adrenaline at pointing your gun at another human being and being prepared to shoot. 

I’m very proud of my chosen career.  It’s the most honorable thing I feel I can do in this society.  After 911, I considered joining the Armed Services to defend my country.  Then my friends and family reminded me that I am needed here.  I defend our country from inside.  Someone needs to keep the peace here at home, and that is what I try and do.

But not everyone can do this job.  Cops are a very strange breed of individuals indeed, unlike any I’ve ever known.  We care very deeply about what we do, however will not show it.  We make crude jokes at gruesome homicide or suicide scenes, and those on the outside may think we are sick.  But it’s not because we don’t care.  It’s how we cope.  It’s the only way we know how to go on.  It’s how we keep going to bring justice to the victims.  I will not cry at work.  But I can tell you there are many, many times I got home and cry my heart out.  We all do.  Then we get up and start all over again.

Being a cop does change you, for better and for worse.  We see the parts of society that people should not have to see.  We see the realities of the evil that exists in the world.  And yes, to quote a movie, “I see dead people.”  And that does change you.  Each one stays with you, frozen in your mind forever.  And unfortunately, reappears when you least expect it.  Granted, after time, the images fade, but they are always with you.  Always a part of you, forever. 

And my first was one of the worst.  A child.  A 10 year old boy who had drowned in his bathtub.  Talk about surreal.  There I am, my partner and I pulling the naked body of this young boy out of the bathtub onto the floor to begin CPR.  And in the background, all we could hear were the chaotic screaming of his mother and two sisters.  And through all this, I am the one who has to be calm.  The one who has to respond correctly.  The one who has to be the hero.  Who is expected to make everything all right.  Only I couldn’t.  He was gone, and nothing I could do would bring him back.

Once the paramedics took him away, I then had to be strong and speak with the mother.  Get the facts.  Just the facts, ma’am.  When did he last eat, what medications was he on, who saw him last.  These are such hard questions to have to ask a woman who has just lost her 10-year-old boy.  But that’s my job.  That’s what I do.  Then I go home, curl up in a ball, and cry my heart out while the image of him floats above me, haunting me.   

There have been many “hauntings” since, the faces and circumstances all different.  The more you see the easier it gets, but it does still mess with your head.  Changing you a little more each time.  As proud as I am of my profession, I often shy away from telling people what I do.  Everyone has a “bad cop story” they want to tell me, or the time they got the ticket for no reason.   And all I can think is, “I deal with the scum of society and take care of the unpleasant parts of life so you don’t have to.”  But then I just smile and nod and think, “If you only knew.”