What is the best teaching from a retired / retiring officer to a younger one?
In my experience, retiring officers can be the asset of a department. They have acquired skills that help them de-escalate situations, spend more time talking with citizens, building up trust, and making them feel empathized, rather than jumping to autograph a ticket or make an arrest. They seem to be best skilled at filtering out chauvinistic nonsense and aggression, making them less reactive and more proactive. If a retiring/retired officer could share a most important part of his soul with a newer one, what would he select, to make him as productive and wise as an older one? Crusader, still have trouble with citizens' freedom of speech after all those years, huh?
Public Comments
- The thing all my trainers repeated was: Treat everyone at first as you'd treat your family....unless you are a sociopath and hate your family.
- First and foremost - to not trust people like you, who ask questions like this, but who really hate the Police. Here's an example of your previous questions: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ApZL6BLWTlI8us7rbVQc7_7ty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20070627124648AAiEB0x&show=7#profile-info-PgiKU8gdaa
- Remember to do the right thing. Do your job the correct way by the book. If you do not you let the bad guy win. Have friends that are not cops. They keep you grounded. When you retire your cop friends will not be around. Your other non-police friends will. Put as much money away into your retirement as you can. Deferred Comp etc. Enjoy the job. Retirement comes faster then you think. Remember that assholes are our bread and butter. Without them we would not have a job.
- Treat everyone politely, professionallly and with courtesy. Even those like you that are always looking for reasons to hate Police Officers.
- I wouldn't give you the time of day, let alone any advice I would give to a brother or sister Officer. Maybe you should stick to your top contributor area - Reptiles. Somehow you understanding cold blooded creatures makes perfect sense.
