Again I want to say I appreciate the long posts - and I'm sure there are a thousand readers who do so while following the thread, but since you are not posting "controversial" comments there are no replies.
I feel what you write underlines what a hard job being a police officer is, and why training is of utmost importance - not just being able to follow procedure but also the psychological aspect of controlling your response to situation, maintaining both physical and mental control of the surroundings and emotional state of participants etc - it's a pity what we hear is budget cuts that impact just this part of policing, which leads to members on the force being ill-equipped to face these tough situations.
It is hard. When I get dressed for work, I had to mentally prepare myself for what could be my last night on Earth. It's hard.
I didn't have a mental evaluation when hired, I wasn't even polygraphed. I was barely interviewed. I was a security guard before, and the Police Chief would walk in every few day to meet with the director of the place I was working and always troll me, "when do you wanna become a real cop?" My contract was up, and I went and talked with their Capt. Filled out the application, hired a couple days later. I had maybe a five minute talk prior to being hired.
Our Academy, in South Carolina, puts you through a lot of stressful life-like situations and they can weed out a decent amount of mentally unstable officers. A good bit of departments require mental evals, poly's, etc., before hiring. Some smaller cities, like where I worked, didn't.
Back to the mentality here.. it's really hard. Again, this could be my last night here. This could be it. I don't want to go through each shift thinking I might die. You have to put that aside. If you can't, in my opinion, things like this incident can happen.
Some people are wired differently. I don't value my life as much as I value another life. I'll finish this off and then I'll try and keep the stories out and weigh in on the current events. The night of my last shift, I prepared myself just as I always have. I put to others well being in place of my own. The first was a drunk guy, who I could just have taken to jail. I suspected there was more to it than alcohol, so I had him taken to the hospital. That event freed me up to go to the next event. Had I taken him to jail, I wouldn't have been available for this next event. I went to deal with a group of teens that left home without permission, after midnight. I met them on the side of the road. I've been dealing with one of them for a couple years. Rough family life for this kid. The blink of an eye is fast. That moment where I had a choice on the side of the road, my life or his, I saved his. I wasn't going to live through what happened when the oncoming car hit me. My family was notified to get to the hospital asap to see me before I was gone. I went into a coma and it was just a matter of time before it was the end for me. A surgeon was able to save my brain stem from snapping and the cut my skull open to let the swelling be relieved and drain the blood.
Miraculously, and obviously lol, I lived. How, who knows. Personally, I thank God for all the things that went right to be able to get me to a surgeon that was experienced in what happened to me.
That'll be my last shift. With that, I'm proud at what I did in my profession for other people. Whether I locked someone up, my case work led someone to prison, rescued dozens of children from drug riddled homes, I never took another life. I did whatever I could, even when the odds were against whether I'd live or not were against me, I made a choice.
I think your posts and experiences are necessary for a thread like this. Thanks for the stories.
Thank you.
Please do. It's always great to read post like yours coming from people on the other side of the fence.
Thank you.
Very welcome.
I'm here to echo everyone else. Continue if you want. Your posts have been insightful.
Thank you.
Nah, this is really helpful and sheds light on what I hope is how things ought to be done. Echoing everyone else here.
Back to this. The shooting here is disgusting. I'm really having a hard time watching the video.
As far as the shooting goes.. it's hard for me to separate myself from my own feelings when it comes to this. I trust the system. If they were able to convince the jury that he was reasonable in fear for his life, then it's on our legislators to work on the laws and elements of these things.
Reaching for a gun that hasn't been seen doesn't meet the requirements for me personally. I'd have to see the gun, see that he is in fact reaching for it. Things can happen so fast.
It's hard to wrap around this one. I understand the logic behind it, but it's still hard to understand how it meets the idea that an officer would reasonably fear for his life with a hint of a real threat.
That is a very reasonable sequence of actions. Weren't all cops instructed to do so? Why he was so easily freakout?
This whole situation is beyond believe.
I don't know how they are trained. It's easy to second guess things from a couch without any real consequences for our actions while we watch it unfold. I honestly don't think I would have shot into that car with a child in there. I would probably have retreated once I saw the gun, to the back of the car and weighed my options at that point.
