No sun today, in our neck of the world, foggy all day.

It seems a lot colder than the thermometer says, it penetrates to our very bones - gotta be the humidity. 

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Officers, Continued

I was at the Academy for a class when the subject of female officers came up.

A deputy was telling me that they had a physical test that included pulling a 150 pound sack off of a road.  It was to simulate having to drag a deer that was road kill off the road.

He started laughing and said they had this one female applicant that couldn’t pull it off; so she pointed to one of the other applicants, and said, help me move this bag off the road.

I said, the object was to get the ‘deer’ off the road, right?

He said yes.

I then said, she did it didn’t she?

He just looked at me.

But, it was a good lesson for me.  There was a time when they used to hire the biggest badest man they could find to walk the beats, because they needed to be able to handle arrested people who wanted to resist, all by themselves.

The requirements for police matched that requirement, they had to be tall, many at least 5’ 10” and others at least 6 feet.

But by the time I was hired, those requirements were being to find to exclusionary.  They excluded women and some nationalities that were on the average shorter than those requirements.

Amy was our first female officer.  I was assigned as her Training Officer.  We were working Graveyard.

We had some unusual contacts while I was working with her.  We made an arrest of a man who was coming along fine, until he realized one of us was a female.

It seemed he was embarrassed as it challenged his ‘manhood.’  Then the fight was on, he didn’t attack her, it was me he was after as if he had to prove himself to her.

It didn’t last long, we got him on the ground, cuffed him and then put him into the car.  The lodging in the jail was uneventful.

Back then there was still a respect for women, and that you didn’t hurt women.  So, even the ‘badest’ suspect showed that respect.

When a suspect would call her ‘ma’m’ or some other female term she would get upset and say, “I am a police officer, not just a woman.”

I have to admit, I didn’t fully understand her mindset and tried to talk her into not taking offense, and use it to deal with them.

There were very few women police officers in the state; she was one of the first.  Like a lot of females she HAD to prove herself capable of doing the job; she was a woman in a ‘man’s world’ and had to hold her own.

Unfortunately, they still do, no matter the job.  I have two daughters that work in dams, 50 years later, they are still having to prove themselves capable of doing the job.

The one muscle in the body that is most important to any police officer, is the tongue.  Most people will respond to an officer that can talk to them – not all of course and sometimes it just depends on the mood of the suspect, one day they would respond correctly, another time they would fight.

But, given the opportunity most suspects don’t want to fight.

Women have been dealing with men all their lives.  They have learned to talk to them, “manipulate” them into getting them to see things their way. 

We didn’t have special training for men, let alone women, on self-defense.  You were taught a couple of holds, but that was it.

Amy did okay, she was not the best female officer we ever had, but she was better than several of the men.  You could depend on her to do her job and be there as back up.

There was one time where there was a fight that she participated in and an arrest was made.  The suspect was a very large man. The other officer told me that he almost got beat up by the suspect, and Amy wasn’t much help.

He said she jumped in to try, he had no problem with that, it was just when she grabbed hold of his arm as he started to strike the officer the suspect lifted her off the ground.

He looked at her, put her back down and said, Oh, sorry ma’m and went to jail without further incident.

I asked him what he thought would have happened if it had been another male officer; he said the fight would have been on.

Then she did her job, I said.

Can’t remember if he fully agreed, but that was the only time I heard an officer complain that she couldn’t hold her own.

I can’t remember how many years she worked with us, it was at least three or four, or why she left.  But, she did fine while she worked for us.

The next female, Jane, that joined us rode with me the first day before she was assigned to a Training Officer.  It was day shift, and in the afternoon we had a fight call.

The initiating officer was dealing with the suspect when we arrived.  I got out of the car, told her to stand back, and went up to the other officer.  We had a bit of a wrestling match, but we took the suspect in the case to jail without further incident.

I got back to the patrol car and Jane asked a few questions.  She had noticed that I didn’t wear my hat when I got out, and the other officer wasn’t wearing his either; she wondered if that was because we thought there would be a fight.

I said, no, that might be a good idea, but there wasn’t a requirement that we wear the hat when contacting suspects, and I rarely wore it.

I did tell her that she would not be handling suspects the way I did.  I was almost 6 feet tall and heavy built.  She was barely 5 feet tall – but she was a woman and needed to use her mind and tongue to get the suspects to do what she wanted.

Again, that would be in most cases, there are times that more violent means may have to be taken in more serious cases.

She was one of the best officers we had, regardless of sex.  She eventually went to another department on the west side of the state where her boyfriend had gone before her. 

That department got a good officer.

We had a total of five females through the years while I worked there; they did fine.  Some better than others, but they proved their worth.

One of the things I saw, as I gained more experience, was that Rookies used the style of dealing with people that their Training Officer used for the first few months.  Eventually they would start developing their own style that worked for them.

As you work with other officers, you learn their style and habits.

I was reminded of that one day when I was interviewing a suspect I had gotten all the information I needed, but was still talking with him, when my backup got his cuffs out and handcuffed him.

We put the suspect in the car and I asked the other officer how he knew I was about to arrest the guy, he said you were rubbing your hands together; you always do that just before you arrest a person.

Talking about tells.  I would make a terrible gambler.

Police Officers are just like any other person in many ways.  Through the years we have learned that certain personalities and mindsets make for good officers.

The tests, the backgrounds that are done, the interviews and the probationary periods are all tests to see if this person is going to be a good fit for the department.

People can hide their true personality for only a short time, within a few months we could see their true personality, if different from what they have tried to portray.

It is an extremely stressful profession; it has one of the highest suicide rates of any profession.

We see people at their worst.  We see families torn up by violence, often following alcohol or other drugs.

We walk into situations where our lives are in danger, where weapons are available or even in the hands of suspects and in some cases we have to shoot to defend ourselves or others.

We investigate accidents involving young children, or the abuse and neglect of a child, often close in age to our own children.

We deliver horrendous news as we tell a person that their loved one has just been killed.

We deal with seeing the same horrors day in and day out.  Often it is the same parties in a whirl wind of calls that we can never fully succeed in helping someone.

It can change a person.  It can get to the point that all you see is that horror, and you wonder if there really are decent people in the world.

You can’t talk to people about what you have to do, because they don’t understand.  It is hard to maintain relationships outside the department because your shifts and days off are different from the general public.

When I went into the high schools and talked about the Police profession I always stressed three things.

First, because a person couldn’t be a police officer before they turned 21, I encouraged them to go to college – take courses they were interested in; it is easier to relate with people when you have a broader background.

Second, work in a retail setting or where you have to work with the public for a while.  Learn to work with people that may be upset because of the service, or their purchases, it will do you well when you have to deal with have to deal with irate people in your job in law enforcement.

Third, develop interests outside of police work.  Mine was the church, but it could be hobbies or organizations that they have a common interest.  Develop friendships of people that you are not likely to see committing crimes.

It is just too easy to get a jaded look at people when all you see are the worst.  While cynicism is helpful in dealing with suspects, it can become a problem in dealing with normal every day citizens.  

We need to realize that the people, the suspects, we deal with on a daily bases are not the norm.  Most people are law abiding and supportive of law enforcement.

Copyright November 21, 2017 Art Labrousse

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Ephesians 4:17-20  KJV  “ This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,

¹⁸ Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:

¹⁹ Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

²⁰ But ye have not so learned Christ;”

It helps when you realize that the problem with those that commit crimes have been blinded by satan.

We deal with a world that is imperfect, that the norm for those that do not know Christ is colored by that fact.

Believe it or not, it does help in the anger that we deal with when we encounter those individuals and the result of their criminal behavior.

Later, Art (-: