Back in the early 2000s NBC had a fictional series called 'Third Watch'; it followed the lives of characters who were NYPD, FDNY and NYC paramedics, and it was a great show. My favorite was Officer John Sullivan, a grizzed, overweight, cynical veteran nearing retirement because he reminded me of...myself.
'Sully' would often clash with a young go-getter who loved running hot at a thousand miles per hour with his hair on fire, who believed the answer to every issue or problem was either an arrest or citation. Bosco was a policeman who reminded me of the youngsters getting into the job as I neared retirement.
I was Bosco way back in 1979. Even two years before that, when I was sworn in as an auxiliary patrolman at Ontario PD.
Every Friday and Saturday night as an auxiliary, without fail, I was at the old police department on Park Avenue West, which is now the city's senior citizen center. Back then, when Ontario was just a village, the administrative offices were in the front half of the building and the police department was in the back. General Motors, the Richland Mall, Service Merchandise, Zayre's, Tractor Supply and a handful of restaurants were the biggest reasons anyone stopped and spent time in the village.
Chief Bob Krauss, Captain Denny Reid, Lieutenant Cal Miller, Tim McClaran, Keith Miller, Rex Knee, Ted Brinley and Dick Hamrick are all gone from us now, as is Paul Jones, who was also on the auxiliary. I worked with Dave Pugh, Ron Dille, Mike Burchett, Ron Miller, Lou Bemiller, Allen Au and Rod Smith in those days, too. Including the chief, we had thirteen officers. If memory serves, the auxiliary corps at one time had eighteen members.
Looking back, I can imagine that some of those men would, at times, become a little perturbed as I rode with them, for a couple of reasons: I wanted to write traffic tickets, make car stops and arrest people; plus, as I learned later in my career, when you're used to operating on your own in a cruiser, a rider can be a pain in the butt. Sometimes it was easy to feel the disdain the 'regulars' had for us.
As I progressed in my years on the job a lot of my attitude toward it changed. The boldest change was the realization that an arrest or citation isn't always the best answer. "We're out here to solve problems", Sully had once said to Bosco in one episode; the younger officer, of course had the opposite view of law enforcement. At the end of that episode, the veteran was proven right.
In the latter years of my three-plus decades on the job I can recount many instances of younger coppers having that same opposite view, seeing me as an over-the-hill dinosaur who was coasting toward the end of the line. The advent of in-car computer terminals only made things worse, as some youngsters wanted solely to operate through them. Officer safety was out the window by doing that, as far I as I was concerned, because if you weren't continually staring at the MDT screen you'd never know when another officer had cleared a call or car stop. Mobile Data Terminals have made for lazy policemen.
And solving problems? Giving someone a break on a minor infraction or traffic ticket paid off countless times, as folks tended to remember what you'd once done for them. One young guy couldn't understand why people would call me or stop in to see me out of the blue with information; I told him it was because they knew they owed me because they'd been let off the hook in the past. I'd treated them as human beings, not criminals; you build a rapport with people, not make them enemies. You don't go out and see how many tickets you can write during the shift, you go out, interact with the public and show them that you're human, too....and lose the arrogant attitude. You are NOT automatically better than someone else just because you're wearing a badge.
I'm just glad that some of the veteran officers I once worked with as a young man took the time to show me how to be a police officer.
Law enforcement needs more of those kind now.
Sully and Bosco
