Officer Alex ponders a strange question: “Is there life after police work?”
A few weeks ago I was at a restaurant that had long wooden tables with tall chairs. It almost exclusively served alcohol, but wasn’t a bar of course. Co-workers new and old were there in what is an exceptionally rare occurrence for me: I was “out.”
The occasion? I have no idea, but it was on a weekday and in a place no one heard of, so I gave it a greenlight as one of my bi-annual social engagements. (I have a reputation as a social butterfly to uphold after all.)
We were covering all the basics (child support payments, injury status, lawsuits, who had been most successfully back-stabbed) when I breached protocol and brought up a conversation out of our comfort zone.
Allow me to clarify something: When cops get together, it’s for “comfort.” Period. Non-cops only want to talk about what amounts to being the separation between you and them…and G.D. “ticket stories” we’d rather choke on broken glass than hear you recount.
Together, however, we can relax in groups, and anything outside of a like-minded topic is rare.
To talk about something that makes us UN-comfortable violates the entire point of subtle socialization, but my entire career has been a bucket of ice water splashes, so why stop now?
I’d run into a former academy mate at a tire shop and in the few extra minutes we had to chat while we were waiting on someone to install tires, he talked about why he quit. The reason was nothing earth shattering mind you, but it occurred to me that you usually you only hear about why someone wanted to become one (“...ever since I was a kid, blah blah...”), not why someone didn’t want to be one anymore.
There was interesting defensiveness that went around the table because most couldn’t imagine another life, and someone just giving it up in a strange way invalidated the choice cops made…often at great emotional (and financial) expense. Hep-C and TB exposures, toxic mental health, alienation from friends, loved ones, and eventually…“everybody”?
That’s the Job to us. For someone to step off the ledge and go back to the real world though? Mouths close and eyes wander downward or over my shoulder.
This guy was actually a superlative in the academy (firearms) and by all accounts a solid copper. Handled his calls, cared about victims, didn’t half-ass reports so that some other badge had to finish what he wouldn’t, and if it was just you and him in an angry crowd you know you’d be fine.
One day however…he got to that 4-to-7-year mark and felt the novelty of the job, the satisfaction no longer outweighed the sacrifices.
He saw the veterans—even those with more than one promotion under their belt—working a parking lot side job night after night. The divorces, the injuries, and on occasion how it could be randomly taken away from them by a misstep (negligent OR out of their control). He did the math, and punched out.
“But how about now?” I’d asked. “You’d be knocking on the pension door in just another few years. Won’t you be kicking your own ass?” He barely paused and said “The money I’ve made since then, and the fact I’ll still have a working body to stay employed after that point? It’s a wash. No. I got my degree, I stopped working in the rain and I’m still married to my wife.
I had a lot of fun and did my part, but I knew I couldn’t make a life of it. I’m glad you did, no disrespect! I thank God every day there are guys like you to take care of my family and me when I press a button, but I don’t regret it.”
I get it. I’ve never seen it as anything but a career, and life sentence. But he saw it like a military tour (except stateside and any combat is in your hometown, not a place across the world you can leave forever). I have to wonder…where would I be now if I’d had that as a mental health option years back?
“Working guys over in the Greyhound bus station for cash, that’s where,” my buddy said, and the sullen silence was broken by much needed laughter.
We didn’t revisit the topic, but the drive home was longer than usual.
…but these days, they all were.
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.