What inspired you to become a cop?

[Edicius]

Please be completely honest, Im just curious.

[Scotty22]

While not one yet, what is inspiring me is that I will be serving others and doing something very meaningful with my life. I never actually thought I would be one, or even try to be one, but I want to look back on my life when I'm older and say this is what I've done to help my fellow man. Sure it's a job, but that's not why I would do it on that reason alone.

[Edicius]

Good to hear. Very respectable reasoning.

[HiTech]

My Father. He was a Police Officer for 35 years and retired as Chief.

[Menace]

Here is my little speil. I want to be a police officer (graduate academy on the 4th of June) to leave this world just a little bit better than when I found it. Plus, I want to wake up and think to myself "WOW, I get to go to work today!" instead of "Man, another day at work." I hear that once you find a job you love, you won't work another day of your life and I'm hoping I find that out real soon.

[Tankus]

im not sure anyone would believe me if i told you......its a bit of a weird story....

[coucousis]

It 's 5:00 A.M and i'm still sleepy..... I'll believe you Thankus.... :D

As for me it all started from my passion for Volonteer firefighter.... at the time in 1988, I became I volonteer firefighter ... We were 15 volonteer and were assited by 40 police officers that were also acting as firefighters....
Originaly I wanted to become a firefighter but since their was not much permanent job available(as a firefighter) and that it was still police officer that were acting as firefighters in many towns.... I went for Police job...

Today everything is pretty well separated.... The volonteer firefighter went up to over 50 members.... and the police officers are no longer firefighters !!!:D

[Tankus]

ok....since you asked for it, here goes.....although i will not be held responsible for anyone that dies of boredom or fall asleep during the tale....

once upon a time...oh, no wait, thats another story....

it was 1985 or so and i had just finished school....well the school said that i had finished and that i wasnt to come back!!....i wanted to be a doctor, but my family had told me for years that i didnt have the brains to be one and that id never make it anyway so i had better set my sights on something that my limited intelligence could handle.....so i wanted to be a butcher.

i got into a little bit of trouble here and there, and after a little while my father became a little sick of me coming home at all hours of the night and...well you know the sort of thing that teenagers do...so he grabbed me by the throat and lifted me upo off the ground and said to me... "girl, you need discipline, and you will join an armed force or be forever dead to this family"

now...since im not an australian citizen (a permanent resident yes) i couldnt join the army navy or air force....and that left the police.....

again i was told that id never make it, they wouldnt have me, i didnt have the brains, i didnt have the guts to stick it out etc etc yada yada yada....

and here i am, 17 years later, a senior constable, a shift supervisor, mentor and field training officer and work place assessor.......my family has eaten humble pie since the day i graduated and we all get along swimmingly now.

and to be perfectly honest.....joining was the best thing i ever did, and i wouldnt change a thing.

now....WAKE UP!!!!

[SnowLeopard]

Family wise, I have always been oriented to work for the State, the bureaucracy. Make the system work for the citizenry.

Operationally, I've been dropped into one situation or the other that went with police work. My first academy could have lead to a USCG commission. In NROTC, I got picked for security work because I was a fighter. In the Navy, I did anti drug boat operations and intel work. Then I got a job as a security officer (provost marshall).

Once out of the Navy, I wasn't headed in the LE direction for a while, but after a while, I felt the tug back, then and now in the anti-terrorism/natural resources area.

In short, oriented to work for the bureaucracy, want to be in the position where I have some power to change things even if at a low level.
-------------------------------------------------------
("Well, maybe I can introduce new ways to motivate them."--Darth Vader, (wtte), "The Return of the Jedi")

[HiTech]

[QUOTE=Tankus]
and to be perfectly honest.....joining was the best thing i ever did, and i wouldnt change a thing.
QUOTE]

Just think, you could have gone the other way and become a modern day Female Ned Kelly... :D

[Evnings]

What inspired me to be a cop? Watching Dragnet and Adam 12 as a kid got me interested in police work. Their positive, honest way of policing really got me interested in law enforcement. Then along came T J Hooker, which really set the hook.

Spending 3 1/2 years as a Dallas Police Explorer got me really hooked. I found the work exciting and rewarding. It showed me that there was a job where I could have direct positive impact on peoples lives. After 23 1/2 years, I'm still at it. Every day is a new adventure. I just wonder where all the years have gone. It only seems like yesterday that I was a pup.

A good pension and job security also added to the allure

[Oldbillplod]

I wanted a secure job with a reasonable salary and a good pension.

[oscarmitre]

I grew up in a company town in regional South Australia. I played too much sport at school and didn't study enough and spent many hours in the classroom staring through the window at the football oval wishing I was out there, or on the basketball court or...... Hence I didn't get enough points to go to University which would have been a way out of the one-company steelmaking and shipbuilding town. I was just resigning myself to a life working for the company when my father came home from work one afternoon and told me the next night the Sergeant in Charge of the local police would be at our place to see me. True enough the Sergeant in Charge turned up and basically did an interview with me. I remember he stood me up and said. "he's big enough". I was 17 and it seemed like an exciting thing to do. I travelled to our state capital for the processing twice and joined just before my 18th birthday for two and a bit years of training.

And I would do it all again. :D

[Switchback]

I had no intentions of ever being in LE. I always had a little interest, though I never really admitted to it, even to myself.

I studied molecular bio in college. I worked in a cancer lab after graduating and even had some of my research published. I loved the work, but making $20K didn't cut it for me. A lot of the industry jobs were monkey jobs, doing assembly-line type of lab work (no fun). Well, I went to a job fair with a friend. There was no one recruiting biologists and there were a ton recruiting engineers (his degree). Since we rode together, I had to wait for him.

Well, I was walking around chewing the fat with differnet people, just killingtime. One of them was a recruitor for the US Marshals. Between running track in college, being in ROTC, and having a couple MOSes prior to college, I guess she liked the looks of me (as a candidate) and suggested me to apply.

I was going to toss the paperwork when I got hoe, but my wife convinced me to go ahead and put in. Each step of the 1.5 year process, I wanted the job more and more. It wasn't until I got to the academy that I realized how blessed I was in getting this job.

...all from stumbling across it at a job fair and putting in on a whim.

I'd never quit now... NEVER! I'm living the dream! It's all about the game... people run and people lie. That's ok, nothing personal... it's my job to catch them. When they run, I follow.... with SMILE.

[bob95321]

I was about to graduate with my 4-year degree in International Studies and went to the job fair at the college. No one wanted an International Studies major. The Border Patrol recruiters were there and they didn't care what major you had and pointed out how much the job paid.

I applied, had to wait 10 months through the hiring process, and after I got through the first year it has been the best job I've ever come close to having. Now I can't leave it because I can't find anything that pays enough or is located where I want to live.