Making the Transition from Civilian to Cop

The transition from civilian to cop doesn’t happen overnight. It starts in the academy and picks up steam during field training. When you’ve seen enough dead bodies, worked a few holidays and plenty of graveyard shifts, used the phonetic alphabet and military time in regular conversation, developed a deep-seeded mistrust of “admin”, memorized two dozen acronyms, heard “my taxes pay your salary” a handful of times and had enough little kids look at you like you’re a superhero, you’re close. One day you’ll realize you’re better at backing into parking spots than you are at pulling in forward like a normal person and that is when the transition will be complete. 

My first day at the department was May 26, 2006. I was 35, a solid ten years older than most cadets. The academy would start in four weeks. Until then, I spent days familiarizing myself with agency software and policies, studying city maps and memorizing every street, road and avenue, doing data entry, running errands and listening to sergeants who were long past their heyday tell heroic stories about the good old days. But the best part was doing ride-alongs with patrol officers. It was exciting to be in a cop car, running call to call and making traffic stops. I wasn’t one of them yet but they treated me like I was and honestly, it was a pretty damn good feeling. Up to this point in my life, I’d never seen or smelled a dead human being. In that first week, there were three. Elderly folks, who passed away peacefully in their homes. Nothing nefarious, no criminal element, just the natural cycle of life. I saw surviving family members in every stage of grief and witnessed for the first time how a big, burly cop can switch from an imposing authority figure to a soft-spoken giant whose gentle demeanor calmed and comforted everyone in the room. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.

I started the academy in the last week of June. My class, 262, was supposed to be the last class at the old academy. Class 263 was scheduled to be the first class at the new, modern campus but to make that happen the instructors had to condense our sixteen weeks of training into thirteen weeks. It was jam packed, days were long and every day started with PT. I enjoyed the academy experience. We arrested each other over and over, drove cars on skid pads, shot thousands of rounds, ran dozens of scenarios and took so many tests. I lived on campus during the week and drove home for the weekend.  Several energetic cadets in their early 20’s randomly interrupted my sleep by tossing empty energy drink cans into my dorm room in the middle of the night, yelling “flash bang!” and then making entry as if they were Delta Force. I graduated on September 22nd and within a few days I was riding shotgun in a patrol car with my Field Training Officer (FTO), a gruff old cop with a huge heart and veins filled not with blood, but coffee. 

During my 10-week field training I experienced several firsts with him. First foot pursuit. First arrest. First fight, traffic stop, graveyard shift, domestic violence call and runaway. I was lucky to have him as my FTO. He was thorough and fair and had a great sense of humor. A rear-facing stuffed pink pig lived between the passenger seat headrest and protective cage that separated the rear seat from the front. Arrestees are always placed in the rear passenger seat, where they would be face to face with the little pink pig mocking them for making bad decisions. He bragged about never falling asleep during a graveyard. He nodded off one evening while I was driving. I seized the opportunity and quickly swerved to the left causing his head to bounce off the passenger side window, abruptly waking him from his slumber. To repay my kindness he spent the remainder of the shift ripping horrendous old man farts that made my eyes water. 

My first code run (lights and siren) took us across town to the movie theater where a patron was found unconscious in the restroom. I did everything perfect until we arrived, at which point I flipped off the siren and proceeded to drive through the parking lot, emergency lights flashing, looking for an open parking space. He looked at me and yelled “What the fuck are you doing?” I told him I was looking for a place to park. “You’re in a cop car, god dammit! Park wherever the fuck you want!” Transition from civilian to cop; incomplete. A few days later we ran code from the west side of town to the east. There are several roads I could have taken. I chose the one with the lowest speed limit, the most stop signs and heaviest traffic. After we wrapped up the call he looked at me and calmly said, “Why in the fuck did you take the slowest road in the entire city to get to this call?” I never made that mistake again.

