BEHIND THE BADGE Sometimes officers have to improvise when certain equipment isn’t issued. Here a K9 officer built a storage unit in the back of his patrol vehicle to keep his search and rescue gear organized.
don’t have to do squat.” He accuses you of harassing him because he has tattoos, wears his baseball hat backwards and has been arrested several times before. Then he rolls up his window. This type of story usually ends with broken window glass and an inebriated driver face down on the pavement being handcuffed. I never met a police officer who wanted to get into a fight and risk a career-ending injury, or worse. But an officer is trained to use the force necessary to bring a suspect into custody. An emotionally charged subject who is determined to argue and physically resist being handcuffed can be a handful, and any resulting scuffle seldom ranks as choreography. In these situations, an injury is bound to happen. If it happens to the officer, well, that comes with the job. The officer knew that when he or she signed up. If the suspect is injured, there’s an internal investigation in which the 110
American Shooting Journal // April 2017
officer’s supervisors will second-guess his every action and try to find a reason to suspend him. The suspect will get a lawyer, who will look to file a lawsuit. A video from the passenger’s smart phone makes the national news and the officer receives an unfriendly verdict from Internet “experts.” Everyone laments the lack of training. LACK OF RESPECT FOR AN officer’s authority can be fueled by biased reports in the media. Once I came across some clippings of newspaper stories from the 1930s that reported on some of our troopers’ cases. I don’t remember the exact headlines, but typically, they read like this: “Would-be thief gets what he deserves as trooper drag him off to jail.” In those days, the police were the good guys and the criminals were the bad guys in the eyes of the media and often, the public at large. Not so today. I remember a national television
Despite technological advances, sometimes you just need a nose for the job.