Do you PO's

[!MASTERMIND!]

Get tired of the job after a while? Somebody I know said at first like withing the first 3 years he was proud of what he was doing, then after a while he kept trying to help the same people who just kept on doing the same things wrong. He thought they were just trying to add drama to their lives. He said that after a while he got really tired of the job and considered a new job. How do you guys feel on this?

[lindat2957]

Well everything you say is true. The first three years,you are very excited, and you do find that you deal with a lot of the same people for a lot of the same reasons. But the first three years are also your learning curve. You learn how do deal with different people in different ways and what does and does not work. you develop your sixth sense of police work, the "that guy/galis up to know good" feeling, then figuring out why. You can let the first three years wear you down. I have seen this in young guys who follow all their cases to see what has become fo the crooks. This tends to lead to a feeling of "what am I working so hard for, the courts are just going to let them go". All I can say is this. If you go into with the right mind set, no matter what the courts do so long as you do your job right that is all that matters...And like it or not we can't save the world, but we can make a difference in some folks lives. At year three, for me, we had to deal with Mr. Rodney King. The mentality became very much US, LE, against them, ANYONE not LE. I was rethinking my career very harshly. Then we lost an officer. The day I rode in a police car and saw all the people holding signs, waving flags, and saluting us, I knew exactly why I do this job. That has stuck with me, but for everyone it is different, different story different amount of time. But I will guess that almost everyone has a moment that defined for them, in their hearts, why they do this job.

[retdetsgt]

I honestly never got tired of it. But I was 25 when I started, back from Vietnam and none of this was as depressing to me as it was to some coming on right out of college. I do think that as a rule, people with more life experience prior to becoming a cop tend to burn out a lot slower, if at all.

I also worked for a large enough dept that I could move around, geographically if nothing else. I worked the "ghetto" for the first 5 years, got tired of that and transfered to another precinct where I worked with poor white trash.... It was a different ball game as the rules of the street were different.

After 5 years of that I started taking promotional exams and made detective. There I moved from child abuse, sex crimes, homicide, drugs, back to sex crimes, then homicide again and finally, hate crimes over the next 17 years.

I never once considered quitting and doing anything else. Funny thing is I never considered being a cop until I saw the job annoucement on the bulletin board at civil service either!

[!MASTERMIND!]

I been wanting to be a cop ever since I was 12 and saw someone blow a stop sign. I said to myself you know I hate when poeople break the law like that and put other peoples lives in jeapordy.

[scootsmo]

I been wanting to be a cop ever since I was 12 and saw someone blow a stop sign. I said to myself you know I hate when poeople break the law like that and put other peoples lives in jeapordy.

You also have to remember that everybody has committed a crime but not everybody is a criminal. If a person failing to stop at a stop sign gets you worked up then you have to take a step back and try looking at the big picture. Yes, I write people all the time for not stopping at stop signs but to get an anger or hatred for their actions already leaves you thinking one dimensionally and doesn't leave you with many other options for the situation.

[Gooch]

I was fresh out of the military when I first joined up in '91 and I loved it at first. 3 years later I was sick and tired of the whiners and all the BS in my department. There was exposed corruption in the command staff and the officers went to media with a "no confidence" vote on the chief. I loved doing police work but the BS that gets in the way of you doing your job got to me and I quit. Now that I'm older and I've done other things I have a different perspective and I take it all in stride. For me, it's much better the second time around and I'm a better cop now.

[Sleuth]

My job (Investigator for U.S. Customs) changed so radically that every 3 years it was like changing jobs!