Originally Posted by
nyeti
There are several tidbits of gold in this post. I was the first person ever recruited off a college campus at my agency. I am sure that experiment shocked the department in the "that isn't what we expected", as I was also the first person to say in the interview "I want to put predatory animals in cages" instead of the normal "I want to help people". When I sat in the High School auditorium full of people trying to get 6 jobs, a ton were military guys. They got slain on things like the written exam and many were I'll prepared for how to do an interview. Things have gotten FAR worse in the last 25 years as to what LE agencies want. Reality-current combat vets are FAR more prepared for LE work than current college students-period. But, being this is real life in which common sense in governemnt run agencies doesn't make a bit of sense, that doesn't matter. It is not that some idiot is sitting in an office going "I don't want warriors as cops", the problem is that some idiot in an office has a set of criteria they want for cops that doesn't include being in the military and being a warrior is not on the list. Do guys who are James Yeager's fantasy warriors have a single skillset that is good to have....yes. Is being a "warrior" the only thing that makes a good cop....not even close. If you cannot write a police report that is acceptable to a district attorney with 8 years of college behind them, and a Judge with likely more, then your warrior skills do not matter. Unlike my era, the detectives who are reviewing your reports are also college graduates (when I started I had a closed door counseling session with our watch commander because he literally could not read my reports without a dictionary). How does being a warrior help with figuring out complex legal codes and legal theory? If you cannot decipher a Supreme Court decision, you will have problems with building solid cases and in legally applying all your bad ass warriorness. The people who are hiring police these days do not care about your ability shoot, fight,drive, and deal with bad people. They should, but they don't. The problem is not with warriors, the problem is that the military folks have been busy doing real life crap that interferes with checking the boxes that some desk jockey thinks is important in cop work. Society needs to do a better job of preparing soldiers to enter the policing field, just like any other job field. Like many jobs,mthe hiring criteria does not neccesarily equate to what actually makes a successful person in that field. Keep in mind that in cop world, 10% of the cops out there are doing 90% of the "warrior stuff". In a rural town of 600 people.....I would imagine that there was not a lot of warrior stuff being needed, which may have been James "I am a warrior" (except when people start shooting where he is a leave my teammates in the car without a driver) problem where he was "a cop".
Let's take DUI as an example. My first several years on the job I generally made at least one DUI arrest every night. Fact...DUI's kill and maim a lot of nice people, and they are a big threat to regular people. I wrote exceptional very detailed DUI reports. I have never testified in court on my own DUI arrests because every single one had a guilty plea before going to a trial because I wrote airtight cases. Trust me, that is uncommon because even I am appaled at how sloppy many cops write these reports, and they get slain in court by attorney's who specialize in getting DUI's off. The paperwork and evidentiary requirements to do a DUI arrest has gone up 10x from the time when I started. Many of the cops I worked with when I started could not handle the requirements today that include having to get a warrant for forced evidence. Yeah, I learned from those old Vietnam vets who I started with how to effectively cuff a combative guy to a chair to get a forced blood out of them. Those same guys would have not had the skills to effectively handle the report requirements today. Want to save little kids from some of the sickest abuse imaginable? You better be able to properly get the paperwork and reporting in order to get them permanently removed from that environment in a system not designed to efficiently do that. Saving little kids by being able to fight through inefficient bureacracies is part of the whole "warrior" thing. Until the day arrives where people like me can simply walk a pediophile into the backyard and shoot them in the head to solve the problem, then the only other thing you can do to solve the problem is learn to do exceptional investigations as a patrol cop. What police agencies want are social workers who simply carry a gun. You want to go out and hunt humans to out violent offenders in cages....then you will need to disguise yourself as a social worker with a gun and be able to efficiently and professionally do that job to get the opportunity to hunt the ones where the social work doesn't work. You also have to be highly effective at being a secretary with a gun when society and the environment is not condusive to hunting.
Most people on these forums know me as the knuckle dragging enforcer. Yep, I was good at that. Most do not know that I was also heavily involved with the Tools for Tolerance program and worked at the Museum of Tolerence in their program for law enforcement. Most people do not know that the proudest award I ever got was a kindness to animals award from the ASPCA. Most people don't know that my police reports were so good that I had them coded for the DA's office that hey would prosecute all of my cases without reading them (I had a code for filing the case or dumping the case if it was a loser). Most people don't know that part of the reason I was effective in cleaning up problems was my ability to utilize lots of different legal codes other than the penal and vehicle code. Most people don't know that I have never been sued as cop, and had one formal citizen complaint my entire career.....which was very early and I learned from. Being a cop is complex and it is not for everybody. Eventually, those who are in the hiring cops business will figure out that a lot of our problems arise from hiring the wrong people, but I doubt it. In the meantime, don't become a cop if you cannot handle what being a cop actually is......and it has nothing to do with how good you shoot.