The first time a suspect decided he’d rather fight than go to jail happened while I was in field training. My FTO and I responded to a call at a local bar at which a male subject was locked out of the bar when he became drunk and disorderly. He didn’t appreciate that and began trying to kick in the door. We rolled in from separate directions but arrived almost simultaneously. The subject, a large Hispanic man, was actively kicking the door. My FTO and I exited our vehicles and approached him, giving him commands to get on the ground, but instead he continued kicking the door. We immediately went hands on with him. We each instinctively took control of an arm, me on the left and my FTO on the right. I leg swept him, which sent all three of us to the ground. Luckily, we both landed on top of the suspect and after a bit of “persuasion”, we got him cuffed. I transported him to the jail, completed my booking paperwork and went 10-8. A short time later the jailer called me with some interesting news. While undressing to change into his jail-issued orange and white striped jumpsuit, the jailer noticed that my arrestee was wearing Underoos. 

In the final phase of field training I was in my own patrol vehicle and my FTO shadowed me, showing up at my calls and only interjecting if he caught me really screwing something up or asking him for help. As a new cop I was so eager to do police work that I didn’t want to to take a break to use the restroom or eat. “Just one more traffic stop and then I’ll go pee.” I was dispatched to a welfare check at a small rental cabin behind a house. The landlord hadn’t seen his elderly tenant for a couple of days and he wasn’t answering his phone. I arrived, walked up the stairs and knocked on the door. No answer. I peeked through a window and saw a pair of naked legs poking out from behind a couch. With exigent circumstances I entered the cabin through the unlocked front door and found the male subject deceased in a dirty t-shirt and underwear. Another dead body notch in my duty belt. These types of calls tie you up for at least two hours, sometimes longer. I made the requisite notifications up the chain of command and waited for the detective to respond. At this point the urge to pee was overwhelming. When the detective arrived I briefed him on the situation and asked if I could leave to use the restroom. He laughed and pointed to the tiny, filthy bathroom down the hall. A short time later the Chief arrived and asked me to return to the station to pick up the dead body kit. Yes, that is a thing. The dead body kit contains Tyvek suits, masks, body bags and other supplies you may need on these calls. I returned to the PD but couldn’t find the kit. I keyed up my mic and said, “2T1, 2T13. I can’t find the dead body kit. Where is it?” Seconds later my cell phone rang. It was the Chief. I answered and he said, “Bret, don’t ever do that again. Don’t use your radio to ask where the dead body kit is. Use your phone.” There is an entire segment of the population who get their kicks listening to police radio traffic (we called it scanner land) and I’d just informed them all that we had a dead body. Oops.

A few years into my career I became an FTO. It was interesting and rewarding to have a direct impact on future cops. I remember one trainee on a DUI stop preparing to do Standardized Field Sobriety Tests (SFST’s) and he placed himself and the driver in between the cop car and suspect vehicle. I pulled him aside and advised him to never do business between the cars. Other drivers are attracted to flashing red and blue lights and in the event one of them rear ended the cop car, it would push it forward into the suspect vehicle, and anyone standing between them would likely be seriously injured. Sometimes, the job of an FTO is to weed out trainees who just shouldn’t be cops. We had a trainee who had been through two other FTO’s, both of whom recommended terminating him, but the Chief wasn’t ready to do that. He was a nice kid with former military service, physically fit and smart, but he had absolutely no people or communication skills and he would lock up at strange times. One night we responded to a barking dog. We arrived and could hear the dog barking from the backyard. We walked up the stairs, knocked on the front door, and the homeowner answered. I waited for my trainee to explain why we were there but he was in vapor lock. I looked at him, and the homeowner looked at him for an awkwardly long time and then looked at me. At that point I realized that I needed to step in and quickly explained why were there. The homeowner apologized and stated he’d bring his dog inside. My trainee and I walked back to our car and as soon as the doors shut, I looked at him and said, “What the fuck just happened?” He said, “I don’t know, I’m sorry, I just froze.” If a person freezes up with a totally compliant homeowner on a barking dog call, they are a danger and a liability. It is likely they will react the same way – or worse – in a high stress, critical incident during which lives are at stake. I reported this to my lieutenant the following day and the trainee was finally terminated. I felt bad for the kid. He really wanted to be a cop but the reality is, not everyone is cut out for the job.