"To be a cop..."
Law Enforcement is one of the most unique professions in the world. Officers, deputies and special agents from across the country are given badges and guns and the power to take a person's liberty away. The repsonsibility of being a peace officer is unsurpassed in any other profession besides perhaps education (educators), judges, or the presidency. Officers put their lives on the line every time they step out of the station but are often greeted by the citizens they police with an extended hand that fails to display all five fingers. While working in South-Central Los Angeles, I personally have been shot at, spit on, punched, kicked, almost run over, cussed at, and falsely accused of everything from civil rights violations to grand theft just to receive my salary. In the words of my friend Keith...
Police work is often highly respected and highly disrespected. We live our lives working in a glass fishbowl that is closely watched my the public and members of the media buy rarely offered all the food that we need to survive. Yet, I still love the job. It gets in your blood. Looking down on a gang member who has been shot in the head, or the bloody violence of a drug deal gone bad quickly becomes surreal and does not shock the senses. You learn not to get personally involved in order keep your sanity. What does bother me is driving my patrol car slowly down the street on a bright summer day and waving to a five year old who kindly returns the gesture by sticking his right thumb into the air, extending his index finger of the same hand in my direction, closing his left eye to aim as the make believe gun points in my direction. The silent yet exaggerated words sound out to the tone of "pow....pow....pow" as I am smoothly followed in his sites and emotionally struck by the gesture and the bullets. Dad, who is an O.G. and on parole for robbery, sits on the porch and smiles knowing that he has hurt me and that his boy is following his lead. I try to laugh at the irony of thinking how I will one day possible put my ass on the line for this father who will call and trust that I will capture the suspects who have killed his son.
The following was given to me by a very close friend who understands law enforcement very well. I hung the poem on the door of my police locker and I recite its words twice a shift. Once when I put on the badge and gun, and once before I go home to my lovely wife. I have since passed on the tradition to two of my close friends in the profession, and I hope that the eloquent prose will spark you to do the same.
A PRAYER FOR A COP Whomever goes to fight monsters should take care
not to become a monster himself. And when you stare too long
into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you.
Frederick Nietzsche
Although armed with the best of intentions,
if you allow yourself to become twisted and hard,
like the street trash you come into contact with
all the day long
(thereby ending up a changed husband to you wife,
father to your children, and friend to me),
I will have such anger as the world
has never seen.
The streets are the way they are:
It is not your fault and not your burden.
Leave the insanity in jail at the end of the day.
Come home to the love of your family and friends
with a happy heart and a smile on your face;
it is perilous to look too closely into the darkness,
whatever you motivations may be,
and there is yet much good
in the world,
my friend.
