My name is Jill and I am a cop. That means that the pains and joys of my personal life are often muted by my work. I resent the intrusion but I confuse my self with my job almost as often as you do. The label "police officer" creates a false image of who I really am. Sometimes I feel like I'm floating between two worlds. My work is not just protecting and serving. It's preserving that buffer that exists in the space between what you think the world is, and what the world really is.
My job isn't like television. The action is less frequent, and more graphic. It is not exhilarating to point a gun at someone. Pooled blood has a disgusting metallic smell and steams a little when the temperature drops. CPR isn't an instant miracle and it's no fun listening to an elderly grandmother's ribs break while I keep her heart beating. I'm not flattered by your curiosity about my work. I don't keep a record of which incident was the most frightening, or the strangest, or the bloodiest, or even the funniest. I don't tell you about my day because I don't want to share the images that haunt me.
But I do have some confessions to make:
Sometimes my stereo is too loud. Andrea Bocelli's voice makes it easier to forget the wasted body of the young man who died alone in a rented room because his family feared the stigma of AIDS. Beethoven's 9th symphony erases the sight of the nurses who sobbed as they scrubbed layers of dirt and slime from a neglected 2-year-old's skin. The Rolling Stones' angry beat assures me that it was ignorance that drove a young mother to draw blood when she bit her toddler on the cheek in an attempt to teach him not to bite.
Sometimes I set a bad example. I exceeded the speed limit on my way home from work because I had trouble shedding the adrenalin that kicked in when I discovered that the man I handcuffed during a drug raid was sitting on a loaded 9mm pistol.
Sometimes I seem rude. I was distracted and forgot to smile when you greeted me in the store because I was remembering the anguished, whispered confession of a teenager who pushed away his drowning brother to save his own life.
Sometimes I'm not as sympathetic as you'd like. I'm not concerned that your 15-year-old daughter is dating an 18-year-old because I just comforted the parents of a young man who slashed his own throat while they slept in the next bedroom. I was terse on the phone because I resented the burden of having to weigh the value of two lives when I was pointing my gun at an armed man who kept begging me to kill him. I laugh when you cringe away from the mess in your teen's room because I know the revulsion of feeling a heroin addict's blood trickling toward an open cut on my arm. If I was silent when you whined about your overbearing mother it's because I really wanted to tell you that I spoke to one of our high school friends today. I found her mother slumped behind the wheel of her car in a tightly closed garage. She had dressed in her best outfit before rolling down the windows and starting the engine.
On the other hand, if I seem totally oblivious to the blood on my uniform, or the names people call me, or the hateful editorials, it's because I am remembering the lessons my job has taught me.
I learned not to sweat the small stuff. Grape juice on the beige sofa and puppy pee on the oriental carpet don't faze me because I know what arterial bleeding and decaying bodies can do to one's decor.
I learned when to shut out the world and take a mental health day. I skipped your daughter's 4th birthday party because I was thinking about the six children under the age of 10 whose mother left them unattended to go out with a friend. When the 3-year-old offered the dog the milk from her cereal bowl, the dog attacked her, tearing open her head and staining the sandbox with blood. The little girl's siblings had to pry her head out of the dog's jaws - twice.
I learned that everyone has a lesson to teach me. Two mothers engaged in custody battles taught me not to judge a book by its cover. The teenage mother on welfare mustered the strength to refrain from crying in front of her worried child while the well-dressed, upper-class mother literally played tug of war with her toddler before running into traffic with the shrieking child in her arms.
I learned that nothing given from the heart is truly gone. A hug, a smile, a reassuring word, or an attentive ear can bring an injured or distraught person back to the surface, and help me refocus.
And I learned not to give up, ever! That split second of terror when I think I have finally engaged the one who is young enough and strong enough to take me down taught me that I have only one restriction: my own mortality.
One week in May has been set aside as Police Memorial Week, a time to remember those officers who didn't make it home after their shift. But why wait? Take a moment to tell an officer that you appreciate her work. Smile and say "Hi" when he's getting coffee. Bite your tongue when you start to tell a "bad cop" story. Better yet, find the time to tell a "good cop" story. The family at the next table may be a cop's family.
Nothing given from the heart is truly gone. It is kept in the hearts of the recipients. Give from the heart. Give something back to the officers who risk everything they have.
Jill Wragg is a retired Police Officer from Massachusetts. She can be reached at JKWragg@yahoo.com
(This piece is copyrighted and can be used by permission only)
I'm sure you had no idea but your post is a copyrighted essay.
Someone changed some words in it so it appears to have been written by a man and then sent it around the internet with his name as author. After I confronted that man, the "altered" essay continued to spread but now as "author unknown." . There is no such thing as "author unknown." A 20 second Google check will tell you the author of any piece you find on the Internet.
