The day-to-day life of a law enforcement officer

The day-to-day life of a law enforcement officer may not be the life you imagine. After all a job is a job and everyone does the best they can at their job in order to get ahead and make money in order to pay the bills.

Most folks watch TV and movies and think they know all there is to know about police officers and detectives, but let me tell you, what you see on TV and in the movies is not the life I have lived or the life those I know have lived.

Started out as a police cadet in the 1970s, studied criminology, became a civilian police officer and then over the years changed from civilian law enforcement and moved to the military where I became a military policeman, military police investigator, military customs investigator, military drug investigator, military fraud investigator, semi-undercover agent, special agent criminal investigator.

The last half of my forty years of police work performed duties as a criminal intelligence analyst writing policy for Department of Defense criminal investigators and again dealing with Special Agent duties involved in the occasional criminal inquiry, evaluation, and internal affairs review, along with war crimes, life in the civilian police world and the military police world is not always lived the way you might think.

Graduated from high school with no idea what I wanted to do in life and had never given much thought to what kind of life I would have after high school. During my years in school my grades were not great, but I compensated by playing football and running track, not great but good. Once out of high school headed off to college once again to be involved in sports, but once in college realized college sports were dangerous and hazardous to one’s health so traded in my sports scholarship for a military scholarship.

Studying about life in the military was interesting but once again realized military life was more dangerous than sports, one could really get killed in the military, after all the Viet Nam war was still being fought.

Changed my work ideas once again and chose a police grant where the police paid for my college as long as I worked for the police. Little did I realize police work was more dangerous than college sports or the military!

Studied during the day and worked as a police cadet at night, then one fine day was drafted into the Army and spent time learning how to be a military policeman, then off to Viet Nam for fun in a foreign land, and then back to my home town and the National Guard and my home town police department.

I attended and graduated from the police academy and started full fledge police work in my home town.

Who knew my home town was more dangerous than Viet Nam? Worked for a year as a police patrol officer and had many close calls and realized military life as a police officer was safer than life as a civilian police officer!

Was torn between civilian or military police, then the path was chosen for me, my guard unit was called to active duty resulting in my going back in the military and back to being a military policeman.

The rest is history; one of these days will type more about the life and times of me as a civilian police officer and as a military policeman.