Metamorphosis

I knew what I signed up for. I knew that as a police officer I would be exposed to some of the worst behavior humans can exhibit. As one instructor put it, we see people on the worst day of their life, and often times, multiple people on the worst day of their life. We encounter anger, sadness, evil, even death, and have to remain calm enough to fulfill our duties.

This all leads into this past week at the Academy. Studying crimes against persons and juvenile law turned into probably one of the most gruesome things I've had to endure in my life. As part of our studies we examined crime scene photos of homicides and particularly gory suicides. Crime scenes don't bother me, seeing a guy after he shoots himself in the head with a high powered rifle doesn't phase me. What really touched the core of my being was one video we were shown. This video was created by a man as he committed suicide. The idea was that we (the police) would find the video to show that it was in fact a suicide so that there wouldn't be an investigation, starting with his wife. The video runs through his death, his wife finding him, and the medics responding to the scene. As I've said: gore, guts, and blood don't bother me. However, watching a man die in front of you is a pretty heart wrenching experience. To cap off the week, our next instructor was a SVU detective, who shared stories of his cases.

The idea behind all this, I think, is to desensitize us and to make us aware of the type of thing we will have to deal with. Police work isn't the glamorous profession depicted by Hollywood; it isn't all car chases and heroic shootouts. If we arrive to a scene and we have an emotional reaction we lose our effectiveness. I'd have to say it worked. By the sixth hour of examining crime scenes, the class was able to crack jokes, while being able to spot out evidence and clues to what may have happened.



On a lighter note, I almost had a heart attack this morning when I woke up and saw that it was 0640, leaving me 10 minutes to pick up my partner and make it to the Academy. I was already planning my "To-From" letter to the instructors explaining why I was late, when I realized: It's Sunday".