I wrote it. I understand tis value to my colleagues but must insist that people respect its copyright by not changing it (especially its pronouns from female to male) and respect me by including my name as author. . When it gets posted in this altered form, people copy the incorrect wording and share it with friends and colleagues. That perpetuates the "male" version. . Please use this version when sharing with friends or when posting, with my name and email, the URL to my blog and the copyright notice.
My permission is implicit if a colleague posts my work as I have below. . Thank you. Officer Jill Wragg Yarmouth Police Department (Ret.)
My name is Jill and I am a cop. That means that the pains and joys of my personal life are often muted by my work. I resent the intrusion but I confuse my self with my job almost as often as you do. The label "police officer" creates a false image of who I really am. Sometimes I feel like I'm floating between two worlds. My work is not just protecting and serving. It's preserving that buffer that exists in the space between what you think the world is, and what the world really is.
My job isn't like television. The action is less frequent, and more graphic. It is not exhilarating to point a gun at someone. Pooled blood has a disgusting metallic smell and steams a little when the temperature drops. CPR isn't an instant miracle and it's no fun listening to an elderly grandmother's ribs break while I keep her heart beating. I'm not flattered by your curiosity about my work. I don't keep a record of which incident was the most frightening, or the strangest, or the bloodiest, or even the funniest. I don't tell you about my day because I don't want to share the images that haunt me.
But I do have some confessions to make:
Sometimes my stereo is too loud. Andrea Bocelli's voice makes it easier to forget the wasted body of the young man who died alone in a rented room because his family feared the stigma of AIDS. Beethoven's 9th symphony erases the sight of the nurses who sobbed as they scrubbed layers of dirt and slime from a neglected 2-year-old's skin. The Rolling Stones' angry beat assures me that it was ignorance that drove a young mother to draw blood when she bit her toddler on the cheek in an attempt to teach him not to bite.
Sometimes I set a bad example. I exceeded the speed limit on my way home from work because I had trouble shedding the adrenalin that kicked in when I discovered that the man I handcuffed during a drug raid was sitting on a loaded 9mm pistol.
Sometimes I seem rude. I was distracted and forgot to smile when you greeted me in the store because I was remembering the anguished, whispered confession of a teenager who pushed away his drowning brother to save his own life.
Sometimes I'm not as sympathetic as you'd like. I'm not concerned that your 15-year-old daughter is dating an 18-year-old because I just comforted the parents of a young man who slashed his own throat while they slept in the next bedroom. I was terse on the phone because I resented the burden of having to weigh the value of two lives when I was pointing my gun at an armed man who kept begging me to kill him. I laugh when you cringe away from the mess in your teen's room because I know the revulsion of feeling a heroin addict's blood trickling toward an open cut on my arm. If I was silent when you whined about your overbearing mother it's because I really wanted to tell you that I spoke to one of our high school friends today. I found her mother slumped behind the wheel of her car in a tightly closed garage. She had dressed in her best outfit before rolling down the windows and starting the engine.
On the other hand, if I seem totally oblivious to the blood on my uniform, or the names people call me, or the hateful editorials, it's because I am remembering the lessons my job has taught me.
I learned not to sweat the small stuff. Grape juice on the beige sofa and puppy pee on the oriental carpet don't faze me because I know what arterial bleeding and decaying bodies can do to one's decor.
I learned when to shut out the world and take a mental health day. I skipped your daughter's 4th birthday party because I was thinking about the six children under the age of 10 whose mother left them unattended to go out with a friend. When the 3-year-old offered the dog the milk from her cereal bowl, the dog attacked her, tearing open her head and staining the sandbox with blood. The little girl's siblings had to pry her head out of the dog's jaws - twice.
I learned that everyone has a lesson to teach me. Two mothers engaged in custody battles taught me not to judge a book by its cover. The teenage mother on welfare mustered the strength to refrain from crying in front of her worried child while the well-dressed, upper-class mother literally played tug of war with her toddler before running into traffic with the shrieking child in her arms.
I learned that nothing given from the heart is truly gone. A hug, a smile, a reassuring word, or an attentive ear can bring an injured or distraught person back to the surface, and help me refocus.
And I learned not to give up, ever! That split second of terror when I think I have finally engaged the one who is young enough and strong enough to take me down taught me that I have only one restriction: my own mortality.
One week in May has been set aside as Police Memorial Week, a time to remember those officers who didn't make it home after their shift. But why wait? Take a moment to tell an officer that you appreciate her work. Smile and say "Hi" when he's getting coffee. Bite your tongue when you start to tell a "bad cop" story. Better yet, find the time to tell a "good cop" story. The family at the next table may be a cop's family.
