PAX Centurion - November / December 2015

www.bppa.org PAX CENTURION • November/December 2015 • Page 15 So…who wants to be a cop? Applicants, interest drop as police work becomes increasingly second-guessed and criticized By James W. Carnell, Pax Editor I T USED TO BE THAT POLICEWORK was inter-genera- tional. If Grandpa was a cop, then Dad became a cop, and a son or a daughter soon followed. Sadly, no more… It goes without saying that police work has become the most sec- ond-guessed and criticized profession in the United States. Armchair quarterbacks who watch every episode of “CSI” or “Law and Order” can quickly tell the street officers what test they should be performing to solve a crime or how they should be approaching a call. With 20/20 hindsight, experts in the media with benefit of video and cellphone cameras can instantly opine on what the officer should or should not have done. Sitting comfortably behind their computers, police critics know how “those stupid cops” botched an investigation or over-reacted with excessive force, because…well… they saw it on TV. (“Why couldn’t the stupid cop have just shot the gun out of the guy’s hand???”) Shortly, the BPD will be losing several (7? 8? 9?) of our younger officers to a new Boston Fire Department recruit class. Even Com- missioner Evans has acknowledged that the job of a firefighter is certainly, in this day and age, far more attractive than being a police officer. Why would anyone want the stress, the pressure, the scrutiny, the criticism and second-guess- ing that comes with being a police officer in 2015? WHY? It used to be that the job was performed with a certain level of satisfaction and pride at removing bad guys from the street. Sadly, that is no longer true. More often than not, it is the actions of the police officer that are criticized and second- guessed, and not the deeds of the criminal. The criminal is afforded a perverse sense of respectability, sympathy and compassion by the public. Perhaps the poor criminal (who knocked down an elderly woman and grabbed her handbag) was mistreated as a child, misunderstood by society, or was not provided with a job and an EBT card by an uncaring society. Why did the evil police officer pick out the suspect simply because he matched the description?Was the officer profiling the suspect because of his race or ethnicity? That certainly seems to be a far more serious offense, in the minds of today’s liberals, than the actual offense of robbery, drug dealing, assault, larceny, etc. The cellphone camera has made every idiot in the world who watched an episode of “COPS” an expert in how police should deal with criminal suspects. The good guys (us) are now perceived as bad, and the bad guy’s conduct is either justified or rationalized as a response to police provocation. Such is the sick and demented world we live in. Almost every cop I know has either advised their children to forget about considering police work as a profession or strongly encouraged their young spalpeens to look elsewhere for work that might result in satisfaction and enjoyment, as opposed to heartache (and heart attacks), criticism and lawsuits. The threat of injury or death from a gunshot, as dramatized by many a police show, is almost an after- thought. It is far more onerous to have to worry about your career being taken away or one’s home and property being subjected to legal proceedings, liens and threats of forfeiture by sniveling, conniving lawyers and their equally detestable clients, all for “doing your job.” The numbers of qualified applicants to police departments keep dropping, and recruiters across the country report they simply can’t locate enough interested candidates who want to commit themselves to police work. More and more younger officers desire to remove themselves from street-level police work as quickly as they can, and many older officers have simply resigned themselves to the political machinations of a job where they can’t win anymore … so why bother? Pro-active police work, in this day and age, is the mark of the insane; if you want end to end up on TV like the cops in Baltimore or Ferguson, Missouri and have your life ruined, go right ahead and try to “make a difference.”You’ll be thrown under the bus in a NewYork minute by backstabbing poli- ticians, administrators, so-called “clerics” and other assorted phonies. The only ones who will be there with you will be your Union, if you’re lucky enough to have one. Once upon a time, in a land far away, some young rookies entered District Two in Roxbury and were counseled by veteran officers who told them how they viewed the job “back then,” and how they thought things were going currently. The younger officers had been warned in theAcademy about these old “burnouts,” and to stay away from them and never listen to their sage advice. The young rookies are now the aging veterans, and long ago forgot theAcademy’s lecture. Problem is, we’re now running out of young rookies to gullibly listen. Period. The numbers of qualified applicants to police departments keep dropping, and recruiters across the country report they simply can’t locate enough interested candidates who want to commit themselves to police work. More and more younger officers desire to remove themselves from street-level police work as quickly as they can, and many older officers have simply resigned themselves to the political machinations of a job where they can’t win anymore … so why bother?