After reflecting on my years as a Police Officer, here are ten things that I learned;
1. Life can change in an instant - for good and for bad.
2. Decisions you make as a cop can change lives - for better and for worse.
3. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people - ultimately bad people have more bad things happen to them than good things because of the way they behave.
4. It is all about the numbers - not how many arrests you make or how many people driving drunk that you catch. It's about how many lives you save or change for the better.
5. Cops have to live for the rest of their lives with decisions that they made in a split second.
6. Cops make mistakes and get it wrong - good cops admit it and work to make it right.
7. Those who work for police do so because they genuinely want to help others, not because they want a better life for themselves.
8. Rarely do you see good things when policing and because of that you become cynical which makes you seem hard and uncaring.
9. Police officers have emotions – they feel, they fear, and they cry. They just don’t show it on the outside.
10. Policing damages good people - when they leave the service, every police officer has issues that they must rationalise before moving forward. Some may never rationalise them.
Police officers are only human with human frailties. None set out to offend or to do harm, the opposite is always the case. And they do what they do for you.