Nothing given from the heart is truly gone. It is kept in the hearts of the recipients. Give from the heart. Give something back to the officers who risk everything they have.
Jill Wragg is a retired Police Officer from Massachusetts. She can be reached at JKWragg@yahoo.com
(This piece is copyrighted and can be used by permission only)
OK PBC's original posting has been replaced with the correct version done by Jill.
It will be stuck for a while for everyone to read.
Great wtiting and a great post.
Posted by: Hb13
Great post, I'm sure other people here have read this but it was read to us by our DV instructor in the academy and it stuck with me. I WANT TO TELL YOU LIES
I want to tell that little boy his Mom will be just fine I want to tell that dad we got his daughter out in time I want to tell that wife her husband will be home tonight I don't want to tell it like it is, I want to tell them lies
You didn't put their seat belts on, you feel you killed your kids I want to say you didn't ... but in a way, you did You pound your fists into my chest, you're hurting so inside I want to say you'll be OK, I want to tell you lies
You left chemicals within his reach and now it's in his eyes I want to say your son will see, not tell you he'll be blind You ask me if he'll be OK, with pleading in your eyes I want to say that yes he will, I want to tell you lies
I can see you're crying as your life goes up in smoke If you'd maintained that smoke alarm, your children may have woke Don't grab my arm and ask me if your family is alive Don't make me tell you they're all dead, I want to tell you lies
I want to say she'll be OK, you didn't take her life I hear you say you love her and you'd never hurt your wife You thought you didn't drink too much, you thought that you could drive I don't want to say how wrong you were, I want to tell you lies
You only left her for a moment, it happens all the time How could she have fell from there? You thought she couldn't climb I want to say her neck's not broke, that she will be just fine I don't want to say she's paralyzed, I want to tell you lies
I want to tell this teen his buddies didn't die in vain Because he thought that it'd be cool to try to beat that train I don't want to tell him this will haunt him all his life I want to say that he'll forget, I want to tell him lies
You left the cabinet open and your daughter found the gun Now you want me to undo the damage that's been done You tell me she's your only child, you say she's only five I don't want to say she wont see six, I want to tell you lies
He fell into the pool when you just went to grab the phone It was only for a second that you left him there alone If you let the damn phone ring perhaps your boy would be alive But I don't want to tell you that, I want to tell you lies
The fact that you were speeding caused that car to overturn And we couldn't get them out of there before the whole thing burned Did they suffer? Yes, they suffered, as they slowly burned alive But I don't want to say those words, I want to tell you lies
But I have to tell it like it is, until my shift is through And then the real lies begin, when I come home to you, You ask me how my day was, and I say it was just fine I hope you understand, sometimes, I have to tell you lies
~ Kal The Rebel ~
Posted by: SPINMASS
Their are lots of very moving poems listed at www.policepoems.com including the two mentioned in this post.
Posted by: Delta784
Risking ridicule and/or flaming here, I have to say I absolutely HATE the "woe is me" stuff written by cops and especially retired cops who want to make a buck off the misplaced sympathies of the public.
Being a police officer sucks. I realized that within the first week of exiting the police academy, but guess what? I stayed with it, and here I am still in the game 20 years later. I had my chance back when I first realized it sucked (at age 22) to get out of it, but I chose to stay.
This sort of weepy, feel-sorry-for-me crap just absolutely infuriates me.
Yes, we have a crappy job. If you don't like it or can't handle it, that revelation should come sometime very early in your career when you're either young enough to change careers, or not so far removed from your former career that you can go back to it.
Either way......leave if you don't like it or can't handle it.
PLEASE.
<RANT OFF>
Posted by: HousingCop
<rant back on> I agree Delta, alot of cops like to write about the bad/good times and get published and sing the old Sprinsteen song "Glory Days". Well the job is what you make of it. If you can't handle the heat, don't step foot in the cruiser. We all know what the job is, has, and has been for the last 200+ years. Still alot of bad guys out there, just like there were in the 1800's. Tragic things still occur and it grates on your soul, but to put it to poems on how you dealt with situations is just sickening. I bet the janitor at the local High School can set pen to paper on how he cleans the halls after the Senior class leaves and goes to college every year, but you won't see that published, will you? <rant off> HC
Posted by: BlackOps
Hoorah Delta, I am with you 100% with this one. This is a job we all CHOSE to do and I am tired of these "poems" and "stories". Suck it up or get out of the business..... we don't want to hear your sob story.
Posted by: billb
Reminds me of an episode of Rescue Me when the fire fighter goes to the 9-11 "support group" and reads his poetry... then he finds out they are all whackers.
(not calling Jill a whacker)
I just think stuff like that is more appreciated by people "not in the know"
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